Into the Darkest Day: An emotional and totally gripping WW2 historical novel

by Kate Hewitt

  “The food looks delicious,” Simon declared. “I’m going to eat my body weight in French fries.”

  Abby laughed at his air of intent. “I am not,” she assured him and he pretended to look crestfallen.

  The waitress came to take their orders, and she asked for a club sandwich, while Simon was as good as his word and asked for a large order of French fries, along with a cheeseburger.

  “They seemed like a sweet couple, didn’t they?” Abby remarked once the waitress had gone.

  “Douglas and Stella? They did. I’m sure I could include lots of lovely tidbits for this book I have yet to write.”

  “But you will write it, won’t you?” Abby asked. Something about his tone made her think he doubted himself.

  Simon shrugged. “To be honest, I’m feeling more interested in the mystery of my grandmother and your grandfather than writing about a load of other couples.” He paused. “Your father’s reticence made it seem even more like a mystery to me. I know you don’t think he’s hiding something, but if he was… what would it be?”

  Abby glanced out the window at the sleepy main street of the little town. The heat was radiating up from the black tarmac in visible waves, and not a soul was in sight. “Honestly, I have no idea. I think he just doesn’t like anyone digging into his past, getting personal.” And neither did she.

  “Was he close with his father? I know you don’t remember him, but did you ever get a sense of their relationship?”

  “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.”

  Abby smiled a little at that. “And your parents?”

  “Dad’s retired now, but he was chair of the mathematics department at the University of Lincoln. That gene skipped me completely. Mum was an assistant lecturer of Norse mythology, of all things.” Which had suited her, because she’d been like some tempestuous Nordic goddess herself, perhaps Freya, goddess of love and war, sorcery and death.

  Abby sat back. “That sounds like quite a family.”

  “Yes.” Talking about his family made him think of Maggie, and how she still hadn’t texted him, even though he’d sent her a video on WhatsApp of his tiny cabin by the lake, with a jokey narrative, longing for her just to smile at something he’d said. He’d also asked her if she wanted him to bring back anything American—“A whole suitcase of Hershey’s, sweetheart. Whatever you like.”

  All of it was too little, too late, Simon knew. He hadn’t even told her he was going to the States for several weeks until he was practically on the plane, a fact that made everything in him cringe and squirm in shame, as if snakes were writhing under his skin, in his gut.

  Perhaps that was why he wanted there to be a mystery to discover, because it would justify him coming here for so long. Then it would be less about running away, and more about going to.

  But maybe there was no mystery, at least not a big one. Maybe they’d just been friends or sweethearts and it had fizzled out. That’s all it probably was, and yet here he was, digging, digging, trying to justify coming all this way… and for what?

  Just so he could avoid what was unraveling back at home, what had unraveled a long time ago?

  “I’ve discovered something,” Simon said after a moment, feeling he needed to tell
Abby, and wanting to get away from his own desperately circling thoughts.

  “Discovered…?” Abby looked more trapped than curious. Was she hiding something, or was he just paranoid, because he knew he was? He could have told her about Maggie, but he hadn’t, and the truth was, he had no intention of doing so. He wanted to keep his complications back home. “What is it about?”

  “Tom Reese.”

  “Oh.” A look of naked relief passed over her face. So she was hiding something, even if just her own reticence. Like father, like daughter. Why were they so reluctant to share anything? Of course, he was too, so he could hardly point the finger. “Okay…”

  “I looked up his Purple Heart medal online. There’s a Hall of Honor thing—you type in a name and it gives you all the information about the person and why they received the medal, or at least as much as is known.” He gave a grimace of apology. “Sorry if I was prying. I was just curious, especially after your dad seemed so reluctant to talk about it.”

  “That’s okay. If it’s online, it’s there for anyone to see, isn’t it?”

  “I suppose.”

  “So what did you find out?”

  “He was in the 82nd Airborne, which was a unit of paratroopers who parachuted into Normandy behind enemy lines on D-Day. He was wounded in Belgium, in December 1944, during the Battle of the Bulge.”

