One Lavender Ribbon

Chapter 16

It was strange, really. The sounds, the smells. Half a century had passed, but the scent of fresh gear, hearing the crunch of military boots on the ground, the faint taste of aircraft smoke that floated on the air and stung the back of your throat. If he closed his eyes and imagined hard enough, he was a raw recruit again, waiting to go to war. Eager, able, hopeful.

They’d spent another twenty minutes outside the plane, with Pops giving a play-by-play of battle after battle. Will was enthralled. Sara and Adrienne had finally grown weary of the graphic account and had gone back to the main boardwalk to get drinks, leaving Pops and Will alone at the end of the runway.

“I remember you telling me war stories when I was little.”

“I did,” Pop’s said proudly. “When your parents brought you home from the hospital, you were so small.” Pops lifted his hands palm side up. “Your whole body fit in my two hands.”

Will smiled.

Pops stared at his palms. If he concentrated hard enough, he could still see, still feel the tiny form of his newborn grandchild. “Your mom and dad said I shouldn’t tell a tiny baby war stories. But I did it anyway.”

“They didn’t like you to talk about it?”

Pops grinned. “Nah. Just wasn’t proper dialogue for a newborn.”

Will looked out over the planes. “Why did you stop? The last story I remember, I was probably ten or eleven.”

Pops’s eyes followed the trail to the six military aircraft in front of him. “You were getting older. G.I. Joe was out. You wanted to hear about mutated Ninja reptiles and Spiderman.”

“I’m sorry, Pops. I didn’t know the stories were real. I didn’t know they were about you.” Will reached down and plucked a small shell from the ground, rolling it over and over in his hand. “I wish I had grown up with them.”

Regret wasn’t a welcome visitor in Pops’s world. He hated Will feeling this way.

Will’s gaze narrowed. “But Mom and Dad didn’t make you stop telling the stories?”

Careful, here. Will rarely brought up his parents. Now, an inquisition about them. “No, why would you think that?”

Will shrugged. “I don’t know. Their whole mission is about bringing peace to the world.”

Pops took a stern stance, planting his feet firmly and his hands on his hips. “Your mom and dad are soldiers, just like me.”

Will smirked. “I guess. I don’t want to talk about them right now; today is about you. I feel like I’ve missed out on such an important part of your life. Now I just want to know everything about it, Pops.”

Appreciation surged as William stood looking over airplanes with his grandson at his side, reflecting on all that was. He was a man who’d lived out his years. He had a wonderful son and a caring grandson. The woman he had once loved like a sister had come back into his life. If he were to die right now, he would be content. No, not just content, he would be fulfilled. If only he could help reconcile son and grandson, it would be perfect.

In all honesty, he didn’t know what the problem was. But over the past several years, Will’s attitude toward his parents had disintegrated. Sure, fathers and sons often had their difficulties. But Will’s words and actions suggested a deep-rooted hurt that pushed far beyond normal father–son struggles. On many occasions he’d tried to discuss it with him, but Will always shut the conversation down. He considered approaching the subject now. One glance at his grandson’s face stopped him. Will was dealing with enough for today. But William offered up a silent prayer. I’d like to see my family intact again. If not today, then before I die.

“Are we staying for the fireworks?” Adrienne asked excitedly. She and Sara had returned with lemonade slushies, and now the four of them were making their way to the bandstand where the Air Force band was warming up.

Will claimed a drink. “If Pops and Sara feel like it.”

They sat down. Adrienne grinned and chewed the end of her straw.

“What’s on your mind?” Will asked, noticing how the cold of the slushie had made her lips red and a little swollen. Slushies rocked.

“Nothing.” She blinked innocently. “Just a little surprise for Pops later.”

Will eyed her suspiciously. The man on the bandstand began to speak, and Will’s attention left Adrienne and her icy-hot mouth. He drank the tart lemonade as the man talked about patriotism and America.

Minutes into his monologue, the announcer took out a list. “We have several guests here today who we would like to recognize now.” He talked about a young man who had just returned from Afghanistan, a high-ranking Air Force colonel, but it was the next name that drew Will’s attention.

