And now they were here, quiet and thoughtful, in a car speeding towards home, towards her father, towards Simon’s departure. Towards the beginning of the rest of their lives. Except Abby had no idea if those would be intertwined or not.
The farmhouse looked tired and faded under a humid sky when Simon dropped her off. He’d offered to stay, but Abby knew she needed to talk to her father alone.
“But I’ll see you?” Simon pressed, sounding both determined and anxious. “I don’t leave till Wednesday.”
“You’ll see me,” Abby promised him, silently thinking, even if it is only to say goodbye.
Inside, everything was quiet and empty-feeling. Abby put her bag by the front door and headed for the kitchen, starting in surprise when she saw her father slumped at the kitchen table, a photograph in his hand, Bailey at his feet, her tail thumping at Abby’s arrival.
“Dad?”
“Did you find out?” He sounded resigned, as resigned as Simon had, talking about his daughter.
“Find out what?”
“About my father. Tom Reese.”
She realized she hadn’t given her grandfather much of a thought at all, once she’d discovered Matthew and Lily. “No, I didn’t. Not really, anyway. We found more out about Matthew Lawson, actually.” But she didn’t think her father cared much about that. “What is it, Dad?” she asked gently, with a courage and a compassion she knew she hadn’t possessed before. Seeing him looking so weary and defeated, she ached to put her arms around him, but she couldn’t remember the last time they’d hugged. “What are you trying to keep from me? Because, whatever it is, it doesn’t matter to me. I promise you it doesn’t.”
“My father was a coward.” The words were barely audible, yet still distinct. “He told me all about it before he died. It had haunted him for years—ever since it happened, I think. Wrecked his life, in some ways.”
Gingerly, Abby pulled out a chair next to her father and sat down. Bailey put her head on her knee. “Since what happened?” she asked.
“Since he deserted.” David looked up at her bleakly, his face drawn into haggard lines of sorrowful acceptance. “He ran away from the battle. Ardennes, when the SS kept coming in waves. Not that that’s any excuse. He was shot as he was fleeing the scene, leaving his comrades to fall, and they did.” He drew a heavy breath. “Shot by his fellow soldier.”
Abby’s mouth dropped open; she knew what—who—he was going to say before he did.
“By Matthew Lawson.”
“Matthaus Weiss,” she said softly, and David frowned.
“Who?”
“It doesn’t matter. I’ll explain later. Is that why he gave Grandad his medal?”
“Part of it, maybe. My father was engaged to Sophie Mather—”
“You knew—”
“So you found that out, did you?” He didn’t sound sour, just accepting.
“We guessed.”
“They were engaged, right at the end of the war. My father loved her. Spoke about her beauty and her fire, how spunky she was.” David sighed heavily. “He went back to London to recuperate after he was wounded. The knowledge of what he’d done was eating him up. Day after day, he couldn’t think about anything else. Couldn’t eat, even. Sometimes he felt as if he couldn’t breathe, just thinking about that moment. That choice…” The pain in her father’s voice, the memory, made Abby certain he wasn’t just talking about his father, about Tom Reese’s regret, but something far closer to home. Closer to their own painfully fractured relationship. “Eventually, he couldn’t keep it to himself. He told Sophie, hoping she’d understand. Needing her to forgive him.”
“But she didn’t,” Abby whispered. It was all starting to make sense, in a terrible way.
“No, she didn’t. He told me she was furious with him. She’d lost her mother to a V-1 rocket, and she’d waited out the war, longing to do something herself, or so my father said. When he told her, she called him a coward. She threw her engagement ring in his face and said she never wanted to see him again.”
After hearing so much about the tempestuous Sophie, Abby found she could picture the scene all too well. “And yet he gave her his Purple Heart—?”
“As a keepsake, to remember him by. He hated having to let her go. I don’t think he blamed her, but she broke his heart. He never told another soul, not till his deathbed, when he told me, a confession he felt he had to make.”
“Oh, Dad.” Abby rested her hand over her father’s gnarled one. It was the closest she could remember them being in years. “I’m so sorry.”
David wiped his eyes, and then he shook his head. “Don’t be sorry about that. It was years ago. Lifetimes. It doesn’t matter anymore. I’ve always known that.”
“Then…” Why did you fight so hard to keep me from knowing it? Considering her father’s state, Abby couldn’t make herself say the words.