Heather Burch - One Lavender Ribbon

They exchanged pleasantries, but she wasn’t here for chit-chat. She got right to business and handed him the picture. “Do you know him?”

“Sure do. William Bryant,” he said, studying the photo. “I haven’t thought about him in years. But we were pretty tight way back when. Several of us local boys enlisted together.”

Adrienne leaned closer, heart racing at the confirmation that this was the man she’d hoped was William.

Smoke-stained fingers pointed to the girl. “That would be Sara.”

“So, that’s what Sara looks like. Can you tell me about Sara and Gracie?”

“William was like me. Poor. His dad owned a local business, but it went under, leaving the family with nothing. William could play ball, though. Probably had a shot at the big time if he hadn’t enlisted.” He leaned back a little. “’Course, no one knew at the time what the future would hold for baseball. Some said it’d end ’cause of the war.”

She thought back to the letters. “He enlisted to please Grace’s parents?”

“Gracie’s momma. Gracie was her trophy daughter. ’Cause she’d run out of money herself, it was up to Gracie to marry well. William came along and ruined that. Enlisting was his way of being respectable enough to marry. We all had our reasons for signing up.”

Leo slid the photo across the table to her. “Why do you want to know all this?”

Adrienne opened her mouth to speak, but no words came out. She couldn’t really explain her obsession or why it was so monumentally important to know that this one solitary man got what he so deserved. “I just . . . I found some things in the attic of my house that belong to her. I thought maybe she might like to have them. I don’t think they were meant to be left.”

For a moment he didn’t speak, just studied her with watery gray eyes.

The diner around them grew quiet as the few families that had come in for a late lunch exited the restaurant. She watched a couple of beachgoers slip out the door, the scent of coconut suntan lotion lingering in the air. Her attention went back to Leo. With the deep wrinkles that creased his face and throat, the older man looked every bit of his eighty-three years.

“Gracie’s dead. She died in ’45.”

He continued speaking, but Adrienne heard nothing but the single word that rolled over and over in her mind. Dead. A quick breath escaped her mouth. Regret surged through her, because she’d built the couple a neat little love story in her mind: William returning, the two marrying, having maybe a half-dozen kids, and living out a wonderful life. The tingling sensation started in her nose; tears would follow if she didn’t get a grip. She fisted her hands. She should have just read the letters and left it at that. Of course, in the back of her mind she’d known the likelihood of an eighty-something woman still being alive was a fifty-fifty shot at best. But dead since 1945? That meant she’d died just a couple of short years after William left to serve his country.

Sun beaming in the large windows made the restaurant feel stuffy. Suffocating. “How?” she finally managed.

Leo studied her for a long moment. “Look, I don’t know why you want to know about Gracie. Honestly, she wasn’t worth the time you’re spending on her.”

Adrienne’s eyes widened. How could he say that? Gracie was the woman William Bryant fell in love with, the woman that kept him from giving up during the war.

Leo was perturbed—maybe even angry—and Adrienne felt like she’d somehow opened an old wound.

Scratching his balding head of sparse springy white hairs, he pushed himself away from the table, piercing gray eyes locked on the window pane.

Maybe she didn’t have the stomach for this. “I’m sorry.”

Leo remained silent.

She shook her head to clear her fear. “I have some letters written by William. He talks about Grace like she was an angel.”

Leo flashed a disgusted smile. “Yeah, she was good at making people think of her that way.”

Adrienne’s eyes fell to the photo. “I thought she loved him.”

“Oh, she did.” Sarcasm edged his words. “Until he left. Then she quickly fell in love with the new guy in town. William deserved so much more. He’s a good man.”

Her journey and the hope of William and Gracie ended right here with Leo. For all she knew, they were both dead, and there’d been no one in the upstairs window of Will’s house. She’d probably imagined it, just like she imagined a neat tidy life for William and Grace. Then Leo’s words sank in. “Did you say he is a good man?”

But Leo was taking his own trip into what was proving to be a painful past. “He came home to learn that Gracie had run off with a traveling salesman—a draft dodger no less—and that she died in a car wreck not a hundred miles from town. William lost everything for her.”

“The picture. Was it Grace on the other side?”

“I suspect.” His hand touched the jagged edge. “Probably tore herself off to give to that poor excuse for a man she ran off with.”

Adrienne’s head began to pound with slow rhythmic force. She needed to leave. Just go home, stop prying, but even as her mind agreed, her mouth was asking more questions. “What do you mean William lost everything for her?”

“He came home crippled from the war. A hero, though,” he added as an afterthought. “Screaming Eagle, one of the best.”

The twinkle in Leo’s eyes made him seem younger. Or maybe it was a mistiness that accompanied wizened old men as they chatted openly about difficulties most people would never endure. Either way, it was rare. Beautiful, tragic, and very rare.

“I’d like to know more about him, if you don’t mind.”

Leo shot a glance up to the wall clock. “Sorry. Past my nap time.” He rubbed a hand across the back of his neck. “If you want to know more about William, maybe you should go ask him.”

“He is still alive, then? Do you think he’d be open to talking with me?” Adrienne blurted.

“Sure. Can that little sports car make it to Naples? Far as I know, he still lives there.”

“Naples,” she echoed. Her car could make it. She’d just been there last week. “He lives with his grandson, doesn’t he?”

Leo nodded. “Need directions?”

“No.” She could find William Bryant’s house without directions or the help of her GPS. Will Bryant. She thought back on the conversation the two had shared. He had never said he didn’t know another William Bryant, just that he couldn’t help her. “Men,” she mumbled. Maybe the younger generation was all the same. In Chicago and here in Bonita Springs, telling half-truths whenever it suited their needs. Like Eric telling her they’d move to Florida. That one wasn’t even a half-truth.

Before buying the house, she’d never heard of Bonita Springs, Florida, but had found it while searching property for sale on the Gulf Coast. She’d always wanted to live by the sea. But Eric had refused after promising her in college. Chicago was the only place for a brilliant young cardiologist. Plus, it was on Lake Michigan, so she convinced herself it would almost be like living on the coast. But a lake, even a massive one, was vastly different from the ocean. She’d grown to love the city but never sank roots. Her heart yearned for something else. Someplace with sand and salt.

“Thanks for your help, Leo.”

“Good luck.”

Adrienne bid Leo good-bye with a new zeal squelched only by the pang of sadness about Gracie. But William had returned from the war, and now she couldn’t help but wonder what he’d come home to. It had been a bittersweet homecoming, no doubt.

A whole new barrage of questions accompanied her as she drove the palm-lined streets toward home. How could anyone not love a man like William Bryant? Someone with something to hide? The letters were left in the attic. Someone with a secret? It still seemed like they were hidden, not just left behind. Leo assumed Gracie had removed herself from the photo. Sara and William were still in the picture. That was her sister and her boyfriend. But why tear it? Maybe Gracie had given it to someone else, or maybe she’d done it in anger. Adrienne would probably never know.