“Today, we have a member of the acclaimed 101st Airborne that was active in World War II. William Bryant was a paratrooper involved in each major battle during the campaign in Europe, including Normandy and Bastogne. William Bryant, please stand.”

For a moment, Pops just sat still, like he was unsure whether it was his name he’d heard. But Sara on one side and Adrienne on the other were tugging at his arm for him to rise. Pops stood, and as he did, a roar in the crowd echoed around them.

Mouth agape, he glanced around as, all over the stadium, people were clapping and cheering. They began to stand with him. Pops slowly raised a hand to them in stunned appreciation. It was a full two minutes before the crowd began to sit back down, their roar fading slowly. Unable to speak, Pops sat as well.

And Will watched him. He’d seen the color drain from Pops’s cheeks as he was commanded to stand. He’d watched as Pops placed a hand over his heart, trying to swallow back the emotion at being singled out. This wasn’t Pops’s style. And he was an old man.

Will’s anger began a slow burn deep in his gut. He kept a close eye on him later as they walked to the car.

The night air swirled, carrying the scent of hot dogs and funnel cakes. Will pressed the button on his car keys, and the headlights flashed on, one row out. The gentlemen helped the ladies into the vehicle, and Will stored Adrienne’s purchases in the trunk. He moved to the driver’s-side door. Once out of the artificial light, and with Adrienne and Sara tucked safely inside the car, Pops slumped against the trunk.

Will rushed back to him. “What’s wrong?”

Pops sucked in a ragged breath. “I was doing fine until the bandstand.” Tender blue eyes studied the younger man. “I’m sorry, Will. I try to be so strong.”

Will forced down a lump in his throat.

Pops’s head dropped, fingers lacing together in embarrassment. “I don’t want you to see me like this.”

It was useless. It was too late. Will could see how delicate his grandfather really was. “When he called my name, it was just too much for me to handle.” A choked sob followed, and Will took a firmer grip on his grandfather, shoring him up.

What was appropriate contact between two men quickly fell by the wayside as Will unlaced Pops fingers and held the older man in his arms. Another choked sob was accompanied by two more, as strong, able shoulders rose and fell under the weight of grief. Then, as quickly as the tears had come, they were gone.

Pops took a handkerchief from his back pocket and wiped his face. “Grown-up bawl baby,” he mumbled, pressing the cloth to his cheeks.

“No,” Will assured. “Bravest man I know.”

Though both women had witnessed the embrace, neither was quick to talk about it. When Pops began to cry, Sara reached over to Adrienne in the backseat and took her hand. The four of them drove back to Naples in silence.

Will helped Sara from the car while Adrienne searched for her house keys. Sara had given Pops a peck on the cheek and was already at the front door.

Sure both of the older people were out of earshot, Will turned on Adrienne. “Why did you do that?” he hissed.

Shocked, she abandoned her search, frowning until she realized he was talking about the bandstand. “I passed a table where they were asking about veterans. I told them about Pops. It was to honor him.”

Will threw an angry glance toward the car. “He nearly broke down. You need to start using some better judgment in your decisions. The day was hard enough on Pops. You seem to forget he’s over eighty years old.”

Adrienne glanced toward the car. “I’m sorry. I didn’t think—”

“Well, please try to next time.” He walked back to the car while she slowly walked up to the house.

Back in the vehicle, Pops stared at him. “You and Adrienne have a tiff?”

“Nothing I can’t handle,” he said, backing out and wishing the leather smell of his car could erase the floral scent of her that still hung in the air. Once on the main road, he turned the radio on.

Soft music filled the car, relieving the silence. With a finger, Pops traced the stitching of the leather seat. “Listen, Will, I want to apologize.”

Will’s eyes left the road. “For what?” Bonita Springs disappeared around them, bathed only in the artificial light of the streetlamps and brightened storefronts.

Pops kept his gaze strictly focused on the seat. “For earlier. I should explain.”

“No, Pops,” Will said tenderly. “You don’t have to explain.”

“I want to.” The resolve in Pops’s tone stopped any argument.

One quick glance, and Will knew he needed to say this.

