The Truth About Us

by Tia Souders

  Leaning forward, Abby wrapped her arms around her, noting the shock in her eyes at the gesture. With a quick squeeze, she let go and took a step back toward her class as the late bell rang.

  “Thanks,” she said and entered the classroom, ignoring Kaden’s gaze on her the entire way.

  ABBY SPENT THE BETTER part of the day avoiding Kaden. Once school let out, she sat in her bedroom at home, trying to figure out what she was supposed to do with everything she had discovered.

  She had no one to talk to. No one to confide in now that Kaden wasn’t an option. She didn’t dare drag Cammie into this either. She had been freaked out enough about all the murder talk the night they visited Lawson’s daughter that she hadn’t even mentioned it again.

  To make matters worse, there would be no more letters from GG. Whoever had broken into Klein’s office had made sure of that, which meant Abby was on her own. Completely and utterly alone in the knowledge of this secret.

  She stepped into the shower, allowing the heat from the water to soak into her skin until it turned pink, but no matter how long she stood under the spray, nothing helped to replace the chill in her bones. Nothing comforted her.

  After she soaped up and rinsed off, she stepped onto the bathroom rug on numb legs, dripping water into the fibers of the plush mat while she toweled herself dry. She dressed in her pajamas, brushed her hair, and braided it, trying to distract herself from reality—her thoughts a constant cyclone, starting with Kaden and how the thought of losing someone she had known for such a short period of time could hurt so much, back around to her grandfather again. By the time she left the bathroom, it was ten o’clock.

  Sinking down onto the edge of her bed, she worried her lip with her teeth. What was she supposed to do?

  From where she sat, she had two choices. She could say nothing and go to the grave with this secret, much like GG, or she could turn him in, her own flesh and blood.

  The first option meant living with the burden of the truth. She would always know she did nothing. Was keeping his secret taking the easy way out? Or was it harder?

  She shook her head and pinched the bridge of her nose. Keeping his secret could very well eat her alive. The knowing would kill her. And what about the countless victims?

  Tears stung the back of Abby’s eyes. She thought of the journal, the real Yoel Gutman’s account of the camps, and The Butcher of Auschwitz. How could she not seek justice for them? They were innocent, not much older than her when they were forced into the camps. They deserved the truth; they deserved justice for the ones responsible to finally pay for their crimes—family or not.

  But to turn him in...

  Abby couldn’t imagine it. While she didn’t think she could ever look him in the eye again without picturing the boy he shot in the head or the monster Irma Mentz, she wasn’t sure she could watch the flash of betrayal at knowing his own granddaughter had turned against him. She didn’t know if she could watch them haul him away in cuffs, to be put in jail until he died. Or worse, until they executed him.

  And what about her mother? She had barely scraped the surface of her grief over losing GG; how could she handle losing him, too? Not to mention, the media storm her grandfather’s arrest would cause. Her parents’ jobs would likely be in jeopardy; their reputations in the community ruined. And Abby would be responsible because by remaining silent, she could prevent all of it—the heartache, the pain, the betrayal.

  Abby fisted her hands in the comforter, wishing she had someone to guide her but knowing she only had herself.

  Did her grandfather regret it? Did he rue the time in his life he was dubbed The Butcher of Auschwitz? Did he get down on his knees every night and pray for absolution?

  Her grandfather—her whole family for that matter—had never been spiritual or faith-filled people. Her mother blamed it on the war, on his having trouble keeping faith in a God that would allow such atrocities. He couldn’t find it in himself to cling to a faith, a heritage, that put him in those camps in the first place. But as Abby sat in the darkness of her room, staring at the flecks of cream in the carpet by her bed, the truth told another story. She couldn’t help but wonder if he feared the wrath of a God who knew exactly what he did and who he was. Maybe this whole time, he had been running. Even from God.

  What she needed now was the truth—straight from him. She needed to hear he hated himself for who he was and what he did. And maybe only then could she find a way to keep this to herself and find a way to live with it.

