The Curator's Daughter

by Melanie Dobson

  “When the social worker first called me, I didn’t know what to do,” Alex said. “Titus swore never to tell anyone that we were the Heywood children, but I still worried someone from the council would come looking for you.”

  Not everyone in their group had been apprehended at Eagle Lake, but the FBI had arrested fifteen men and women and found homes for their children. The bodies of Joseph and Elaine and five other members were recovered from the rubble.

  Ember changed her last name to Ellis like her brother, as if they’d both immigrated to this island in search of freedom. The first name was her choice, and she’d picked Ember, not even thinking about the flames she’d left behind. To her it was about starting over. A spark for new beginnings as her mind and body recovered from the shock. The initial E to remind her always of her baby.

  Later, when her mind began to heal, Alex said the ember of her name was about starting a new fire, one to spread truth instead of destruction.

  She twirled the cherry drink, watching it funnel inside her glass. “Titus must have told his mother about us.”

  “She already knew.” Alex looked away from the license plates, refocusing on his beer. “I suspect he talked to others on the island as well, but no one ever asked me about the Aryan Council or any of its members.”

  “Lukas did something that disturbed Mrs. Kiehl.”

  “He arrived from Germany right before Dad moved the group to Idaho,” Alex said. “I remember him bragging about being the grandson of an SS officer and showing off a Death’s Head ring to prove it. For all I know, he bought the ring at a costume shop, but if Mrs. Kiehl heard him talking about his grandfather or the ring, it might have been traumatic for her.”

  Ember remembered the ring, but she didn’t remember Lukas talking about the SS, not that she even knew in her early teens what the SS was. By the time they’d married, Lukas was an officer of the Aryan Council and that usurped everything else until he lit the match to ward off the FBI.

  She’d returned to Eagle Lake once after college and walked the perimeter, trying to remember what happened that horrific night in the fire and fog, but those hours blurred in her mind. Long ago Alex had told her Elsie drowned, that the social worker called months after that terrible night to say they found a body. But when Ember called the FBI, the agent said they had no record—at least not that they would share with her—of finding a baby girl, and none of the news stories she’d read ever mentioned a baby.

  She watched Alex closely, daring to ask the question again. “Do you still think Elsie drowned in the lake?”

  Instead of answering her question, her brother sipped on his beer as if it could give him the strength he needed to soldier on.

  “The truth, Alex.”

  His eyes were focused on the mantle of foam. “I don’t know what happened to her.”

  “But you said—”

  “The social worker thought she drowned, but they never found her body.”

  Ember’s back slammed into the wood, her heart almost erupting through her chest. “She might still be alive—”

  “It’s doubtful.”

  She had no pictures of Elsie, but the memories were stamped in her mind. Lukas had told her he had their baby, as they were running away, and then he was gone. If Elsie hadn’t died in the lake or fire, someone had to know where he’d taken her.

  Ember began the tapping again, palms slapping her jeans. Even after all these years, the weight of her guilt threatened to drown her as well. She’d loved her baby fiercely in their months together. “Why did you lie to me?”

  “You wouldn’t have been able to think about anything else except finding her, and you were too young, too wounded, to be a mother. You needed to figure out your life first.”

  “But when I was older—”

  “Nothing either of us can do will bring her back, Ember.” Another sip of the beer. “I only wanted the best for you. Still do . . .”

  “I know.” Her brother had given up three years of his life to care for her.

  “Some of these white supremacist groups never stop looking for their people,” he said. “If you start searching for information, I’m afraid someone from the council will find you.”

  The social worker had warned her of this, and yet she’d hoped that with the passage of twenty years, Sarah Heywood had been forgotten. “I’ve been getting strange letters at work,” she said, a chill traveling across her skin.

  “From who?”

  “I don’t know. Security thinks someone found my name on the museum’s website, and they’re trying to scare me so I’ll stop my work. The letters are postmarked from Boise.”

  He reached for her hand. “You have to be careful, Ember.”

  “I’ve never received anything at home,” she said, trying to assure them both. “They’re empty threats.”

  “Is your picture on the website?”

  “No, just my academic work, but Lukas is in prison and the rest of the council scattered after the raid. Who else would send me letters?’

  “I don’t know, but someone could be biding their time.”

  She paused, not wanting to worry him anymore. “What if Elsie is still alive?”

  “She’s not—”

  “It’s possible, Alex. She could be in college or have started a family of her own by now.” A legitimate one.

  “Or living as a neo-Nazi if Lukas managed to hand her off to someone else . . .”

  She tapped her hands a little harder. Grounding herself. “I need to start looking again.”

  “It will be an endless journey, I’m afraid.”

  “But I think it might be a journey that I need to take,” she said slowly. “Just one more time.”

  Searching for what was behind her now so she didn’t spend a lifetime, like Mrs. Kiehl, wondering what happened to someone she’d loved.

  If Elsie had survived, she’d be an adult with a new name and, Ember prayed, a new life outside the hate.

  “I’ll make a few calls,” Alex said. “See if I can find anyone who left the council.”

  “Thank you.”

  “Will you come back to the mountains with me tonight?” he asked. “Maggie and Saul have been begging to see you, and Tracy said she needs some Ember time.”

  “I’d love to.”

