When Lilly saw the uniform, her hands began to shake, then her legs and arms until she was shaking so hard the matron had to prop her up against a chair lest she fall into the trees.
Say Ja, the matron had commanded, to anything that was asked of her. Ja. Ja. Ja.
And remind the man that she was German.
Lilly wore the same blue dress as the last visit, her stains washed away, the same bow and shoes. The matron said she must look her best for those who came to shop for measured children.
But this time no other girls stepped into the room. Was this man going to adopt her? Or maybe he could take her back to her mama.
If she wet her dress, the matron swore she’d leave Lilly in the forest outside Sonnenwiese so the wolves could have her for supper.
The man and red lady didn’t notice Lilly at first. They were laughing about something, petting each other on their arms. Perhaps they were going to adopt her together.
“Leave us,” the red lady finally said, waving the matron away with her clipboard. Lilly clung to the armchair as the matron closed the doors, waiting for the questions.
The man stared at her a long time before speaking. “What is your name?”
This was one she’d practiced, the matron asking her before every meal. “Lilly.”
“Where are you from, Lilly?”
“Ich bin Deutsche.”
The man glanced at the red lady.
“Berlin,” the woman said. “Her parents were killed in the bombing last month.”
“Ja,” Lilly said although she didn’t understand all of the words.
He leaned forward now, his blue eyes flashing in the forest light like those of the wolves from her picture books. “Do you like dogs, Lilly?”
“Ja.”
“Do you eat them for dinner?”
The red lady’s eyes widened, but he’d asked a question. Lilly had to answer.
“Ja,” she said, her fingers still curled around the chair.
“What are your favorite dogs to eat?”
So many questions at once, but she couldn’t stop. The matron would take her to the woods. “Ja.”
The lady lifted the clipboard, covering her face.
“Do you even know what I’m saying?” the man asked.
“Ja.”
He and the red lady laughed as if she’d made a joke, but she hadn’t meant to be funny. She’d done exactly what the matron told her to do.
She straightened her shoulders. “Ich bin Deutsche!”
They both stared at her, mouths open.
The man turned away, looking back at the red lady. “Do you have another girl this age?”
She shuffled through her papers. “No, but we have plenty of babies.”
“My wife can’t take care of a baby.”
“I’m afraid Lilly’s our oldest right now, but your men will bring us more. If you can wait a few months—”
He studied Lilly again, like she was one of the pastries her brothers used to bring home. “I suppose this one will do.”
The red lady wrote on her paper. “She’ll make a fine daughter.”
“I’ll return by the end of the year,” the man said. “I hope she’ll learn more German words by then.”
“Our nurses will make sure she speaks fluently.”
They were ignoring her again, a smile on the man’s face. Something big just happened, but Lilly didn’t know what it was.
The man stood and brushed his trousers. “It’s been a much more enjoyable visit than I anticipated.”
The lady’s brooch sparked in the light when she nodded toward a side door, the toes on her shiny red shoes drumming on the ground. “You must sign some papers before you leave.”
He smiled again. “Very good.”
25
HANNA
“I have to visit the cobbler during lunch.” Hanna pointed at the heel on her laced oxfords, the leather square flapping against the sole. It had taken some effort to loosen the piece without scuffing or breaking the side, but no one could question her need to repair it.
For the past month she’d been trying to connect with Frau Weber after work, but the driver that Kolman left behind was always waiting at the curb at five to transport her home, and lunch in the museum cafeteria had become mandatory for all the employees, to protect them in these tumultuous times, the director had said. And to protect the remaining artifacts, she suspected. Much of the collection had already been transported to the secret bunker, but Director Kohlhaussen didn’t want anything leaving the building without an approved escort.
She had to find a new tactic to leave the museum before five.
Grete didn’t even glance down at Hanna’s shoe. “I’ll tell the director.”
“It may take a few hours.”
Hanna stepped into a huddle of visitors who were exiting the lobby, walking carefully on her toes. If the driver was parked nearby, perhaps he wouldn’t notice her in this crowd.
Lingering, looking around for the sedan, would only signal her irregular routine, so she moved quickly onto a path that wove through the buildings and crossed over a pedestrian bridge to the street where Frau Weber lived.
The cobbler loaned her a tight-fitting pair of Mary Janes while he repaired her heel, and she climbed the steps quickly to Frau Weber’s apartment.
“It’s Hanna,” she whispered after the second knock, slipping inside when the door opened.
The roots of Frau Weber’s hair had grayed considerably in the past two months as if this Reich were sucking the life out of her. Hanna glanced toward the kitchen door. Not only was it closed, it was partially obscured by Frau Weber’s collection of plants.
Their time together would be short. No savoring conversation over coffee today.
“I love you like my own daughter, Hanna, but you are going to jeopardize us all by coming here.”
“No one followed me.”
“The Nazis have eyes in every corner of this city now.”
Hanna sat on one of the chairs. “I read the biography on Paul.”
“Did you burn it?”
