AllFreeNovel
Share Us
“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.
