Hidden Among the Stars

by Melanie Dobson

  “Good morning to you,” he says. “I thought I smelled coffee.”

  I push the second mug toward him. “I wasn’t sure what you wanted in it, so I gambled with cream and a packet of sugar.”

  He takes a long sip. “Perfect.”

  Pink light spreads slowly across the water until it illuminates the Alpine houses and stone church to our right, driving away the fog.

  “Did you and Ella enjoy the ice caves?”

  He nods. “She didn’t want to leave.”

  “The girl embraces every moment,” I say, my fingers wrapped around the warm mug. “Like her dad.”

  “Like I used to.”

  “You don’t fool me, Dr. Nemeth.”

  “I wasn’t trying to.”

  “Right . . .”

  He laughs before taking another sip of coffee. “I thought you were shy, back when I first met you in Columbus, but you aren’t shy at all.” When he stares at me, I pull my sleeves over my hands, trying to ward off the cold. “You are afraid of something, though.”

  I roll my eyes. “Everyone is afraid of something.”

  My attempt to deflect doesn’t deter him. “I think, Callie Randall, that you are afraid of yourself.”

  I hate it when people analyze me. Hate it even more when they’re right. “That’s ridiculous.”

  “Or perhaps it’s more like you’re afraid of letting others get to know who you are, beyond the stories that you like to tell.”

  “There’s nothing wrong with stories—”

  “Unless you use them as a shield,” he says, taking another sip. “We all process differently—I get that—but it’s one thing to reflect and mull things over internally, another to crawl into a shell of your own making and hide.”

  “I’m not hiding.”

  The sun edges over the mountain, chasing the remaining mist and lamplight away. He unzips his jacket as sunlight sweeps across our balcony. “It’s just a theory.”

  “Why must doctors always theorize?”

  He laughs. “Because until you recognize a problem, you can’t make a change.”

  “I don’t have a problem— ”

  “I’m certainly glad to hear that.”

  My skin begins to warm as well, but not from the sun.

  “Did Herr Stadler call you?” I ask, ready to conclude the analysis.

  He pulls his phone out of his pocket and glances at it. “Nothing yet.”

  Josh has questions for Annika about the treasure, but it doesn’t matter so much now, at least to me, whether she calls. Except perhaps she could tell me why Luzia was at the estate and if she remembers any stories about a baby who was taken to France. Then I would know . . .

  “We missed you at dinner last night,” he says. “My date fell asleep over her food. I had to carry her back to the inn.”

  “You’re an amazing dad, Josh.”

  “Not particularly . . .”

  “I’m a bit of an expert in this area.”

  He eyes me. “You’ve studied good dads?”

  “No . . .” In that moment, I decide to inch a bit further out of my shell. “Let’s just say my father wouldn’t have carried me home from a restaurant. For that matter, he would never have taken me to a restaurant that didn’t have a drive-through.”

  “Ah . . .”

  “It gives me a great appreciation for all the men in this world who are excellent dads.”

  The Hallstatt ferry embarks from the dock on our left, cruising toward the train station on the other side of the lake.

  “What did you find in Vienna?” he asks.

  I sigh. “Sadness, I’m afraid.”

  “It seems as if sadness is stamped all over this place.”

  “So much beauty and yet so much sorrow.”

  “It seems to linger here, doesn’t it?” Together we watch a swan circle the water below us. “The memories of the many who died seem to cling to these hills.”

  I reach for my coffee mug again, and even though it’s cold now, I wrap my hands around it. “I’ve uncovered a story that goes beyond just these hills. It relates to Annika’s story, but it’s a personal journey for me as well.”

  I wasn’t planning to tell him, but it pours out of me, this story about the woman who has journeyed with me for most of my life. I tell him that Charlotte knows me well and loves me for exactly who I am.

  “Yesterday I found information about a woman who I think might have been Charlotte’s mother,” I say. “And then I discovered she was killed at Ravensbrück.”