“I can’t burn his biography. We have to keep it as a record of what’s happening in Nuremberg.”
“Paul can share his own story when he returns,” Frau Weber said.
Hanna considered her words. She’d jumped to her own conclusion that he wouldn’t be returning. That his disappearance, the months that had gone by with no word, meant he’d met an ugly fate.
But Luisa must have understood the importance of keeping it or she would have never written it down.
Hanna glanced at the kitchen door, wondering if her cousin was behind it. “Do you think he’ll return?”
Frau Weber didn’t answer the question. “The Gestapo will kill you if they find it.”
“I hid it in a safe place.”
“North America is a safe place, Hanna. Great Britain, even. Unless you found a courier to ship it across the ocean, that story is not safe.”
Places like America, Charlie once told her, had something called freedom of speech, but they knew no such freedom here. Speech was akin to marriage now. Only used in what was perceived to be the best interest of their government.
“Your father would have my head if he knew you were involved.”
“I’d like to think he would be proud of me for helping.”
Frau Weber nodded her head slowly. “Herr Tillich was a wounded man. Not just his leg, but his heart when he lost his son and then his wife.”
“You and Luisa rescued me in that season.”
“And I don’t want you to get hurt now . . .”
But she couldn’t step away, hiding in the lodge by herself while others like Frau Weber were hiding people. “There was a list of names with Paul’s biography.”
“You were supposed to burn that as well.”
“A box from the Dreydel family came to me at the museum. They were one of the families on her list, and now they’ve been relocated, their things requisitioned as
property of the German government,” Hanna said. “Does Luisa know what happened to them?”
“Perhaps.”
Exasperated, she nodded toward the kitchen. “Ask her.”
“Luisa has relocated as well for a few days.”
“She was sent east?” Hanna asked, alarmed.
“No. She simply moves around to protect all of us.”
“I want to collect the stories,” Hanna said. “When the war is over, we’ll tell the world what happened in Nuremberg. What the Nazis have done.”
“Only if Germany loses the war.”
Frau Weber was right. If Hitler won, if the stories were found, they’d be killed, but if they didn’t keep the stories, even if Germany won the war, no one would ever know the truth. Someone had to take a risk to hide the stories like the museum was doing with the artifacts. Someone without children or a family who needed her here.
“If some of the people on Luisa’s list are still in the city, I’ll find a way to speak with them.”
“You married an SS officer, Hanna. They’ll never trust you.”
“I didn’t have any other choice . . .”
“We always have a choice,” Frau Weber said. “But sometimes it’s better to go along with their demands in order to help whom we can. Wait here, please.”
When she returned, Frau Weber carried a basket with fabric. “I fear my days in Nuremberg are numbered.”
“Then you must hide like Luisa!”
“It’s too late for me to leave,” she said. “But these stories . . .”
Underneath the folds of material was a small stack of papers. A compilation of biographies chronicling what happened to Paul’s sister and his parents and other families like the Dreydels who’d been taken away during the night. According to one of the papers, the morning after the Dreydels were removed from their home, taken away forcibly by soldiers in a truck, a separate van arrived for their things.
“Did you write these?” Hanna asked as she skimmed the stories.
“With Luisa’s assistance. Many of these people are close friends of hers.”
Hanna’s stomach turned as she continued reading the accounts, at least twenty of them about Jewish people begging for food. A man who jumped out of a window. A woman who took the life of her child before the Nazis could take her away.
What was happening to her beautiful country? The strength of its people?
Germany’s hourglass had turned upside down, and she’d only seen glimpses of the shifting sand while she was away. But newspapers like the local Der Stürmer, she’d discovered, were propagating the hatred of the Jewish people with their scathing articles and vulgar cartoons. The hatred seemed to be everywhere, filling up the papers and airwaves, some of the reporters urging fellow Germans to destroy the Jewish people like they were vermin.
But no one was reporting about those who’d already been destroyed.
No wonder the Gestapo was nervous. If they knew Luisa had been collecting these stories, they feared where she might send them. They controlled the information, the narrative of the German people, and Nazi leaders didn’t want to provoke the world. No one, especially not a woman like Luisa, would ruin their plans.
Hanna lowered the stack of papers on her lap. “You said it’s dangerous to have these.”
“Terribly—”
“Then you can’t hide them in your sewing basket.”
“I don’t have any place else to keep them.”
If she couldn’t gather the stories, Hanna would help Frau Weber hide them until the war was over, and then return dignity to those who had suffered by sharing them.
But she couldn’t take the entire stack back to the museum with her. They wouldn’t fit in her clutch bag, and Director Kohlhaussen or Grete would notice if she tried to hide a pile of papers in her clothes. Two or three papers, though, folded under her waistline . . . No one would see them on her way into the museum, but the director might notice the papers on the way back out, certainly if she was called aside for a personal search,
If she couldn’t take the stories home to the labyrinth, she would find someplace else to hide them.
“Do you enjoy history?” Hanna asked.
“I much prefer sewing.”