  Abby got up, the springs in her bed creaking with the dissipating weight, and made her way out of her bedroom. She tip-toed down the staircase toward the guest room off the back hall of the first floor —the one her grandfather had occupied since GG’s death. Her bare feet pattered over the cool hardwood, and when she stopped in front of his closed door, she paused, steeling herself to lay eyes on him for the first time since her discovery.

  Taking a deep breath, she squeezed her eyes shut and took in a cleansing breath in mental preparation, then pushed the door open before she could change her mind.

  A trickle of light from the hall spilled into the cavernous room. As her vision adjusted to the darkness and cleared, she stepped inside, her gaze homing in on the giant bed centered on the back wall directly across from her. A large lump, she knew to be her grandfather’s body, protruded from the blankets.

  Her pulse hammered in her ears as she stepped toward the bed. One. Two. Three.

  She took her time closing the gap, for fear of startling him awake. When she reached his bedside, she glanced down at his face, confirming he was asleep. In the soft light of the moon, he looked younger than his eighty-seven years. Soft puffs of air escaped his parted lips in a rhythmic pattern.

  In sleep, his peaceful expression rendered a look of innocence and vulnerability Abby had trouble reconciling herself with. How could he be Irma Mentz? How could everything she had ever known about him—their family—be a lie? And not for the first time, she found herself wanting to deny the truth.

  Maybe this had all been a nightmare.

  A misunderstanding.

  One big joke.

  Maybe it didn’t matter.

  Leaning forward, Abby moved until the side of the bed pressed against her thighs and slowly reached out her hand. She pulled the blanket down and grasped the neckline of his t-shirt and slowly pulled on the soft cotton until his scar became visible. Her eyes followed the angry pinkish-purple flesh, the line of the jagged hook, which stretched from his clavicle up to his neck, just below his Adam’s apple. Exactly how it had been written in the journal. The same scar The Butcher of Auschwitz was given by Kuni.

  Her last-ditch attempt to disprove everything she knew had failed. She was foolish to hope when all the evidence had mounted against him.

  An overwhelming need for an explanation, for something to explain away the truth ballooned in her chest, while a wave of nausea hit her at once. Taking a step back, she pressed her palm over her mouth to keep from making a sound.

  Her throat constricted, making it hard to breathe as her lungs burned. Tears pressed against the back of her eyes and a sob escaped her throat, despite her best efforts to restrain her emotions.

  She bolted toward the door.

  She couldn’t do this. She was a coward, not nearly strong enough.

  No tears, no tears, no tears, she repeated to herself on a loop.

  Her hand touched the doorknob as his soft rasp broke the silence. “Abigail?”

  She froze, wanting nothing more than to run back to her room, crawl under the covers, and hide like a child during a thunderstorm. But this wasn’t a thunderstorm, and she was no longer a child. She had grown up more in these last weeks—heck, these last twenty-four hours—than she ever thought possible.

  Turning, she found his gaze in the dark. He struggled against the blankets, propping himself up with muscle-thinned arms.

  “Is everything okay? Is it GG?” he asked, and Abby watched as the knowing flashed in h
is eyes that he no longer needed to wake in the night and worry about her health. She no longer needed anything. She was no longer with them.

  He settled himself against the pillow, as Abigail bit her lip, reigning in the despair threatening to detonate inside of her like a nuclear bomb. The way he struggled, his strangled voice, his expression cloaked in sadness and loss—everything about him was weak and vulnerable. Yet, she knew better. At one time, he had been a much different man. A monster.

  The old man staring back at her in the dark was a brutal killer. He once reveled in the pain and suffering of others.

  Abigail fisted her hands by her side, knowing she needed to confront him but not knowing if she could.

  She pulled oxygen into her lungs and braced herself.

  “Why?” she asked in a strangled voice.

  He blinked back at her, confused, which made her angrier somehow. He had done this to them. He had kept this from them all these years. How could he?

  She straightened, standing tall, prepared for a firing squad.

  “Grandpa, I know. I know your secret.”

