27
USA, JUNE 1950
The Barretts held the party to celebrate Robbie’s fourth birthday at the country club. Eve watched her son running around with thirty other children in expensive party clothes, eating candy and popping balloons, and wondered how the past three and a half years in America could have flown by so fast. There was an enormous birthday cake, clowns doing magic tricks, pony rides in the country club’s parking lot. The extravagance overwhelmed Eve, yet Robbie seemed to take it all for granted as if it were his birthright, including the towering pile of birthday presents. Would he grow up shackled to his wealth, like Alfie?
The long afternoon included cocktails and idle chitchat with the other country-club mothers. Eve pretended to be interested in their lives as the children played pin the tail on the donkey, while her heart yearned for the refuge and contentment that only an hour in the woods could provide.
When the party finally ended, she hauled Robbie’s carload of birthday presents into her little bungalow, changed into comfortable clothes, and told Robbie to do the same. Then she telephoned Tom Vandenberg. “Hi, Tom. This is Audrey. I was wondering if Robbie and I could come out to the farm for an hour or so.”
“Sure. You know you’re always welcome.”
“I should warn you, though. We just got home from Robbie’s birthday party at the club and he’s a bit wound up from all the excitement. I need to calm him down so he’ll sleep tonight.”
Tom laughed. “Well, the farm is the place to do it.”
“Thanks, Tom. We’ll be there shortly. I’ll bring some leftover cake for your reward. There was enough to feed an entire regiment.”
Eve’s tension from the exhausting day began to release as she left the suburbs and drove into the countryside. She felt free and happy out here, away from the women she had nothing in common with. Memories of her childhood in the village always flooded back as she watched Tom’s cows grazing in the pasture or saw his flock of sheep on the hillside. In the years since she first met Tom, he had become a good friend to her and Robbie. She also felt a stirring of affection and attraction toward him, but even though the times when she felt unbearably lonely were too many to count, she resisted the pull. She had loved Alfie and Louis and had lost them both. She wouldn’t risk the searing grief love brought. Eve understood, at last, why Mum wouldn’t go to the cinema with Williams. Besides, a relationship with Tom would complicate her life. She had committed fraud when she’d assumed Audrey’s identity, so a marriage to Tom or anyone else would be illegal under her false name.
Tom waited outside for them. He bent to kiss Eve’s cheek as he took the plate of cake she’d brought. “I’ll run this inside the house real quick,” he said. He was back in a flash. “So did you have a nice party?” he asked as he ruffled Robbie’s ginger hair.
“Yeah! You should see all the presents I got!”
“More than any four-year-old could possibly need,” Eve added. “How about a walk in the woods?” The stretch of woods lay just beyond the pasture and she instinctively walked toward the trees and the sound of the rushing creek as if pulled by ropes. How she longed to be a carefree girl again, roaming through the trees with one of Granny Maud’s sausage rolls and a scone pinned in a napkin. If only she could go back in time to the days before Granny died. Before she went to work at Wellingford Hall. Before the war and the endless days of fear and sorrow and grief. Before Alfie. And Louis. Back to an innocent time when she believed in a Good Shepherd who would never abandon her.
They reached the woods. The lovely sound of birdsong trilled above them. “Hear that, Robbie?” Tom asked. “That’s a meadowlark.”
“How can you tell?”
“Because every bird sings its own special song. I can teach you some of them, if you’d like.”
Eve hurried forward, not waiting to hear Robbie’s reply, hoping Tom wouldn’t notice her tears. Granny Maud knew all the birds’ songs, too, and had been teaching Eve before . . . before she was laid to rest in the graveyard behind the village church and Eve’s life changed forever.
She halted beneath a huge tree with branches that nearly touched the ground. “What a perfect climbing tree!”
“It was my favorite when I was a boy. Want to try it, Robbie?”
He drew back, shaking his head. “Uh-uh!”
“Oh, dear. Don’t tell me my son is turning into a city boy!” Eve said, laughing. “We can’t have that!” She kicked off her shoes and scrambled up the trunk, halting on a branch above them. “This brings back so many memories,” she said, laughing again. “Oh, how I’ve missed the woods! Come on up, Robbie.”
Tom lifted him up to the first branch, helping him until Eve could reach down to pull him up beside her. But she could tell he was scared, so she let Tom lift him down. She sat on the branch, legs dangling, the bark rough against her palms. “I would be content to live in a tree if there was a way to do it,” she said with a sigh.
“You surprised me, Audrey,” Tom said when she’d climbed down again.
“Oh? Why’s that?”
“Well, the way Bob described you, I pictured a dignified princess who lived in a castle. Where did you learn to climb trees?”
“Um . . . My friend Eve Dawson taught me.” She looked away so he wouldn’t see she was lying.
“I heard all about Eve, too.”
“Really? What did you hear?”
“That she was funny and brave and full of life. Whatever happened to her?”
“We lost touch after the war.”
“Well, she did a good job teaching you to climb. You scrambled up that tree like a monkey.”
Eve met his gaze, and the love and longing she saw in Tom’s eyes startled her. Her heart lurched. She could easily fall in love with Tom if she allowed herself. He was her closest friend. She imagined being held in his arms, kissing him, and her heart skipped faster. Maybe she already was in love with him. Eve quickly looked away, dismissing the thought. Impossible. The Barretts would never approve.
But Mum would. Granny Maud, too. They would have liked Tom Vandenberg.
Eve continued walking, following the creek through the woods. The rushing water was like music to her soul. Her sighs of contentment blended with the sigh of the branches swishing in the wind, the rustle of leaves and twigs beneath her feet. Much too soon, Robbie slowed down. “You’re not tired already, are you?” she asked.
“My tummy hurts.”
“I’m not surprised after all the cake and ice cream you ate.”
“Can we go home?”
I am home, she wanted to say.
“Want me to carry you, buddy?” Tom asked. Robbie nodded, and Tom swung him up onto his shoulders as if he weighed nothing at all. Eve had never known her father, but he must have been a lot like Tom, a hardworking man who loved the land and his animals, a man with a warm smile for everyone. She knew the ache of growing up without a father and regretted that her son would know it, too.
“Right, then. I guess we’d better head home,” Eve said when they reached the farmyard. Tom settled Robbie into the backseat. “Thanks, Tom,” she said after a quick embrace. She loved the scent of woods and fresh air on his clothing but didn’t dare to linger in his arms.