“Not really. They were both farmers, strong, silent types.” She smiled wryly. “Salt of the earth, like you said.” And yet again she felt that sense of yawning ignorance, this time about her own family. Why didn’t she know more? Did most people know their grandparents’ stories? Why had Tom Reese left Minnesota, and never seemed to return—at least not that Abby knew about?
The questions kept piling up, yet maybe there was less mystery there than Abby suspected, or Simon wanted there to be. After all, people did just slip away. Days and years passed and you realized how far you’d drifted along the currents of time. Wasn’t life just like that?
Or maybe there was a mystery, a secret, even. Then, the question was, did Abby want to discover what it was?
SIMON
Simon watched Abby as she sipped her drink, her expression pensive and a little bit sad. A wisp of dark hair had fallen across her cheek and he had the rather absurd urge to lean over and tuck it behind her ear. He wouldn’t, of course.
“What about your immediate family?” he asked, and he didn’t miss the way Abby tensed just a little, before she made herself relax as she turned back to look at them.
“What about them?”
“It’s just you and your dad…?” he prompted, waiting for the response she seemed reluctant to give.
“Yes.” A pause while Simon waited some more, for there was clearly something to be said. Abby didn’t seem to want to say it, though.
“Has it always been that way?” he asked gently.
“No.” She sighed and pushed her drink away a little. “My mom and brother died in a car accident fifteen years ago, when I was seventeen.”
“Oh, Abby.” Simon almost reached over to touch her hand, but there was something so prickly and restive about her that he didn’t. She folded her arms and looked out the window. “I’m so sorry.”
“Thank you. It… it was a tough time.”
Which had to be a massive understatement. “Is that why you’ve stayed?” he asked, and Abby turned back to look at him.
“What do you mean?” she asked sharply, too sharply.
“Sorry… I just meant because your father would have been alone. Running the orchard by himself…”
“Oh.” She seemed to relax, her shoulders rounding a little. “Yes, I suppose that’s why. But, like I said before, if I’d wanted to go, I would have.” She seemed to be saying that as much for her benefit as for his, a need to remind herself of it. To believe it.
“And where would you have gone?” he asked lightly.
“What?” She frowned and then reached for her drink again. “I had a place at University of Wisconsin Madison.” She spoke dismissively, as if it hadn’t mattered. “I wanted to major in German—how ridiculous is that?”
“It’s not ridiculous.”
“I’m not sure what I would have done with a degree in German. I think I chose it just because I liked my high school German teacher. I did study the Second World War, a little, as part of it. Not that it helps with any of this.”
“It’s always hard to give up a dream.” What would Abby have been like, Simon wondered, if her mother and brother hadn’t died? If she’d gone to university? Maybe she would have moved away, lived in a city, had a more normal and varied life. Although who was he to say her life wasn’t normal, or that she had regrets, just because he did?
“It wasn’t so much about losing a dream as gaining perspective,” Abby said slowly. “My mother and brother’s deaths—they made me realize what was important. I never felt like I was giving up anything, just making the choice I needed to at that time.”
“And wanted to?”
Something flashed across her face and was gone. She lifted her chin an inch or two. “Yes.”
Their food came then, which was probably a good thing. Simon dug into his cheeseburger and they ate in silence for a few moments as the unspoken tension their conversation had created trickled away. He wasn’t even sure why he’d pushed—did he really want to involve himself in another person’s emotional mess? He had enough of his own.
“What about you?” Abby finally asked. “Did you always want to be a history teacher?”
“Yes.” Simon put his half-eaten burger down and took a sip of his lemonade. “It runs in my family. Everyone’s an academic. University lecturers, though. I chickened out and went for the easy option.” He hoped he didn’t sound bitter when he said that. Simon, the disappointment of the family, or so his mother had said often enough, when she’d been in one of her moods.
“You didn’t want to be like everyone else?”
“I didn’t have the brains, or the work ethic, to be honest.” He shrugged. “I have two older sisters who are absolutely fierce. One’s a professor of Women’s Studies, the other of Sociology. They both terrify me a little.”