A Fire Sparkling

by MacLean, Julianne

  But I can’t let myself question what might have been or the choices I’ve made. I promise you there were many days when I wanted to shed this uniform and find you, but then what? How could we be happy in a world full of hate and brutality? I had the chance to disrupt that world from within, and I always believed that you would understand one day when we were together again. I just didn’t expect it to be today, in front of the Gestapo.

  I love you, and I want you to be happy in a free world. If I survive this war, I will find my way back to you and our son. I don’t know if you will be able to forgive me, but I hope you will at least see me for the man I truly am.

  Love forever and always, Ludwig

  Tears blinded my eyes and choked my voice as I sank onto the chair again, shocked by this intimate letter that had been lost and locked away in a German attic all these years. My grandmother had never known the truth. She’d spent nearly seventy years believing that she had been a fool for love, but she hadn’t been, and this man who we all thought was the enemy—a man who was supposedly seduced into the Nazi regime—had been a Resistance fighter all along.

  I wiped away my tears and looked up at Hans. “Why didn’t you tell her the truth that night, before she got on the plane? You knew that Ludwig risked his life to save her and that he still loved her. Why did you keep that from her?”

  “He made me promise not to say anything,” Hans replied, “because he was afraid she wouldn’t get on the plane—that she would stay in France and try to find him again. And he knew he was being watched.”

  “Still, you could have told her that. Sent her home with some hope.”

  He shook his head with regret. “I wish I had. If you only knew . . . I’ve regretted it all my life, and now it feels so much worse, knowing that she survived. I’d always imagined they were together since the war, in a higher place, and there were no more secrets. No more wars. No cruelty.”

  I read the letter again and stood up. “She needs to see this.”

  Hans was staring down at his feet, rubbing his chest as if pained. “I’m so sorry,” he said. “I failed your grandmother, and I failed Ludwig. I should have tried harder to find her and deliver this. I shouldn’t have accepted that she was dead.” He sat down in the chair.

  “You had no way of knowing,” I said, crouching before him and touching his arm. “The whole situation was impossibly complicated.”

  He nodded, but I knew he would carry this regret with him for the rest of his days.

  “But whatever happened to Ludwig?” I asked. “How did he die?”

  Hans lifted his damp eyes. “The next day, after we got Deidre and April out of France, the Gestapo arrested him. I’m not sure, exactly, how they found out he was involved with the ambush on the prison truck. I’d managed to return the car and uniform before dawn, and it seemed like no one was the wiser. But somehow, they knew, and I think he was aware. It’s why he made me promise to deliver that chest to April. Of course, I didn’t know about the letter inside.” Hans paused and grimaced at a painful memory. “The Nazis were spooked because of the Allies’ approach on Paris. They were rounding up resisters with a vengeance and went on a killing spree. From what I was able to learn about it, the Gestapo shot him at their headquarters in Paris after a long night of torture and questioning. I believe, in the end, when he knew they weren’t going to set him free, he admitted to being the Gray Ghost, to make sure they stopped searching, and to protect me, because I was the one everyone suspected. They destroyed most of the records of his existence and his achievements during the war, because it was an embarrassment that one of Hitler’s top officers was a traitor. And your country didn’t want to recognize a German soldier’s contribution to the war. You had your own heroes to celebrate.”

  “But he shouldn’t have been forgotten,” I said bitingly to Hans. “Why didn’t you make it known? He deserved some sort of recognition. And he was your childhood friend—a man who risked his life to ensure a free world for others.”

  “When the war was over,” Hans explained, “I just wanted to forget. We all wanted to put it behind us.”

  Something shuddered within me, for those were the same words my grandmother had uttered after she relived all the horrors from her past. I felt an intense pang of regret for judging this man who had also risked his life in the name of freedom and had rescued my grandmother from certain doom. How could I possibly understand what he must have felt or what he had needed to do to survive the aftermath?

  Hans’s face was drawn, his eyes dark with self-recrimination.