“Coming home from the war is like your birthday and Christmas all rolled up in one.” Lips framed with wrinkles pressed together. “At least that’s what I thought. I’d heard stories about entire towns shutting down and having a parade to welcome a soldier home.”

Will smiled at him.

Pops brushed his hands on his pants. “Call it romanticizing, but I just expected . . . ” They turned onto a side road. With no moonlight outside, their conversation was illuminated only by the unnatural glow of the dashboard. “Look, when I got home, there was no one there to greet me. No one.”

Will’s heart sank into his stomach, and he was glad the dash light was faint. He’d hate for Pops to see the horror on his face.

Pops swallowed. “Tonight I feel like I got the homecoming I missed back then.” He looked over at his grandson. “That may sound silly to you, but it’s how I feel.”

Will couldn’t breathe. His lungs were denying his body oxygen. He wondered if he would ever learn to keep his mouth shut. “That’s why you reacted to it?”

Pops smiled. “You mean my crying fit at the back of the car?”

“I would hardly call it a crying fit.”

Pops patted the seat. “Whatever you would call it. It was the perfect ending to a perfect day. Thank you, Will. For making all this happen.”

Will couldn’t take the credit for the bandstand. He could, however, take the blame for once again accusing Adrienne when he should be thanking her. He ran a hand through his hair, stiffening at the thought of having to apologize. Again.

Pops noticed his demeanor. “Don’t worry. If you messed things up with Adrienne, I’m sure she’ll give you a chance to fix it.”

Will smiled over at him and said wryly, “How do you know I’m the one that messed up?”

“You’re the man. We’re always the ones that mess up.”

“Honeybees have stingers, you know?” Will said.

“That’s why honey is so sweet.”

“It’s worth the sting. Is that what you’re trying to tell me?”

“I guess you’ll find out.”

Will sighed. Yes, he was hopelessly caught in her orbit. “Guess I will, Pops.”

The two women had stayed quiet for the first few minutes inside the house. Adrienne flitted from room to room, turning on lights. Sara seemed unusually distracted. “Everything all right?” she asked the older woman.

“What? Oh, yes.” Sara followed her into the lavender room.

“Do you think Pops is okay?” Adrienne asked, shaking a thick down pillow into a plum pillow case.

Sara nodded from across the bed. “I’m sure.” After fluffing the pillow on her side, she nestled it at the head of the antique sleigh bed purchased for the room.

Adrienne stifled a yawn. It had been a long day. “You’ve fallen in love with him all over again, haven’t you?”

Sara took the pillow back up and hugged it to herself. “No,” she said.

“I don’t believe you, Sara.” Adrienne tucked stray wisps of hair behind her ear and regarded the older woman.

Sara used her palm to smooth the cotton bedspread. “The truth is, I never fell out of love with him.”

Adrienne sat at the edge of the bed and drew one foot up under her knee. “What do you see for the two of you?”

Sara blinked, a crimson stain darkening her face. “Whatever do you mean?”

“Well, I don’t know.” Adrienne threw her hands into the air. “He feels the same.”

Sara dropped slowly onto the bed. “I don’t know that you’re right.”

“Of course I’m right.” She tipped her shoulder. “The way he looks at you, how he holds your hand.”

Sara scooted so she could look at Adrienne fully. “When I hear his voice, my heart beats faster. This warm, thick liquid moves through my veins when he touches me. But—”

“But what?”

Sara pushed hair from her face. “He doesn’t look at me like he used to look at Gracie.”

“I’m sure that’s not true.”

Sara’s gaze drifted around the room. “It is. Gracie was perfect. She had the poise of a swan while I was more of an . . . ”—she scrunched her nose—“an ugly duckling and a klutz.”

“Sara, I can’t imagine you as an ugly duckling and certainly not a klutz. You’re so elegant.”

Sara gave her an appreciative smile.

“I mean it. Everything about you is beautiful.”

Sara’s voice dropped. “Not everything.”

Chills spread over Adrienne’s arms, though she had no clue why. Then she thought about the letter. The note from Grace that Pops had salvaged. She’d intended to ask Sara about it but had lost her nerve. Now it seemed that fateful note could be somehow connected to Sara’s admission. Now was the time.