  “Oh.” Abby let out an embarrassed laugh. “I don’t actually know about any of that, really.”

  “Didn’t you say you studied the Second World War?” Simon teased, and she laughed again.

  “That was years ago. I’ve forgotten it all now.”

  “I don’t know if it’s important, anyway, in terms of your family. It was a surprise attack by the Germans, who had amassed a huge amount, or ‘bulge,’ of troops and weaponry, in Belgium, to prevent the Allies from advancing into Germany. There were a lot of casualties.”

  The waitress came back to check on them, and Abby gave her a fleeting smile of thanks before turning back to Simon. “So what do you think?” she asked. “It doesn’t tell you much more about your grandmother, does it? Or even much more about my grandfather, really.”

  “I just wonder,” Simon said slowly, “why it was such a secret in your family. His Purple Heart. You heard Helen—most people were proud of those medals. It meant they’d fought for their country, and they’d paid a price. And if he received it during that operation… it meant he’d been fighting on the front lines for months. I did a little research on the 82nd Airborne, and although they had some leave in the middle, they saw all the major battles. It was seriously tough stuff. Crack troops and all that, and your grandfather was part of it. Wouldn’t he have been proud?”

  Abby held his gaze for a moment before looking away. “When you talk about him,” she said slowly, “it feels as if you’re talking about someone else. A stranger, not a relative. You could be talking about Douglas Bryant, or anyone, really. Not my grandfather. Not that I even remember him, but… all I’ve known, all I’ve related him to, is the orchard. The land.”

  “So are you curious?” he asked, because he heard a tremor of wonder in her voice. At least he hoped he did.

  “I’m afraid to be curious,” Abby admitted with a sigh. “As ridiculous as that probably sounds. My dad and I… we have a complicated relationship. You’ve probably realized that.”

  “It was a bit noticeable.” Simon smiled, trying to lighten the mood, but Abby still looked unhappy, and he didn’t like it. “Because of your mother and brother dying?” he guessed.

  “That’s part of it,” she answered after a moment. She turned to look out the window again, and Simon had the sense she didn’t want him to see the expression on her face.

  He was silent for a moment, wondering how much to press. How much he wanted to. He usually avoided the messy, emotional stuff, kept it light and charming. Easy. But something about Abby’s sadness tugged at him, made him want to help.

  “Could you… could you tell me why?” he asked gently.

  ABBY

  The question was spoken so kindly, so sympathetically, that Abby felt her eyes film with tears. No, she was not going to cry. She swallowed dryly and then took a sip of her Coke.

  “It’s all a bit difficult,” she said, thankful that she’d managed to stem the threat of tears. She turned to look at him. “It’s been such a nice day. I don’t want to go into all of that and ruin it.”

  “Would it ruin it?”

  She felt a prickle of annoyance, one emotion piling on top of another. He was starting to sound as if he were her therapist. “Yes, it would, actually. I know you mean well, but I really don’t want to go into all that right now. Let’s focus on Sophie and Tom.”

  Simon blinked, and Abby felt as if she’d slapped him. Then he summoned a smile, even if it looked a little rusty. “Okay. Message received. Sorry.”

  She shrugged, half in apology, half in acceptance, and Simon picked up his cheeseburger. They ate in silence for a few minutes, and Abby felt she’d ruined the day anyway. Her memories had.

  At moments like this, she felt as if she were living under a huge, looming shadow, or a thousand-pound weight, every day a struggle. Then she told herself to stop being so melodramatic. She had a good life. She liked the work she did for the orchard, the way she’d developed the little shop. She lived in a lovely house in a beautiful place, and she had some good friends and a father whom she knew loved her, deep down, in spite of everything. Plus she had a wonderful dog. That was a lot, wasn’t it?

  It was enough.

  Abby looked out the window again, and saw the color had been leached from the sky, so it was bone-white, the world seeming muted under its lack of light. A summer storm was forecast for that evening, the kind with heavy purple clouds and neon forks of lightning, the rain pounding on the tin roof of the barn, streaming down the windows.