  A flash of alarm glinted in his eyes. “I don’t know what you mean. I think you need to get back to sleep.”

  “I don’t need sleep,” she said through gritted teeth, although that couldn’t be further from the truth. She hadn’t had a decent night’s sleep since GG died.

  “I need to know why you did it. All of it. Actually, no.” She held up a trembling hand. “Forget that because nothing you say will be good enough. But maybe what I really need to know is... Are you sorry? Do you regret it? Is that why you kept it all from us? Is that why you ran? Or was it just the fear of being caught and finally held responsible?”

  “Abby, I know how hard GG’s death hit you. It affected all—”

  “This has nothing to do with GG!” Abby’s chest heaved. “I know. Don’t you get that? I know everything!” She stalked toward the bed and pointed a finger at him, allowing her anger and fear, to fuel her. “Stop pretending.”

  “What do you know exactly?”

  His lips pressed into a flat line, while the muscles in his jaw tightened below his sagging skin. The flicker of irritation in his eyes was so hot, so quick, she almost missed it, and in that moment, she saw Irma Mentz in all his cruelty and all his rage.

  “I know you are not Yoel Gutman. I know about Auschwitz and how you were an SS. Officer there, not a Jew like you’ve fooled everyone into believing. I know about the property in Austria. How you’re a war criminal instead of a hero.” Her voice broke on the last word. Her shoulders slumped in defeat because in the end, they would all lose, and all her courage drained from her with the weight of this revelation. “I know what you...” Her voice trembled, as a single tear fell down her face. “You did terrible things,” she said, wiping the moisture from her eyes. Her voice shook. “Terrible, terrible things.”

  Her grandfather tore his gaze from hers and stared out the window into the moonlight, looking twice his age, like he had lived a thousand lives in the last few minutes. His lip quivered, and sorrow illuminated his eyes when he turned back to her and whispered, “That was so long ago.”

  All the wind escaped her lungs like a punch to the gut. Knowing the truth and hearing him admit to it were two very different things, and until the moment he confirmed what she already knew, a little seed of denial had stored itself inside her heart. But with that one admission, he plucked it out.

  “Sometimes it feels like three lifetimes ago. What do you want me to say?” he asked.

  That it wasn’t you. That there’s an explanation for all of this. It’s all just an elaborate joke.

  “Say you regret it. Tell me you’ve spent your whole life living as Yoel trying to make up for what you did. Tell me you’d change your past if you could, and that you’ve done everything in your power to put it behind you. That you’ve lied to all of us because you can’t stand the man you were before. Because you wanted a second chance to make things right, to live with a moral compass. To make a difference, even if it was only within your own family. Tell me that,” she said, her voice trembling. “And I’ll forget all of this. I’ll try and put it behind me. I’ll try and keep your secret. But I need to believe this first.”

  “Of course I think all of those things.” His eyes hardened on her face. “You think I’m proud of what I did?”

  On shaking limbs, her grandfather shifted in bed and got to his feet, standing before her, his back hunched in the dark. His flannel pants and t-shirt hung on his thin frame.

  “I hate what I did, who I was, and I’ve spent the last sixty-three years of my existence trying to be a man who made their family proud. I’ve devoted myself to my family and living in peace.”

  He stepped toward her, sending her stomach spiraling, part of her afraid of his touch and part of her needing his embrace, doubly ill at the notion he frightened her. How did GG separate the man she suspected he was—the killer—from the man she married? How could she? Abby knew she would forever live with the task of reconciling the two.

  He reached out to her, and when she flinched, he dropped his hand and his eyes filled with tears.

  “My Abigail,” he said, his voice cracking. “My dear, dear Abigail. I was a fool. A young ambitious fool, who got caught up in a movement, and in the name of my country, I did terrible things. Things I’ve spent a lifetime trying to forget. I’ll probably never forgive myself for them, but I don’t know if I could bear it if you couldn’t. Please.” The tracks of his tears glistened as he expelled his grief.

