Into the Darkest Day

“So, why don’t I tell you what I know?” he said when the silence had stretched to several seconds, and threatened to become something seriously awkward. He tried to summon something of the cheerful tone he’d had with Abby earlier, but it was starting to feel forced.

Unsurprisingly, David didn’t respond, but Abby raised her eyebrows expectantly, giving him a little smile. Lovely smile, too.

Simon pushed the thought away as he began. “My grandmother Sophie Mather lived in London during the war. I think that’s where she must have met your father, Tom Reese.” He directed this towards David, but then glanced at Abby, who nodded encouragingly. “I don’t know the nature of their relationship, of course, but it seemed… close. My grandmother certainly spoke fondly of him before she died. She seemed to have seen quite a bit of him.”

“My father never mentioned her to me.” D

avid moved his implacable gaze from the distance to Simon. “Not one word.” The reticence must have run in the family.

“My grandmother never said anything to me either, or my mother, until she was diagnosed with terminal cancer last year,” he agreed. Not that his grandmother had had many opportunities to share such details; her relationship with her daughter, and her daughter’s family, had been complicated and often fraught. “These things… they’re difficult to speak about, aren’t they? The war, I mean, and all that happened then. My grandmother hardly ever mentioned it.”

“There’s a reason for that.” David’s tone was flat.

“What did she say about Grandad?” Abby asked. Simon could tell she was trying to pitch her tone somewhere between cheerful and cautious, and it wavered between the two.

Her father shot her a quelling look that brought a faint flush to her cheeks. Abby had to be thirty years old, at least. What was she doing, living at home, under her father’s thumb? Or was he imagining the unhealthy dynamic, reading too much into a single look?

Simon directed his reply to David. “Not all that much, to be honest. Just that he was an American soldier stationed near London before D-Day, and they’d become… friends. She said they’d parted badly and he’d given her his medal as a keepsake. She felt it was time to give it back.” He paused. “She also said she should have given it back a long time ago, and she hoped that he could forgive her.” Another pause as he let that information sink in. “She gave me the address of your place. She said she’d lost touch with your father right after the war, but she told me she looked him up on the internet. She was surprisingly savvy, that way.” If Simon had been hoping for a small smile at that, he didn’t get one. He felt ridiculous, as if he were in a play, pretending this was a fun, friendly conversation when it was anything but. David wasn’t overtly hostile, not exactly, but close enough. “She wanted him—or his descendants—to have the medal back.” He looked between Abby and David, trying to gage Abby’s mood. Was she interested in the medal, despite her father’s determined lack of interest? “Do you… do you want to see it?”

David rose from the rocking chair with a creak of both joints and rockers. “I don’t need to see it.”

“Dad,” Abby protested quietly. “What’s the harm—”

“I already knew he was wounded.”

Abby’s eyes widened. “You never told me that—”

“There was never any reason to. He didn’t like talking about it, and it wasn’t too serious, anyway.” He turned to Simon. “I don’t mean to be rude, but I’m not interested in digging up the past, finding out what my father had to do with your grandmother. He was happily married to my mother for forty years. He made his life here. No good will ever come of poking around in the past, digging up things people don’t want to talk about.” He nodded towards Simon as he thrust his barely touched glass of lemonade onto the porch railing. “I appreciate your interest and concern, and I thank you for your time, going out of your way to bring back this medal, but this is the end of it,” he stated, and then, giving the dog one last pat, he stepped off the porch and started walking back towards the barn.

ABBY

Wow. That had gone even worse than Abby could have possibly expected, which was saying something. She felt herself flush as the ensuing silence stretched and stretched between them. Simon looked bemused, staring after her father’s retreating back. Bailey lifted her head, looking between them, and then pressed her head against Abby’s knee, as she so often did when she sensed tension.

“I’m sorry,” Abby said at last as she fondled Bailey’s ears, her gaze lowered. “I know what it sounded like, but he really doesn’t mean to be rude.”

Simon turned to her, eyebrows raised, a wry smile quirking his mouth. “Are you sure about that?”

“It’s just… he doesn’t like talking about the past.” Which was rather obvious.

Simon nodded and sighed. “No, I’m the one who’s sorry. I don’t mean to cause trouble.” He smiled ruefully. “But I have, haven’t I? For whatever reason, your father does not want this medal back, or for anyone to talk about Tom Reese.”

“It doesn’t have to be such a mystery,” Abby felt compelled to say, although she wasn’t sure why. Maybe it was a mystery. “It’s just… my father doesn’t like anything to change.”

“But this wouldn’t change things, would it? If anything happened, it was almost eighty years ago. Surely it couldn’t matter now.”

“I know.” She gazed at her father’s retreating back as he headed into the barn, noting his heavy tread, his stooped shoulders, before dropping into the seat he’d just left. “It might change his opinion of his father, I suppose, if he got up to something…” She trailed off, unsure what she was implying, especially of Simon’s grandmother. The truth was, she had no idea why her father was so reluctant to receive the medal, or know about Simon’s grandmother. Was it just his natural reticence to talk about the past, or something deeper?

“Got up to something?” Simon repeated, sounding skeptical. “It’s true he might have had a wartime romance, years before he was married. That hardly seems scandalous.” Simon sounded gently incredulous, and Abby shrugged again, spreading her hands in a gesture of helpless apology.

“Honestly, I don’t know.”

“Do you want to see it?”

She blinked, a little startled. “The medal?”

“It belongs to your family. I need to give it back, whether you want it or not. It was my grandmother’s wish.”

“All right.” Bailey flopped on the floor again as Abby held out her hand and Simon reached into his pocket. Abby’s breath caught as he gently, and almost reverently, opened a little box and then deposited the little heart with its faded purple ribbon into her palm.