Her eyes flew open and she scrambled to her feet.

"Nick."

"On the lookout for Matthew?"

"No. I..." On the lookout for you. "Gram said you'd be coming from Center Street."

"I came early. There's a fence rail that needs replacing. I wanted to check for others before making a run to the lumber store."

"You take such good care of her."

"I'm honored that she lets me." Nick gestured toward the hill up which he'd once carried a singing, clinging little girl. "Shall we?"

"Sure." They ascended in silence, except for the swishing sound of her jeans legs brushing against each other. Finally she said, "Matthew won't be coming to Sarah's Orchard."

"So he's dead, after all."

"What? No!"

"No?" Then why isn't he moving heaven and earth to win you back? "What did you do?"

"When I saw...what I saw, I put my engagement ring in a wedding-invitation envelope, slid it through the mail slot in his door and drove away."

"That's nice. Classy." His smile was solemn. But it was a smile. "Very haiku."

She stopped. The denim stopped.

"What's wrong?" he asked.

"Nothing. I thought it was very haiku, too. Are you a poet?"

"I'm a handyman, Elizabeth." Nick resumed walking. "So you think your haiku message will keep Matthew away?"

"No. But I'm hoping the conversation we had when he called last night will. I believe I made it clear that any further discussions would be a waste of his time-and mine."

"You meant it."

"Absolutely."

"I'll bet he wasn't happy."

"He was...surprised. He tried to convince me that what he'd done had 'just happened,' as if he'd had no more control over it than if he'd been struck by lightning. And, of course, he said it meant nothing to him. Janine meant nothing."

"You obviously weren't convinced."

"I told him I thought he was in love with Janine and should have the courage to marry her, no matter how his parents felt about it. That wasn't what he wanted to hear. He was still trying to persuade me to forgive him. I said I already had, but that the marriage was off."

"Why?"

"Why?"

"I'm not questioning your decision. I'm just wondering if you expanded on your reasons."

"I did point out that lies don't 'just happen.' And that he'd lied to me in advance about where he'd be yesterday afternoon."

"A premeditated lie."

"Yes."

"Betrayal in the first degree."

"I wish I'd said that. Are you an attorney, Nick?"

"Elizabeth," he said, "I'm a handyman."

"Who can do anything, according to Gram."

"I can do a few things."

"Have you always been a handyman?"

Not always, Nick thought. Not until a December afternoon. Before then, he'd been a boy no one wanted, or valued.

He hadn't believed-until then-in a better world than the one he'd always known. But there was a better world, he'd discovered. And, just maybe, it was a world in which he could belong. He'd vowed to try.

"From the time I was seven, when I've seen something that needed fixing, I've done my best to fix it."

"Do you think I should've tried to fix my relationship with Matthew?"

"Not in a million years. Not even if you loved him." This time it was Nick who stopped. He waited until she met his dark gray eyes. "Did you?"

"Love the man I was going to marry? And whom I would have married if I hadn't caught him in flagrante with Janine?"

"Yes," Nick said. "That man."

"No." It began as a whisper, as if it were a confession almost too shameful to reveal. Once exposed to the summer sun-or perhaps to the gray eyes that glittered with sparks of blue-the no took on a life of its own. A happy life, relieved...and giggling. Bubbling. "No. No! I didn't love him."

Seven.

"Where's Clara?" Nick asked when they entered the kitchen.

"She's at Eve's."

"Ah."

"Lemonade?" she offered.

"Sure. Thank you." Tossing the folder he'd brought with him onto the kitchen table, Nick walked to the counter where Charles's letters lay, taken from their glossy boxes. "Are you reading these?"

"Yes. Gram wants all of us to read them. All of us is her family...and you." It surprised him, Elizabeth thought. And moved him. He swallowed and looked away. "After making copies, I'm going to have each set professionally bound."

"That's nice." Nick touched the stack that had been removed from their envelopes. "Are these the ones you've read so far?"

Elizabeth nodded as she gave him a glass of lemonade. "I put the envelopes in order first. That didn't take as long as Gram figured it might. Then I started reading. The letters begin the day Granddad said goodbye to her in Portland. He introduces each fellow soldier he meets like an author introduces the characters in his story-who each of them is, where he comes from, who he loves, who and what he left behind. It's a diverse group, but they're united in their commitment to what they've chosen to do. Granddad doesn't portray their journey as a grand adventure. And yet, as they're crossing the country-and then the ocean-it feels that way. There's a sense of excitement, of eagerness for what lies ahead."

"Do you think they know what lies ahead?"

Elizabeth shook her head. "How could they? They're only eighteen. And, like Granddad, they've enlisted because of Pearl Harbor. The country they love has been attacked. They want to defend it. They believe what they're doing is right and good. And because it is right and good, they also believe they'll return triumphant and whole. But they can't, can they? Not all of them."

"No," Nick said. "Not all of them. In the letters you've read, have they gone into battle yet?"