  Abby inhaled a ragged breath. In all her years, she had never seen any emotion from him, but his tears fell now, and the rubber band in her chest snapped. With a sigh, she leaned into him, clasping his brittle hands in hers, needing to reconnect with the person who taught her how to ride a bike, play chess, and swam with her in the pool on hot summer nights.

  “I love you, Abby,” he murmured. As the words left his lips, his jaw trembled, a choking sound gurgling from his chest as his tears continued to fall.

  He pulled her in for a hug, curling his bony arms around her. “And I loved GG, more than anything, and your mother. If I could trade places with any of those people I harmed so long ago, I would. In a heartbeat, I’d pay the price for my sins, but life doesn’t work like that. There are no do-overs. And so, I understand if you can’t keep this to yourself.”

  He pulled away from her, looking her in the eye, and Abby willed herself to remain calm, to hold back her tears as he continued. “No matter how sorry I am, or how changed, I would understand if you can’t forgive me.”

  Abby’s heart lurched in her chest, even as her head spun, setting her off-balance. “I love you, too, Grandpa,” she said, choking on the words—having no idea what to do with them.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

  Five days ago, Abby had discovered the truth. Five days that felt like a lifetime, and the same length of time she had been successfully avoiding Kaden. But she knew her lucky streak was coming to an end. She couldn’t avoid him forever without some sort of explanation for why she suddenly broke things off. A confrontation was past due, yet she couldn’t bring herself to decide on how she would let Kaden down or what she should do about her grandfather. Both decisions were eating her alive. Both the secret and her promise to Mr. Oliver were killing her softly with her silence.

  Abby exited fourth-period and made a beeline for the empty classroom she had used for study hall during lunch this week. Not only had she switched several of her classes around to avoid seeing Kaden, she had started taking lunch with a couple other students in the mostly empty room, where some of them received tutoring. All she had to do was tell Mr. Delgado she needed help—extra study time for math—and he took the steps necessary to change a few of her classes. She had been a good student until the last couple of weeks, with a great track record, so there was no reason not to help her out. Parents with a well-known, amazing reputation in the community didn’t hurt either.

  All s
he had to do was carry most of her things with her, avoiding her locker despite her sixty-pound bookbag, and she had drastically reduced her chance of a run-in with Kaden. But as she left her environmental studies class and hurried to the open doorway for health, her luck ran out.

  A hand curled over her shoulder, followed by the familiar sound of his voice. “Abby, wait.”

  Pausing, she bit her lip and slowly turned to face him. Students brushed passed them in the hall, drawing her eye before she focused straight in front of her, on the broad plane of his chest.

  “Yeah?” she asked, trying to sound casual when she felt anything but.

  Her palms grew clammy in his presence, while her heart pummeled her chest in a punishing beat, hating herself for striking a deal with his father.

  “What is going on? You haven’t been in class or at lunch. You’ve hardly been around at all.”

  Abby stared at her feet, feeling the heat of his gaze on her face as he waited for her response.

  “Uh, since I screwed up on so many things since this whole thing with GG, Mr. Delgado let me switch classes and take an extra study hall. It seems to be helping,” she said, a false note to her voice.

  “Are you avoiding me?”

  Abby snorted. “What? No. Of course not. Why would I do that?”

  “It’s not the whole money thing, right? The stuff I told you the last time I saw you?”

  Abby’s gaze darted to his at the question. He shoved his hands in his pockets, and she had to glance away again to avoid his wrecked expression.

  She wanted to kick herself. How had she not realized that was what he would think? The last time they spoke, he confided in her about their financial trouble, and then she ditched him.

  She hated that he entertained, for even a second, the notion that she would think poorly of him because of that after all her talk of not caring. But what reason had she given him to think otherwise?

  “No. Of course, not. I just...” She paused and shook her head. “My mom found one of GG’s letters and freaked. On top of that, my grades have suffered. I’m basically in huge trouble at home, so I decided to take a break from the whole secret thing to keep my sanity. I need to focus on school and everything that’s important instead.”