  Why couldn’t she allow herself to be more curious about Sophie and Tom? Why did everything between her and her dad have to be a dead end, a closed door? Why couldn’t this little mystery draw them together, as they picked at the threads and unraveled it together? Instead, it felt like yet another thing forcing them apart.

  As she considered it, her thoughts roamed further, recklessly now. What if Tom Reese and Sophie Mather had had a wartime romance, a dramatic, star-crossed love affair, even? What if Sophie had done something terrible that had haunted her for the rest of her life? And what if finding out would be a way to put their own ghosts to rest?

  For the first time, Abby felt a true flicker of curiosity, a tempting whisper of “what if”.

  Why hadn’t Sophie and Tom found their happy ending? Heaven knew she wanted someone to.

  “There’s a trunk with some of my grandfather’s things in the attic,” she told Simon with an impulsive recklessness that was so unlike her. “At least, I think there is. I could have a look through it, if you wanted. See if there’s anything in there that relates to all this.”

  Simon’s eyes lit up. “I don’t want to ruffle any feathers…”

  “I don’t have to tell my dad I’m doing it.”

  He frowned. “Maybe you should.”

  Abby shook her head, knowing that was impossible. “It’s better if I don’t.”

  “I’m sorry.” Lightly, barely a brush of his fingertips, Simon touched her hand. “I hope maybe you can tell me about it sometime.”

  Abby could only nod.

  A few hours later, as late-afternoon sunlight slanted through the windows of the empty rooms of the farmhouse, she walked slowly upstairs. Her father was still out spraying; he hadn’t missed her at all, and, bizarrely, that made her feel as sad as it did relieved. Bailey, at least, had greeted her with enthusiasm when she’d come in the house, tail wagging, head pressing against her leg as soon as she opened the door. Abby had smiled and stroked her soft head; sometimes Bailey felt almost human in her understanding, her gentle affection.

  Now, the stairs creaked under her careful steps as she turned the corner
and walked past her father’s bedroom, a guest bedroom that was never used, her own bedroom, and then the fourth bedroom whose door remained shut. Luke’s room—still with its football pennants tacked to the walls, the navy bedspread pulled tight across the single bed. Neither of them ever went in there; she’d closed the door fifteen years ago and, as far as she knew, neither of them had ever opened it again. Everything in there had to be covered with dust.

  She hesitated at the narrow door leading to an equally narrow set of stairs that went to the attic of the old farmhouse, the drafty unused storage space they’d never really needed, except to keep the memories at bay, out of sight, if not out of mind.

  Taking a steadying breath, Abby opened the door. The stairs were covered in cobwebs—she hadn’t come up here since last January, when she’d brought their decorations back up after another quiet Christmas. She’d shoved the box of ornaments by the top of the stairs and hurried back down again. Now the creak of her steps felt abnormally loud in her ears.

  She wasn’t doing anything wrong, but she felt as if she was. She wasn’t actually sure if her grandfather’s stuff was even up there; she had a vague memory of an old leather-banded trunk that she’d been told not to open as a child, and she suspected it held her grandparents’ memorabilia, but maybe it didn’t. And even if it did, she had no idea whether the stuff inside went all the way back to the war.

  At the top of the stairs, Abby flicked on the light switch, and the single bulb’s weak glow barely penetrated the shadowy space, with its stacks of plastic crates and cardboard boxes. Nearer the stairs and easiest to access were the things they actually used—Christmas decorations, a box of winter clothes, three dozen canning jars.

  Farther back, everything became more ambiguous, dangerous. Unmarked boxes of old school books and report cards, photographs, picture frames. A plastic crate of baby clothes that surely hadn’t been opened in nearly thirty years. Another one of dresses, her mother’s Sunday clothes. Abby had been the one to pack up her mother’s things; her father hadn’t wanted to throw anything away. He hadn’t wanted to look at it, either.