"Yes. Just. And they all survived. Granddad says it that succinctly, that flatly, without any description of what actually happened." Elizabeth handed him the letter Charles wrote at midnight on April 13, 1942. "A few hours later, he wrote this."

Nick's expression as he read revealed nothing. When he finished and looked at her, his eyes were the color of stone. "What do you think?"

"About the letter? That it's beautiful. He loves Gram so much."

"Yes, he does." Nick hesitated briefly. "I'm sensing you have other thoughts."

"I get the feeling something horrible happened. He needs to tell her what it was."

"He won't. Ever."

"What?"

"He'll tell her succinctly, flatly, when one of his band of brothers dies. But he'll never describe how his friends die, or the way it feels to aim a rifle at another human being and pull the trigger and watch him fall, or how frightened he is, or angry, or if there comes a time when he wishes he could take a bullet instead of firing one."

"He has to tell her those things."

"Does he? Why?"

"She's the woman he loves! The woman who loves him. He can't hide such important emotions from her. It would be wrong."

"Wrong?"

"Yes." It was so clear to her. How could it not be to him? But it obviously wasn't. A new darkness shadowed his eyes. It looked like sadness, she thought. Loneliness. He didn't agree with what she was saying. And yet, it seemed, he wasn't going to argue the point. Maybe, if she quit arguing, he'd explain. "Why would he hide what he was feeling?"

"Because he loves her. He wants to protect her, Elizabeth. Her-and them. The love they share."

"You're saying he did something in combat that would make her love him less-or stop loving him at all? Because if so, I don't believe it. Granddad would never, ever, have committed the kind of atrocity that...Never."

"You're right," Nick said. "He wouldn't have. He'd have died first. You know that. I know that. And he trusts that your grandmother will know it, too. War can't change a man like Charles MacKenzie, Elizabeth. Not even war can do that."

Elizabeth heard in Nick's voice the same emotion she'd heard in Granddad's when he spoke of Nick. She couldn't define it. But it was solemn. Important. And very deep. Gram had said the two were alike. And close, Elizabeth realized. Bonded in some special-reverent-way. Maybe Granddad had told Nick about the letters, what he'd shared and hadn't shared with Clara...and why. Or maybe Nick was only guessing.

Either way, Nick seemed to know.

"You're not going to find any premeditated betrayal here."

Nick gestured toward the letters as he spoke. Here referred, of course, to what Charles had written to his love. And yet, for a crazy unsettling moment, it felt as if here-where there was no betrayal-was anyplace she happened to be. With Nick.

"No betrayal," she murmured. "But you said Granddad wants to protect Gram. And them."

"He needs to believe that the world he knew before he went to war still exists. That's the world he's fighting for, where a girl climbs down a tree to meet the boy she loves, and you don't have to strain to hear an owl above the sounds of mortar and the cries of wounded men. That's why he's fighting, Elizabeth, to protect that innocence, that ideal."

"So when he writes about Gram being beside him, he's not bringing her to war with him."

"No," Nick said softly, "he's going home."

Home felt like here. Crazy. Except, in his blue-gray eyes, the sadness-and the loneliness-were gone.

What filled the void was so unsettling, in a giddy, glorious way, that she turned from him...and started babbling.

"Maybe we should look at your color schemes. Not that I'm going to make any suggestions. In fact, don't let me. I'd never have come up with the choices you made for Gram's kitchen, and they're wonderful..."

"She's going to love these." Elizabeth's assertion, made thirty minutes later, was a grateful one. "The colors you've chosen are so cheerful. Just walking from room to room will make her smile."

"I hope so," Nick said. "Assuming she can see them."

"She's having trouble with her vision?" Elizabeth frowned. "She didn't say anything about it."

"I'm not so sure she would, even if she knew."

He was right, of course. Gram wasn't one to complain. "She doesn't know?"

"She's aware that her vision isn't what it used to be. But if it's what I think it is-cataracts-the impairment has come on so gradually she's adapted to the changes without realizing how significant they are."

"But you think they're significant."

"Very, and probably have been for a while. But because she has adapted, it's only been three weeks since I first began to wonder."

"What made you wonder?"

"Because of what happened when she looked at the sky on a crystal-clear night. She grabbed my arm and pointed to the moon. She was alarmed by what she saw, didn't know what it was. I thought she was confused. But as I was deciding how to suggest that to her, she began to describe what she was seeing. An immense sphere of light, she said, bright and glaring. A UFO, she thought, and was stunned I wasn't remarking on it, too. When I told her all I saw was the moon, she tilted her head, changing the angle of the incoming light and, with a laugh, chalked it up to her eyes playing tricks on her."

"But it wasn't."

"No. I did a little reading online and began to notice other things. Her reaction to oncoming headlights, for instance. She squints at them and, sometimes, she even recoils."

"I didn't think she drove at night."