  “I’m so sorry,” I said. “I had no right to say that. It’s not your fault, and I’m grateful that you kept this chest all these years and showed it to me. Would it be all right if I took it back to America? I’d like to give it to my grandmother. It will mean a great deal to her.”

  “Of course,” he replied, his face bleak with sorrow. “And tell her I’m sorry.”

  “You have nothing to be sorry for. She had a good life. And maybe it was better this way—that she didn’t know—because she was able to move on.”

  “I’m glad,” he replied.

  “She spoke fondly of you,” I told him, making sure that Hans would not blame himself for anyone’s unhappiness. “You saved her life that night when you made sure she got on the plane. And you were probably right. She wouldn’t have left if she knew the truth. She would have stayed in France. I’m grateful to you for making sure that didn’t happen.”

  He leaned close and kissed me on the cheek. “You’re just like her, you know. Fearless and good hearted.”

  “Thank you.” It was the biggest compliment anyone could have given me.

  Turning away, I placed the letter under the false bottom of the secret drawer and slid it into place. Then I picked up the chest and left Hans’s attic.

  A short while later, I was making my way back to my hotel in the back seat of a cab, where I called Geoffrey on my cell phone, because I had promised to let him know what I learned after talking to Hans.

  As it turned out, I had learned a great deal, and I was eager to talk to him about all of it.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN

  The massive jumbo jet touched down at JFK shortly after four o’clock the following afternoon, and I went through customs with Ludwig’s sea chest in my carry-on. Twenty minutes later, I reached the baggage claim and hugged my father, who had come from Connecticut to collect me.

  I still hadn’t told him about the letter or the chest. It wasn’t something I’d wanted to do over the telephone or by email. I believed he deserved to see it for himself, so I merely explained that I’d found the answers we were searching for and that I would share it all with him when I returned.

  So, there I sat, nine hours later, in the front seat of his car. I pulled the chest out of my carry-on bag and set it on my lap, while Dad got into the driver’s seat beside me.

  “What’s that?” he asked with a confused frown before he had a chance to slide the key into the ignition.

  “It’s exactly what you think it is,” I replied. “When I arrived in Berlin, I met with Hans Buchmann, the man we thought was the Gray Ghost.”

  “And he gave that to you?” Dad replied. “It’s exactly like Gram’s.”

  “Yes, and it’s not a coincidence. Hans knew Ludwig. They were friends since childhood, and he told me that Ludwig wasn’t what we thought he was. Not at all. He was a good man, Dad. He fought against Hitler, not for him.”

  Dad turned slightly in the seat to face me more directly. “I don’t understand. What are you saying?”

  “He was part of the German Resistance,” I explained. “But no one knew that, except for Hans.”

  Dad’s brow furrowed in confusion. “He was part of the Resistance?”

  “Yes.”

  “How did you find this out?”

  “When I went to visit Hans in Berlin,” I explained, “he still had this. He’d been keeping it in his attic all these years.” I paused, recalling our first fe
w moments together. “When he saw me, he thought I was Gram. He said I looked just like her.”

  “You do. There’s a very strong resemblance.” Dad seemed almost mesmerized as he stared at me, digesting this news.

  I laid my hands on the top of the chest, and then I raised the lid. “Look what’s inside.” I turned it toward him, and he rummaged through the mementos that Ludwig had kept—the photographs and the newspaper clipping of Gram singing onstage.

  “Look at these,” Dad said with fascination.

  I sat quietly while he flipped through all the pictures and studied the ticket stubs to theater performances and the cinema.

  “It’s obvious that she meant something to him,” Dad said, “if he kept all of this. But it doesn’t excuse what happened at Gestapo headquarters. I can’t forgive him for that—for allowing her to be tortured. She’s my mother, and it kills me to think about what they did to her.”