  “Does Charlotte know?” he asks.

  I shake my head.

  “What was her mother’s name?”

  “Luzia Weiss.”

  Josh nods slowly, as if he’s soaking in this information. Then his eyes grow wide.

  “What is it?” I ask.

  He turns toward me, but he’s looking over my shoulder, at a hill beyond the inn. “There’s something I need to show you.”

  CHAPTER 37

  LAKE HALLSTATT, AUSTRIA

  APRIL 1939

  The ornately carved and worn casket that housed Baron Christoph Eyssl von Eysselsberg came via boat in the evening hours, the second week in April. It was a strange sight to watch the pallbearers carry it up the bank on their shoulders, starlight sprinkling the casket with a silver dust.

  Luzi was hidden behind the wall, but Annika watched the odd procession from a window seat in the library. Herr Pfarrer in his formal black vestments led the men and the ancient casket across the estate by candlelight, to the unpainted platform in the chapel. The church had faithfully kept its promise from centuries past.

  If only they could help the people today . . .

  No one in this region remembered Christoph or his family, only the reputation of a peculiar salt administrator who had built this castle and ruled over this area as if it were a kingdom. And his strange request to return home every fifty years.

  Better, Annika supposed, that his casket visit here than he haunt the place, but she would much rather his remains stay in the crypt where they belonged.

  Minutes later, the Catholic priest knocked on the front door, and Annika hurried through the hall to meet him.

  “Are you well?” Herr Pfarrer asked.

  “I am getting along well enough.”

  “The casket is secure in the chapel,” he said as if he’d brought her a gift. “We’ll return in the morning.”

  She nodded in acknowledgment, her fingers tightened around the iron door handle. Being agreeable was one of the best things she could do to ward off suspicion, but she would be counting down the hours until the body of Baron Eyssl von Eysselsberg returned to his crypt across the lake.

  When the priest and men were gone, Annika knocked five times on the panel near the fireplace. Luzi unlocked it from the inside before pulling it open. She had what she needed in the small space to last for days if necessary. Pillow and blanket. A flashlight and chamber pot. A thermos with water, brown bread, and pickled eggs.

  Annika’s Bambi book was now hidden in this space as well, in the metal box that she’d rescued after the fire, but Luzi had never mentioned opening the box or seeing Max’s picture taped in the back of the book. Annika almost wished that she had seen it, that she would ask about it, even. They talked about all manner of subjects, but they rarely spoke about the man who’d brought them together.

  Luzi scooted out of the space, and Annika reached out, helping her to her feet.

  In the past weeks, Luzi’s belly had swollen under the clothing she’d managed to alter from Frau Dornbach’s wardrobe. Hiding inside this space must be far from comfortable, but Luzi never complained. She knew much better than Annika what might happen if the Gestapo found her here.

  “When will they return?” Luzi asked.

  “In the morning.”

  Luzi excused herself to use the bathroom before they began preparing dinner. Nights like this, Annika was even more grateful that Luzi was here with her. She didn’t think she could bear to be
alone in this huge place, even on the nights when there wasn’t a casket behind the house.

  She brought a loaf of sourdough Hausbrot to the library along with butter and a jug of goat milk for them to drink. Before Annika returned to the kitchen for plates and cups, Luzi stepped back into the room, her skin a pale pink from washing, her peroxide-bleached hair wet around her face.

  “Please sit,” Luzi said. “I’ll bring the rest of the things.”

  “No—”

  “Please,” she insisted. “You need to rest, and it’s good for me to stretch my legs.”

  “Thank you.” But Annika had sat only for seconds when someone rang their doorbell again. She turned and stared at the archway that separated the library from the hall.

  “The priest must have forgotten something,” Annika said, trying to drown the familiar pangs of fear inside her.

  The bell rang again, and Luzi pressed the edge of the panel, opening it into the wall. “I’ll spend the night in here.”