“Sara, Pops had one letter from Grace. It was the last letter sent to him.”

Sara’s gaze dropped to the floor.

“I read it. It sounded . . . it really sounded like a woman in love. But it was right before Grace died.”

Sara remained silent.

“I wondered if you might know anything about that letter?”

Sara stood slowly and moved to the far wall where her suitcase sat open; clothes ruffled as she dug through the blouses and skirts. One deep breath, and she turned to face Adrienne, a stack of letters in her hand.

Adrienne blinked, trying to assimilate the idea of this new stack with the ones she’d found from William. “Sara, what are those?”

“Grace never wrote to William. I begged her to. I pleaded, but she wouldn’t.”

A muddled picture of the past began to clear before Adrienne. She wasn’t sure she liked what she saw. But what could she do now? Forge on. Clarify her suspicions. “Sara, you wrote the letters? The letters from Grace?”

“Every single word.” A lone tear trickled down her cheek. “It was such a deceitful, evil thing to do. But he’d gone there for her. If he knew the truth, I was afraid he’d never survive.”

“But you told William Grace lost interest in him because of you. Because you loved him.”

“Over the years, it was just easier to believe she’d landed in another man’s arms because of me. Truthfully, she had no intention of waiting for William.”

Adrienne couldn’t speak. Couldn’t even move.

“Oh, I loved him from the first day he found me crying at the riverside.” Her thumbs caressed the letters in her hand. “But I fell deeper and deeper in love reading his letters. I grew up on those letters. Became a woman.”

“And you wrote him back.”

“Yes. We grew closer and closer, sharing the war, sharing home. I poured my heart into those words. But . . . but never my secret.”

“And with each letter, you had to sign Grace’s name at the bottom. Oh, Sara.” Adrienne moved closer. “I’m so sorry.”

When the older woman moved to hide the letters behind her, Adrienne stepped toward her and gently took hold of her wrist. “If you wrote the letters from Grace, what are these?”

Sara forced out a long breath. “These are the letters from me. The ones I never sent. They’ve been in a locked drawer in my bureau for years.”

“The antique bureau in your living room, right? I’ve noticed you looking at it now and then. I thought it held a secret, but not this.”

Sara held out the stack of letters, and Adrienne took it, feeling as if she held another treasure in her hands. Yet the burden weighed heavily. And Adrienne didn’t know what to do with them. If she could burn them and never have to tell Pops the truth, that seemed the best—albeit most deceitful—course of action. She understood how easy it must have been for Sara to fall into this deception. The truth was a beast with sharpened claws.

A tiny smile appeared on Sara’s face. “Go ahead. Read one.”

Adrienne froze. By reading them, even one, she became part of the fraud. Her fingertips grew sweaty with her indecision. Somewhere inside, her heart made the choice her mind couldn’t. She slid one letter from beneath the ribbon. The remaining pages she set on the nearby bookshelf. Adrienne unfolded the page and read.

Dear William,

Sometimes I marvel at the selfishness that burdens my soul. I am drowning, slipping silently into quicksand made by my own hands. Lies are hideous things. I feel as though I’m living a dual life. One of a careful daughter, another of a secret lover.

If it weren’t for my intense love for you, I’d stop. I’d give up this charade. I’d tell Momma and Gracie the truth. But I won’t. So much rests on my ability to keep the two very separate parts of my life far from each other. Maybe you understand. You of all people always understand my thoughts and feelings. And you—the young man who left town as the son of a merchant but will return to me as a battle-toughened hero. Your country honors your sacrifice. Even in the streets, the children tell tales of the brave 101st. And what is that like for you? Knowing your most inner being—the poet I know and love—must take second place to the hero you are called? You, William, are leading a dual life as well.

In it all, we have each other. That makes it worth every scorn I may one day face. Worth every ounce of shame I feel when my mother or my sister look upon me with suspicious eyes. You’re worth it all, William. You hold my heart in your gentle hands. You have since the day we met. And if it is up to me, you always will.

Your true love,

Sara

There were no words. What feeble encouragement could Adrienne give after reading a letter that honest, that intimate, that private? With a tear tickling the corner of her eye, she said, “Sara, you have to show him.”

