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She dumped their bowls in the sink before leading Simon to the front hallway, and the photo of Tom and Susan Reese hanging by the stairs. It was black and white and they were both unsmiling, the way
people seemed to be for photos back then. Tom was in a dark suit, Susan in a relatively plain white dress, belted at the waist. Though they stood next to each other, they weren’t touching.
Simon leaned closer to study it intently, his hair flopping forward. He raked it back with one long-fingered hand as he squinted at the photo.
“Where was it taken?”
“Um… a registry office in Milwaukee, I think.”
He turned to look at her in surprise. “Not in Minnesota? Not in a church?”
Abby shrugged, startled by the question, one she’d never considered before. “I don’t know. I don’t think so.” She searched her memory. “I think it was a small wedding. No family. There’s only that one photo, and no one ever talked about Grandad’s family back in Minnesota, anyway.”
“How did they meet?”
Abby cast her mind over what little family history she knew. Life began and ended with Willow Tree Orchards; no one had ever really talked about anything before. Her mother’s family was from Chicago, and there was only her elderly grandmother left, in a nursing home with dementia. As for the Reeses…
“I don’t know,” Abby confessed. “I know my grandfather came from Minnesota, but I don’t know where my granny came from, and I never met either of their families.”
“Don’t you think that’s a bit odd?”
“Is it?” She felt a little defensive. “How many people know their whole family tree? Besides, it’s not as if we’ve had lots of opportunity to go visiting. We live on a working orchard. It’s an around-the-clock job—”
“Surely it’s not like livestock, though,” Simon countered gently. “Where you have to milk the cows every morning, or whatever?” He let out a laugh. “Not that I know the first thing about any of it. I’m a city boy, through and through.”
Abby turned back to the photo. She tried to remember her grandmother, but she had only the vaguest wisp of a recollection—a woman in an apron, her hair in a bun. Or was she imagining even that? “I don’t know,” she said again. She stared at her grandfather’s face. Was she imagining the bleak set to his eyes, his jaw, the way he looked at the camera as if he were challenging it? Was there a mystery here, after all? And, if so, was it one she wanted to discover?
“Look, why don’t you come with me?” Simon asked, and Abby turned to him.
“Come with you?” she repeated blankly. “Where?”
“To the Bryants, the family in Genoa City. I’m interviewing them on Saturday. You’re a local, you could be a help. And it might be interesting…”
Abby had no idea how she could help Simon conduct an interview, and while the family’s life story could be interesting, it had no relevance to her. And yet, all the same, she found herself nodding. Smiling, even, because he’d asked, and she knew she wanted to see him again.
“All right,” she said as her smile widened. “I could go with you.”
Chapter Five
January 1944
The Berkeley Hotel was a grand edifice on the corner of Berkeley Street and Piccadilly, its golden stone façade making it one of the most elegant buildings Lily had ever been in. The sound of a swing orchestra spilled out from its open doors as Tom took Sophie’s arm and headed inside, with Lily and Matthew behind.
Lily had been anxious all week for this evening, fretting about what to wear, what to say, how to be. As she’d suspected, Sophie and Tom had paired off the moment they’d all left the house. By the time they were halfway down Holmside Road, Sophie had her arm in Tom’s, while Lily and Matthew trailed silently behind, both of them struggling to find anything to say. At least Lily was. Perhaps Matthew simply didn’t care.
They couldn’t talk much on the Tube, with the press of people and the noisy rattling of the car, but as soon as they emerged from the station, London’s nightlife hidden and seething beneath a veil of blackout darkness, Tom was all jaunty assuredness.
“The Berkeley is the place to be,” he informed them all as they came into the foyer and a girl in a black dress took their coats with a simpering smile.
Bereft of her coat, Lily felt her dress’s plainness acutely. Sophie had magicked up a dancing frock from the paltry depths of the wardrobe—or, more accurately, from one of the girls at the War Office. It was a shimmering, silvery thing that bared her shoulders and floated as she moved. A bit dated, but lovely.
Lily, on the other hand, was in a far more sensible dress she’d worn every year of the war at Christmas. It was dark green taffeta, its modest skirt and square neckline as appropriate for church as a dance hall. Its only concession to the occasion was a bow knot at the neck.
Tom whistled appreciatively as Sophie did a little twirl in her silver dress, tossing her head back and laughing. She was radiant, sparkling like a star, while Lily felt as drab as a sparrow; she was wearing less makeup than the coat-check girl.
She glanced at Matthew, who had his hands in his trouser pockets and was looking completely disinterested in anything going on.
And so much was—women in beautiful dresses, men in uniform, everyone chatting and laughing and tossing back drinks like something out of a radio play. Lily had never seen so many Americans, of all different types and ranks, a sea of army green and khaki brown and navy blue, everyone looking as if they were born to be there, the women coquettish, the men swaggering.