  Annika shivered. “It shouldn’t be necessary.”

  “My hiding protects us both.”

  Annika nodded before Luzi pushed the panel closed from the inside. The seams between the panels stitched up neatly.

  When the doorbell rang for a third time, Annika took a deep breath, praying that it wasn’t another mob returning to finish what they’d started with the fire.

  If they barged inside, how would she get Luzi out of here?

  Instead of answering the front door, she opened the one to the parlor, the room where Vati had died. She hadn’t been back inside since the fire—and she didn’t want to go now—but she couldn’t answer the door until she saw who was on the other side.

  Carefully she stepped over remnants of burnt wood and ash-laden furniture piled on what was once a finely carpeted floor. Through the broken window, she saw Hermann on the stoop, the bell ringing through the house again.

  She rushed back into the hall, opening the door. “What is it?”

  “I just received a call, from a schoolmate in Salzburg. He said Gestapo agents are coming back here to search for missing treasure from Vienna.”

  The pounding in her heart resumed. “When are they coming?”

  “He didn’t know.”

  The Gestapo agents wouldn’t find Luzi’s space etched into the wall, but if they searched the grounds, they might find the heirlooms buried in the forest.

  “Where is Max?” she asked.

  Hermann took off his corduroy cap, his blond hair clumping to his head. “Hiding in the mountains.”

  “He wouldn’t tell anyone.”

  Hermann shifted his hat. “Not unless something much bigger were at stake.”

  She reached for the post. Had they forced Max to talk for Luzi’s sake?

  Her mind raced, trying to determine what to do. “We have to move the things.”

  “They’ll search every crevice in this place.”

  She turned slowly toward the chapel, an idea brewing in her head. “Can you help me with one more project?”

  “Of course.”

  Annika didn’t recognize either man who stood on her doorstep, each dressed in the brown shirt and red band that required no introduction.

  The other agents who had visited from Salzburg had been somewhat polite—apologetic, even, when they insisted on searching for Max—but the agents this morning offered no apology. It was quite clear that they and the men waiting outside in their black vehicles, four of them parked in the courtyard, were going to search the estate whether or not she wanted them here.

  If she could keep them in the forest, searching, Luzi would be safe inside.

  “You are hiding things,” the senior agent said. Not a question, a proclamation that he clearly believed to be truth.

  Annika steadied her voice. “Your agents already searched the house.”

  “Where is Herr Dornbach?” the younger man asked, a trickle of grease seeping down his jaw, pooling at his collar.

  “Max Dornbach,” the elder clarified.

  “I don’t know,” she said. “Perhaps in Vienna.”

  The younger one moved closer. “Are you Luzi?”

  She blanched. “No, I—”

  How did they know Luzi’s name?

  “She’s the caretaker’s daughter,” the elder said as if she hadn’t an actual name. Then he turned back toward the other cars and curled his arm up like a hook, as if he’d caught a fish.

  The men tumbled out of the cars and began scouring the property. Two more of them stepped toward the house, ignoring Annika when she said their men had already searched every room in the castle. They started in the kitchen, pulling out drawers and rifling through the cabinets as if she’d hidden treasures in the flour or sugar bins.

  Luzi, she prayed, would be safe in her hiding place.

  As the agents stormed into the dining room, she feared the worst had come to Max. If so, he could no longer protect his things . . . or the child who belonged to him.

  Would these men search until they found Luzi? The Nazis, it seemed, would stop at nothing to find those who eluded them.

  What would they do to Annika if they didn’t find her?

  In the library, the men began to search through the hundreds of books, and her heart dropped when one of them plucked a copy of Bambi from the shelves. But it was Max’s copy, not hers.

  Unless Luzi, for some reason, had decided to place the book in the library.

  When the younger agent held it up, she prayed he wouldn’t begin turning the pages.

  “This book has been banned,” he said.

