Safe Haven by Anna Schmidt

mashed potatoes.
    Suzanne did not return to her room after her abrupt exit. When she left the table, Theo heard the screen door open and close with a soft click. Hilda and Hugh continued to chatter on, apparently knowing each other well. Selma told them all that the other two boarders on the second floor had left that morning for a camping trip and would be gone for a week.
    Theo let the conversation flow around him without comment. He was well aware that Hugh Kilmer made some passing references to the “Krauts”—comments Hilda apparently found hysterically funny. Theo cleaned up the last of the peas and potatoes on his plate, washed them down with the last of his tea, and stood up. “Mrs. Velo, if it’s okay with you, I’ll use the tools in the workshop to repair that rocker on the front porch.”
    “Oh, Theo, there’s no rush, and it’s so hot.”
    “The sun’s setting, and there will be a breeze off the lake,” Theo replied with a smile meant only for her. He nodded briefly to Hugh and Hilda and left the room. As he went out to the porch to get the chair and carry it to the workshop, he heard Hilda say, “He’s certainly a handsome young man.”
    “Maybe,” Hugh replied, taking no pains to lower his voice. “But he should be over there defending his country, not sitting here waiting for somebody else to save him and his Kraut relatives.”
    Suzanne was not on the porch as Theo had hoped. He had planned to suggest that she sit with him in the workshop while he repaired the chair so they could talk. He glanced up and down the tree-lined street where kids were out playing in the yards while the adults—women mostly—sat on the porches and talked about the heat. There was no sign of her.
    It took longer than Theo had expected to find the proper wood to replace the rotted arms on the rocker. Once he had sanded and attached the new arms, they had to be painted, so by the time he pulled the chain to shut off the light and stepped out into the yard, the house was mostly dark. He stood a minute, enjoying the yard filled with the scent of lavender and mint from Selma’s herb garden and the soft intermittent glow of fireflies sprinting here and there. Certain that at this hour everyone would be sleeping, he walked around the side of the house and mounted the wooden porch steps.
    Suzanne was sitting in the swing that hung from the rafters at one end of the porch. “Hi,” he said. “Hot night.”
    “Nothing stirring,” she agreed as she made room for him next to her on the swing. “Sorry about the talk at supper,” she added.
    “Certainly not your fault, and besides, I’m pretty used to it.” He sat down next to her, setting the swing in motion. “Back home my brother and I had to hear a lot of the same stuff.”
    “Didn’t it make you mad?”
    Theo shrugged. “I get it that for some people war—fighting—is the only answer.”
    “And we all know how well that has worked over the centuries,” Suzanne said sarcastically.
    “People get all worked up—they hear things on the radio, read them in the newspapers …”
    “Oh, so now this whole thing is my fault, after all?” She laughed.
    “I’m just saying that there are all kinds of ways to tell a story depending on the outcome you want to achieve.” He chuckled. “It’s a little like that game we played when we were little—I think it was called gossip’—where a bunch of kids would sit in a line and—”
    “The first kid would whisper something to the one next to him, who would whisper what he or she heard to the next, and so on—”
    “And by the time it reached the last in line, it was a totally different message than what the first kid had whispered. Seems to me this whole political thing is a little like that. But what do I know? I’m just a farmer from Wisconsin.”
    They rocked in the swing in silence for several minutes.
    “So how do you think I should tell the story?” she asked.
    “Depends on what story you plan to tell