She returned the stack of papers. “Perhaps you might cultivate an interest.”
“And what would I do with this newfound interest?” Frau Weber asked, her eyebrows raised.
“You could visit the National Museum. We still have some paintings on the walls and a collection of bells from the old abbeys.”
Frau Weber tucked the pages back between her fabric.
“Visitors can take their purses into the museum, but employees aren’t allowed to have any personal items inside,” Hanna continued, developing the plan in her mind. “You could bring the papers when you visit. Two at a time.”
“And you’d take them home?”
“No, we’re monitored closely when we leave, but I could—
Frau Weber waved her hands. “Don’t tell me.”
“Could you visit the bells tomorrow? I’ll shake your hand when I return from the cafeteria at noon.”
Frau Weber thought for a moment. “I am quite interested in bells.”
“You’ll have to fold the pages small enough so no one can see.”
Frau Weber smiled. “I’ve been tucking and folding for most of life.”
For the next month Frau Weber came faithfully to the museum two or three times a week, passing along twenty-four of the stories, until Grete inquired about her interest in the abbey bells.
26
EMBER
“Why were you visiting Lilly Kiehl?” Alex asked, taking a swig of Irish beer from his mug, his trimmed beard gleaming in the light.
They were tucked back in a booth with enough license plates along the wall to outfit an army of tin men.
“I wanted to interview her for my dissertation.”
“I’m proud of you, Ember. You are using the gifts God has given you to inspire others.”
“Thank you.” She couldn’t stand the taste of beer, so she settled for something called an Irish Rose, a sparkling cherry lemonade that made her feel like a teenager again, drinking a strawberry milkshake to make the problems go away.
“Did you get what you needed from her?”
“I got more than I anticipated.” She took a long sip of her drink. “Mrs. Kiehl started to talk about Lukas . . .”
Her brother leaned forward, his shoulder-length hair framing his drink. “What exactly did she say?”
“Nothing of significance, but the fact that she even knew him—I was shocked, Alex. I didn’t think anyone on Martha’s Vineyard knew about him, but then Dakota told me Lukas had lived on the island, back when Dad had his church there.”
Alex nodded slowly. “That’s when the real trouble began.”
Frustration bubbled inside her. Sometimes her brother was like one of those stone walls around the Kiehls’ farm. She’d read plenty of articles about the Aryan Council, watched the interviews and a documentary online, but those clips were only the shards that spilled after the story broke. Much had happened before and then after the fire. Things she didn’t remember. Things from her childhood that she never knew.
The caseworker from Idaho had met with Alex before Ember had moved into his cottage, told him what happened on Eagle Lake, but Alex also knew more than she did about their father’s church in those early years. Sometimes Ember felt like he’d spent the past twenty years withholding information from her even as she tried to pry back one ragged layer at a time, grabbling for the truth. While part of her wanted to forget what was behind her, knowing the truth about Lukas, at least, might help heal some of those wounds that festered whenever she heard his name.
“Why won’t you tell me everything?” Her voice cracked. “Other people know more than me about my own family.”
Alex studied the row of license plates as if da Vinci himself had painted them. The pause was fine with her. So m
uch had happened in the past two days that she was still trying to sort it out in her own mind.
Dakota had taken her out for lobster and corn on the cob last night like he’d promised. In public. Where everyone in Oak Bluffs could see. Not that she knew very many people who still lived on the island, but he seemed to know almost everyone who passed by their patio table. After dinner, they’d combed the beach for treasures that the storm had recovered, a dozen beautiful shells for her to display in her condo to remind herself always that God still worked miracles.
Between the calm water and a Bonine tablet, her stomach had weathered the boat ride back to the mainland just fine. She’d said goodbye to Captain Kiehl at the train station, knowing she might never see the man again, but the reconciliation was a glimpse of what she’d imagined so many years ago. Redemption where she’d expected it the least. Her short trip had filled her with hope that she might be able to redeem more of her story.
“I don’t like to think about those days, Ember.”
“I don’t like to think about them either,” she said. “But the memories keep coming back.”
“I wish I could have protected you—”
“You have been the best of brothers, Alex. It was our parents’ job to protect both of us.”
Joseph and Elaine Heywood had, in their own way, thought they were caring well for their children when they’d all lived on the island. The Aryan Council was supposed to incite a new Reich, and their father thought he was leaving a gift—a triumphant legacy—for his kids and the next generation. He’d been furious when Alex refused to join them in Idaho; then he’d disowned his eighteen-year-old son. Ember hadn’t been allowed to communicate with her brother during the seven years she’d spent on Eagle Lake.
The Aryan blood, the hatred, running through her veins had terrified her when she’d first returned to Martha’s Vineyard until Alex explained that blood replaces itself several times a year. Every red and white cell was uniquely hers.
But not her DNA, and that’s what she was fighting against. The DNA and years of indoctrination that her father couched as sermons. The hours of being told who she was supposed to hate even as she knew, from her earliest years, that it was wrong. She’d never wanted to hate anyone.
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