  “Me too,” I agreed, “but he did help her, Dad. He was the one who organized the ambush on the prison truck. He set it all up so that she would be rescued, and the only reason she didn’t know about that was because he was afraid she wouldn’t get on the plane if she knew. And he was probably right. She wouldn’t have. She would have stayed in France to try and be with him, and her safety would have been at stake. She might have been killed.”

  Dad’s mouth fell open, and he stammered. “He did all that? But whatever happened to him?”

  I lowered my gaze. “I’m so sorry, Dad. I hate to be the one to tell you this, but he didn’t survive the war. Somehow, they found out what he did, and he was arrested the next day. Hans told me that he was executed at Gestapo headquarters. It must have been only a few days before the Allies arrived and the Germans surrendered. If only he could have held out a little while longer.”

  Dad gripped the steering wheel and tipped his head back on the seat. For a long, painful moment he simply sat there, blinking in disbelief.

  “There’s more,” I said.

  “More?”

  “Yes.”

  “How much more?”

  The rest of the story stuck in my throat, but I forced myself to go on. “He wrote a letter to Gram, and he hid it in the secret compartment.” I found the button inside, gave it a flick, and opened the drawer. “I think you should read it, and then we should take all of this home and show it to Gram.”

  I pulled the ribbon, withdrew the letter, and passed it to my father. He unfolded it and began to read.

  By the time he was finished, tears were streaming down his face. “My God.”

  I reached out to squeeze his shoulder. “I’m so sorry. I know it’s heartbreaking. For all of you. He never got to meet you, and Gram never knew the truth. She lived her entire life believing that he didn’t care about her, that he was a cruel man and that he betrayed her, and that she’d been wrong about him when she fell in love. But she wasn’t wrong. Your real father was wonderful.”

  Dad’s voice broke, and tears filled his eyes again. “I wish I could have met him, that I could have known him. But I never had the chance.”

  He began to cry, and I waited patiently for him to express the grief he needed to express while the sight of his pain caused me to weep openly as well.

  “Jack was a wonderful father to me,” he said with a deep shudder of sorrow, “and I’ll never regret that he was the man who raised me, but I wish . . .”

  “I know, Dad. I know.”

  He leaned toward me, and we embraced.

  After a moment, he sat back and fought to collect himself. He reached into his pocket for a handkerchief, which he used to wipe his cheeks. He blew his nose.

  “Are you sure we should show this letter to her?” he asked.

  The question hit me like a plank across the chest. “Yes, of course. Why? You don’t think so?”

  “I don’t know,” he replied. “Over the past week, ever since you left, she’s been her old self, and she hasn’t mentioned the past. All her life, she was happy, Gillian. Happy with Jack. She always believed he was the better man, the one she was meant to be with. But if she reads this letter, she might have regrets. She might wish she had never gotten on that airplane. She might hate herself for losing faith in Ludwig. For not trying to save him somehow.”

  I stared straight ahead. “It’s not like I haven’t thought of that. But I still believe she needs to know the truth.”

  Dad’s face was ashen. “You think she would be better off?”

  I took a deep, steadying breath. “Yes. She’s a strong woman. And if it were me, I’d want to know. I’d make peace with it somehow.”

  Dad sat for a long time, thinking about it. Then he started up the car. “Let’s go home. We’ll figure it out along the way.”

  Looking down at the antique sea chest on my lap, I ran my finger over the brass plate with the Regency gentleman in the top hat. Then I recalled the story Gram had told us about the day she and Ludwig had encountered each other at the antique market in Bordeaux.

  What were the odds that they would bump into each other that day? And how amazing—that I would find my way to Hans’s attic decades later and retrieve this important piece of the past.

  Call me sentimental, or superstitious, but I couldn’t help but believe that everything was happening exactly as it was meant to. I had traveled all the way to Europe in search of answers, and now I was back in America with Ludwig’s letter in my possession. Surely it was always meant to find its way back to Gram. But not before now.

  So, I couldn’t just bury it. I felt that would be a terrible injustice. A denial of fate and every other type of magic that existed in the world. And I wanted to believe in magic. I wanted to believe that in the end, the universe would take care of us, and we would end up exactly where we were meant to be.

