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Louise gave Ginny’s plate a pointed stare. “I wasn’t aware that the ‘goodness’ promised by the psalmist included deviled eggs and two helpings of fried cod.”
“Pretty sure Jesus ate fish.” That was one bit she’d picked up at the island church—the men who followed Jesus around were fishermen, almost as good as lobstermen. Made a person think God must have a soft spot for the likes of her family. “Anyway, food’s getting cold. Mind if I join you?”
Louise looked like she did mind but was too polite to say so. Freddy led them to a blanket in the shade of the clapboard church, a prime spot. On their way over, Louise got waylaid by Mrs. Dougherty, asking something about a Red Cross blood drive. That left Ginny to try to sink down gracefully to the ground without dumping her plate or showing off her drawers to the families lunching around them. Skirts. Always such a bother. Thankfully, Freddy didn’t seem to notice her awkwardness as he kneeled and tucked into his lunch.
“Looks like we’re unchaperoned for a bit.”
Freddy pressed a hand to his heart in shock. “A genuine scandal. You know, that was one of the three rules Miss C gave me for boarding at Windward Hall.” He ticked them off on his fingers. “No drinking. No taking days off without permission. And no romantic entanglements.”
“Odd set of rules, that.”
“I suppose she didn’t want to play chaperone all summer. And American military men have a reputation to work off, you know. The Brits called us ‘overpaid, oversexed, and over here.’”
The idea of Freddy romancing a pack of British women was laughable. Why, Ginny felt safer with him than she had with some of the island boys she’d known all her life.
Don’t forget about the lying, she reminded herself. Freddy might be a gentleman, but he was a gentleman hiding something. Hercule Poirot sure wouldn’t waste an opportunity like this, alone with a potential suspect for ... something. She’d come over to the house a few times to read to Freddy while he gardened, but Gio was always there too. Nice of Freddy to take the boy under his wing and all, but it was harder than she expected to conduct a proper interrogation with a kid around.
Best to keep things open-ended at first. “So, tell me your story, Freddy Keats.”
There it was. That tense, guarded look again, covered up with a shrug. “Not much to tell.”
All right, maybe a little more specific, just to help things along. “When’d you join up? Before Pearl Harbor, I’m guessing, from the sound of things.”
His shoulders relaxed. So this he was comfortable with. That probably meant she was prodding in the wrong direction, but she couldn’t very well throw it into reverse now.
“Right after Dunkirk. After that, I knew we couldn’t hide from war forever. And I wasready, Ginny. Planned on being the most decorated flying ace in American history. In those early letters back to my family, I bragged myself ... well, to the skies.”
Hadn’t Mack said something just about the same? “You were a good pilot, I’ll bet.”
“I was.” He shook his head in disgust, as if landing from whatever soaring memories he’d been replaying in his mind. “But even good pilots can get shot down on their third transport mission with an awful shrapnel wound. And now here I am, my biggest worry whether we’ll get enough rain for the green beans.”
Ginny swallowed another mouthful and studied Freddy carefully. That expression was a new one, not likely to show up on the “We Can Do It” propaganda posters he always looked to be posing for. “You can’t feel guilty about not being able to fight anymore.”
He took a bite from his own plate—Lillian’s pie, which, Ginny noted with satisfaction, didn’t prompt a reaction of awe. “If I stop feeling a little bit of guilt ... I’ll just be angry. And I don’t have anyone nearby to get angry at, except maybe God.”
“Why not try it?”
He stared at her, and she took another forkful of lunch, calm as a clock, as folks on the island said. “Miss Cavendish was right. You are a perfect heathen.”
“That’s where you’re wrong. I’m not a perfect anything.”Stop grinning.This was serious, after all. “I only mean that if you keep up a front with other folks, that’s your choice. But isn’t God supposed to already know how you really feel?”
For a moment, she could see those honest emotions at war on Freddy’s face. But then he blinked—and smiled, sunny and warm. “I’d rather keep things cordial between the good Lord and myself. Anyway, given enough time in a hospital, a man starts to wonder who he really is. And I decided to go back to my roots—literally.”
Ginny groaned. “Is that terrible line how you got Louise to hire you?”
He glanced over at his employer, now trying to back awayfrom the chatty Mrs. Dougherty, but still out of earshot. “Pretty much. Oh, I gave her all the Victory garden mumbo jumbo from the Department of Agriculture and told her about my years tending our family’s garden. But she was midway through a speech about how some committee could help me locate a factory job when I said...”
“What?” She’d often wondered what logic had convinced the old spinster to employ a drifting veteran.
Freddy looked away, picking at a blade of grass. “It’s silly.”
“Tell me anyway.”
“I said, ‘I’m a pilot, ma’am, trained to destroy. There’s a lot I want to forget, but some things I want to remember. And ever since I put flowers on a friend’s grave, all I want to do is make things grow again.’”
That look on his face as he said it—strong but a little sad around the edges—well, if Ginny had been in Louise’s shoes, she’d have done the exact same thing.
“Freddy, that’s positively poetic. You and EmilyD. ought to be friends.”