  She tilted her head, hoping they would see her as a kitten like Max did, naive and perhaps a little silly. “Why would someone ban a book about deer?”

  The men, all four of them, looked confounded by her question.

  “Or is it the hunter that they don’t like?” she asked.

  The elder agent grabbed the book from his partner’s hands and tossed it onto the floor near the fireplace. “Because Felix Salten is a Jew.”

  Sweat glazed Annika’s palms, her pores spilling over when she couldn’t use words.

  One of the agents picked up a lamp and began pounding on the walls with the bronze base. She wiped her palms on her skirt as meters became centimeters. Then his lamp was poised to strike the panel that protected her friend.

  An image popped into her head—she and Max sitting on this sofa a decade from now, hand in hand. Remembering Luzi together. Max wouldn’t long for Luzi as he once had, not with Annika as his wife.

  She didn’t even have to tell these men where Luzi was hidden. They would discover it on their own. Nothing she could do would stop them from finding Luzi. Nothing except . . .

  Words tumbled from her mouth as she stepped in front of the panel. “What do you want from me?”

  “We don’t want you,” the man with the lamp said. “We want the treasure you’ve hidden. And the girl.”

  More pictures flashed in her mind. This time of Luzi and the child that grew within her. Of Max and his love for the woman behind the panel. Even if he never found out about the baby, Annika would know.

  These men of Hitler, they would take both mother and child with them, and no matter what Annika did—marry him, even—Max would never recover from this loss. His heart would be broken, the woman he loved gone.

  Annika’s heart quaked, shooting a tremor up her throat, and her voice fled for a moment.

  But if she was going to do this, she would have to be strong.

  “I’m Luzi Weiss,” she finally said, praying for the strength to press on.

  The man studied her appearance as if he didn’t quite believe her. She had no photo to prove it, no certificate, but she did have . . .

  She reached under her collar and slowly pulled out the Star of David necklace. “Max brought me here.”

  “You’re not Luzi,” the elder agent said, but the agent near the wall was distracted now, the lamp at his side.

  She didn’t refute the agent�
��s words, but all of them were staring at her. As long as they were focused on her, Luzi would be safe.

  She couldn’t think beyond that.

  The elder agent stepped forward and eyed the necklace. Then he ripped it off her neck. “You are stupid to tell us so.”

  Annika notched her chin up even as the fear swelled within her. “I’m proud of who I am.”

  “There’s no pride in being a Jew.” He turned to the man by the wall. “Take her.”

  Another agent ran into the room. “We found something in the yard.”

  The agent clenched Annika’s arm, forcing her forward. She glanced back at the panel one last time before leaving the castle that she loved.

  CHAPTER 38

  The faint scent of the pale-pink peonies in my hand perfumes our walk to the cemetery. Ella holds my other hand as we follow her dad up stone steps, seventy of them total before we crest the hill.

  Metal and wooden crosses mark dozens of small gardens in this cemetery, each person commemorated with a cross and a unique array of flowers on their grave. Life springs from this soil that buried those who’ve gone before us, beauty unfolding from the depths of sorrow.

  It’s a strange concept for Americans, but the residents of Hallstatt rent graves instead of purchasing them. When the ten-year lease expires, Josh told me, the grave is usually reoccupied, but someone—Max Dornbach, I assume—continued renting this grave almost eighty years after Luzi died.

  Even if her body isn’t here, I want to remember her life as well.

  Josh glances over at me and then down at Ella’s hand, secure in mine. In his eyes, I see something new, and I wonder if he would have taken my hand if Ella weren’t clinging to it.

  He stops first in front of a garden plot for Annika’s mother, Kathrin Knopf. A woman who died five years before the war began. Tiny white flowers bloom across the garden plot as if the dirt has been glazed with snow. At the base of the wooden cross are two coral-colored asters towering over the kingdom of white, and a red candle hangs in a wrought-iron lantern over the grave, the glass sides blackened as if someone has burned a candle often in her memory.