  When we walked through the door, Gram was sitting in Grampa Jack’s easy chair, knitting something in bright-red wool.

  “Gillian!” she said with a smile. She set her knitting needles aside and rose to greet me. I hugged her tenderly and with a great outpouring of love.

  “I’m so happy to be back,” I said. “I had the best time.”

  She looked into my eyes. “I can see that you’re happy. You look much better than you did before. It was good for you to get away. Come and tell me all about it.”

  She took me by the hand and led me to the sofa while my father carried my large suitcase upstairs.

  I sat down and started rattling on about the first half of my trip. “London was amazing. I saw Kensington Palace and the Tower, and I took the Underground everywhere.”

  “It’s a beautiful city,” she agreed.

  “Yes, it is. And I went to Craven Street. I saw where you used to live. Did you know that Benjamin Franklin lived on that street at one time?” I’d seen a blue commemorative plaque on one of the older Georgian houses that still stood near her old address.

  “I wasn’t aware of that.” She watched my expression and waited for me to tell her more. I had the feeling that she already knew I’d done some investigating, and she was expecting it. Knowing her, it’s probably what she would have done in my shoes.

  “And . . . I went to visit Daphne,” I told her, point-blank.

  “Daphne.” Gram closed her eyes and held her open palm to her heart. “I thought you might.”

  “Did you?”

  “Of course.” Our eyes met. “Dear, sweet Daphne. It’s been too many years. How was she?”

  “Very well,” I replied. “She lives in a beautiful town house in Chelsea with her son and daughter-in-law. Apparently, she married a wealthy real estate mogul from Canada after the war, and they had three children. She was a schoolteacher for a while.”

  “I knew that,” Gram replied. “But I didn’t know about her children.”

  We chatted for a moment about Daphne’s life since the 1940s, and I told Gram about Geoffrey, Daphne’s grandson. I mentioned that we’d had lunch together.

  “Was he handsome?” she asked furtively.
>
  “Yes, I suppose he was.”

  “Ooh.”

  I chuckled softly and said, “Easy, Gram. It was just lunch. But he did help me out with something important, which I need to tell you about. And I hope I’m doing the right thing by sharing this with you. I don’t want you to be angry with me.”

  My father entered the room just then.

  “Hi, Dad,” I said. “I was just about to tell Gram what I learned after visiting Daphne.”

  He sat down in a chair and nodded in agreement.

  I returned my attention to Gram. “I didn’t tell you this before, but I didn’t just plan a trip to London. I also booked a flight to Berlin, because I wanted to find out what happened to Ludwig. And I know you didn’t want to talk about him anymore, but he was my grandfather, and I had to know.”

  She sat very still, with a look of concern.

  Holding both her hands in mine, I continued to explain. “The first thing I did was go to see Hans Buchmann, because I thought he might be able to help me, or at least steer me in the right direction. He was the man you knew as the Gray Ghost, and he’s still alive.”

  Her eyes brightened at that. “Is he really? Goodness.”

  “Yes, and I went to visit him,” I explained. “He seemed well, and he had just married a woman he’d met at a local market. Her name was Joan, and they seemed happy.”

  “That’s wonderful.” There was a hint of trepidation in Gram’s tone. I knew she was nervous about what I might say next.

  “He told me things, Gram—things he’d kept secret, even from you and Daphne when you worked together in France.”

  “What sorts of things?”

  Dad and I exchanged a look, and he got up to go retrieve Ludwig’s chest from my bag by the front door.

  “He told me,” I continued hesitantly, “that he and Ludwig knew each other, ever since childhood. They’d grown up on the same street and used to play together.”

  She frowned with displeasure. “What? I never knew that.”

  “No. It was a secret. But there’s more.” I paused and spoke slowly. “They were part of the Nazi Resistance together before the war even started, and when Hans went into hiding, Ludwig did the opposite. He joined the Wehrmacht.”