The Last Train Home

Chapter Thirty-Eight

"How's Eva?" Alec asked, leaning on the door to the stable and staring at me. He could have at least offered to help, but since it's Alec, I knew he wouldn't.

"Doing better, I think. She still hasn't heard anything, but with the evacuation planned, she's optimistic. At least it's given her a bit of hope he'll make it home," I said.

"I'm sure he will. The government would never have just abandoned them." He paused. "How are you? I know that this rescue attempt puts your dad in harm's way."

I shrugged and continued to pick up the straw to tidy up Jigsaw's bed. Even if he meant well, I didn't want to talk about Dad, not yet anyway. Barbara had been watching me out of the corner of her eye for the last few days and the last thing I needed was to think about Dad and have that wall come crumbling down around me. I didn't want to talk about Dad or what the Dunkirk evacuation plan might have meant for him. The less I thought about it, the better.

It wasn't as if I didn't want to think about Dad, he had been on my mind a lot since we heard about Dunkirk, I just didn't want to think about what could happen to him. The evacuation put him right on the front line since the paper reported that they would be using Navy ships since they could fit more soldiers on them. I knew what could happen, I had worked through every possible scenario in my head. If I didn't think about it, it wouldn't become a reality.

"Do you want to do something today?" he asked.

"Like what? There really isn't much to do here and we've done just about everything."

"Call me crazy-"

"-You're crazy."

Alec glared at me. "Rude." He shook his head. "Anyway, I thought we could do a summer project or something, to get our minds off the war and give us something to do."

"Go on, what's your genius idea?" I placed the pitchfork against the wall of the stable and walked over the straw to join him.

"We build a treehouse. It was something Dad always promised me he would do, but he never had the time. He still has to work on the farm and you have free time, so we can do it ourselves. It won't be anything too fancy, just a small box in a tree."

"You want to build a treehouse?"

"Yes! It could be fun. There's a tree on the edge of our farm boundary that's perfect for it. We have plenty of spare wood and it'll be fun. Promise."

I stared at him, trying to understand if he's being serious and intends to build a treehouse, or if it's something he thought of but will forget by the end of the week. Personally, I'm counting on the latter for it since Alec doesn't really have the attention span for continuing a project that would take up most of his free time. That, and I still didn't understand how he had all this free time when he was supposed to be helping his Dad out on the farm now that his brothers weren't around. He spent more time with me than anywhere else.

Still, I didn't hate the idea of a project now that the bulk of the work on the farm had been completed. I spent most of my time wandering around the farm in search of something to do and ended up spending time with the horses rather than people. It gave me something to do, but even that got boring after a while. Maybe Alec had the right idea when it came to having a project to focus on. I wasn't too sure about the treehouse aspect of it all, though.

"Who'll create the plans?" I grabbed the pitchfork from the wall of the stable and exited through the door, pushing Alec off it as I did so.

"Me. Don't worry, I have it all figured out and it'll be fine."

"Coming from you, that isn't very reassuring."

"It'll be fine, especially with your genius building skills. I'm sure you can handle anything."