Old fingers darted out and snatched the letter. “And what, Adrienne? He has forgiven me for so much. Where does his charity run out?”

“Why didn’t you let him know when you first saw him again?” Adrienne wasn’t trying to accuse—just understand.

“It’s unforgivable. What I did. He wrote such intimate things, private things in those letters.” Sara shook her head. “When I got the opportunity to see him again, I couldn’t . . . just couldn’t. Do you have any idea what it was like writing him with my mother and my sister in the next room? Always wondering when they’d find out. What my mother would do to me?”

“But Sara—”

“No. I won’t hear it.” She turned away, closing off the conversation. When she looked over her shoulder at Adrienne, tears glistened in her eyes. “I finally have him in my life. Do you know what that means to me? How many years I hoped for this, knowing there was no way, no possible way I could spend my life with the man I love?”

Adrienne ran her hands through her hair. She wouldn’t convince Sara tonight. “Someday, Sara. He’ll need to know.”

She nodded. “Please, can we talk about something else?”

Adrienne tipped her head, letting the intensity go. “As I was saying earlier, everything about you is beautiful.”

With an appreciative smile, Sara’s nearly untraceable Southern accent thickened. “Well, Momma did have her rules.” She walked to the bed and grabbed the pillow, then placed it on top of her head and began to stroll across the room, elbows at her sides, fingertips out.

Adrienne clapped. “Bravo.”

“Gracefully, my darling,” she instructed as Adrienne put a pillow on her head. It fell off.

“This is too easy.” Sara tossed the pillow onto the bed and reached for a book from the narrow bookshelf by the window. She balanced it and walked, making smooth twists and turns. Again, Adrienne followed her lead, laughing as she had to reach up time and time again to steady the book that slid from her like an ill-fitting crown.

Book still perfectly balanced, Sara bent her knees and swept down in one graceful motion to pick up a shoe from the floor. “Momma taught us how to walk like a lady, sit like a lady, descend the stairs like a lady.”

“There’s a proper way to descend the stairs?” Adrienne laughed and rolled her eyes, glad for the change of topic. “Boy, I’ve got a lot to learn.”

“Of course,” Sara said, nose high. “Knees together as if connected. Hand lightly on the banister, stand tall, and float down the stairs. I was a bitter disappointment to Momma.” She tipped her head forward, letting the book slide into her hands.

Adrienne’s book slid off on its own. “All that training must have taken root somewhere. You’re more graceful than any woman I know.”

“I suppose. Somewhere between knobby, skinned-up knees and the womanly body I prayed for and didn’t think I’d ever get.” Her eyes left Adrienne. “Gracie didn’t have to work at it. Beauty, elegance just came naturally to her. But for once, I wanted to be Cinderella at the ball. I just always ended up playing in the mud puddle when the coach arrived.”

Adrienne closed the gap between them. She rested her hands on Sara’s shoulders.

“William always thought of me like a kid sister.” She practically whispered the words, biting back the pain that edged her eyes. “What if he still does?”

Adrienne shook her head. “He doesn’t. I can see it even if you can’t. Besides,” she grinned, “Cinderella always gets the handsome prince.”

“Always?”

Adrienne nodded.

“What about your handsome prince?”

Pulling her bottom lip between her teeth, Adrienne stiffened. “My handsome prince is acting like a toad right now.” He was the last thing she wanted to think about. It had been a magical day until . . .

“Acting like a toad?” Sara tapped her index finger on her chin. “I think a kiss rectifies that.”

“I’d rather kiss a toad.”

Sara yawned and Adrienne took it as a cue to work her way to the bedroom door. “Well, you’ll get your chance bright and early tomorrow morning.”

She stopped dead in her tracks. Slowly, she turned to face the older woman. “You don’t actually believe he’s still coming, do you?”

Sara’s eyes were troubled. “Of course he is. He was very worried about you overdoing it in the heat. People don’t just toss you aside because they get mad at you. Goodness, Adrienne. That’s not really what you expected, is it?”

It wasn’t just what she expected, it was what she knew would happen.