  Her niece and nephew greeted their dad with hugs and then they wrapped their arms around her. Saul crouched like a lion, pretending to attack, and when he banged his elbow on the fancy baluster, Tracy chased away his pain with her motherhood magic. A kiss and a cookie to make it better.

  As Tracy fetched a tray of snacks for all of them, Ember wondered again what it would have been like to have a mom who’d cared well for her.

  And what it would have been like to mother her own child.

  If Elsie was still out there, Ember would find her.

  And she hoped Lilly Kiehl could find out what happened to her mom.

  27

  HANNA

  A lioness lounged on a wedge of sandstone, the autumn sun splashing over the reddened leaves across the new Tiergarten. On the cliff above, a lion paced along the stone as if he were trying to decide whether to protect his mate or make certain that she didn’t step out of line.

  Hanna watched the animals through bars as she waited for Frau Weber to arrive, a flock of whip-poor-wills and other exotic birds clattering inside an aviary nearby. Most of the zoo had been sculpted into rock so the animals had natural shelter inside their cages. Hitler had wanted this place to demonstrate the mystery and power of the Reich like everything he’d built in Nuremberg. Even the straw rooftops shimmered in the light.

  Juden Nicht Erlaubt—that was the sign beside the ticket booth at the entrance. Just like every other business in Nuremberg, Jews were no longer permitted to visit the zoo, but ever since Grete had inquired about Hanna’s friend’s interest in the bells, Frau Weber brought the stories here.

  Hanna had collected almost fifty biographies now. An entire archive hidden to preserve th
e heritage of those who’d been taken away.

  Kolman had been gone for three months, and she’d only received two short letters, both of them postmarked from Berlin. He couldn’t say where their team was working—the archaeological digs were highly confidential—but each time he said that he’d be home soon.

  Other women might have longed for their husbands to return, but Hanna wished hers would stay in the field. She didn’t like the way Kolman watched over her as if she were the enemy. Nor how he’d begun to talk about children.

  While he was traveling, the driver made sure that Hanna stayed firmly in her cage. He fetched her for work each day and delivered her home, took her into Nuremberg to shop on Saturday afternoon and attend church on Sunday. But every Saturday morning she pedaled her bicycle a full kilometer down to the zoo alone. No one bothered her here.

  The zookeeper opened a slot and threw a slab of rotting meat onto the stone, the lioness pouncing on the meal before her mate. The stench of it transported Hanna back to a dump in Nepal last year where she and her team had searched for Aryan roots. Nothing in that rubbish pile had connected the ancestral heritage of Germans to a pure Aryan race, but the Ahnenerbe had sent cages of live animals back home to be studied. Some of them, perhaps, had ended up in this zoo.

  She shook her head, refocusing. That world was no longer hers to embrace.

  A woman with a burgundy scarf and matching coat stepped up to watch the lions, her purse clutched in both hands, but when Hanna walked over to speak with her friend, an SS officer moved between them, a man she didn’t recognize.

  Hanna looked back at the lions, her heart racing. Had this man come looking for her?

  Then she saw that he wasn’t alone. A woman—his wife, she assumed—and two young children stepped up beside him. The little girl took his hand, and they watched the lions devour their meal.

  Hanna didn’t dare leave, but Frau Weber moved across the footpath to look at the jungle of birds perched in the branches, as if these creatures didn’t realize there was a whole sky above their heads.

  Others gathered to watch the lions, crowding the fenced rim, and Hanna meandered down the treed path, stopping to look at the rhinoceroses as they bathed in the mud. Then she walked past an enclosure with deer who didn’t even bother to look up. Every animal, it seemed, had their own obsession.

  No one else was on the trail beyond the deer, but Hanna continued, casually strolling through the trees. The end of this path looped around a pond filled with ducks imported from America, several wooden chairs at the edge for visitors to feed them.

  The woman, her hair covered with the burgundy scarf, was sitting in one of the chairs. When she looked up, Hanna almost squealed. Instead of Frau Weber, Luisa was sitting in front of her.

  Hanna caught her breath as she slipped into the second chair. If only she could wrap her arms around her cousin.

  But she’d embrace the relief in her heart instead, grateful the Gestapo hadn’t found Luisa.

  “I’ve missed you so,” she whispered.

  A sad smile swept across Luisa’s face. “I’m glad you were gone these past years. I didn’t want you to see . . .”

  And Hanna knew. Her public humiliation must have been horrific. The scarf covered Luisa’s sheared head, but most of her hair would still be gone. “They shouldn’t have done that to you.”

  Her cousin looked back at the ducks swarming toward them as if they were about to enjoy a bounty of food, at the weeping willow draped over the edge of the pond. “It’s only going to get worse.”

  “Have you received word from Paul?”

  “One postcard,” she said. “He wrote that he was taking a vacation, as if it was perfectly normal for my husband to be going on a holiday alone. At the time I was in prison for the crime of marrying him, so there was no vacation for me.”

  “Did the card say where he was going?”

  Luisa shook her head, the lines in her forehead deep as if decades of worry had hollowed out her skin. “He said that he would send for me as soon as I was out, but at the bottom, he scribbled an X over his name, as if he’d made a mistake, then wrote out his name again. It was a signal between us, that I needed to hide the moment they released me from jail.”

  “They’re still searching for you.”

  Luisa nodded. “Someone told them I was talking to the Jewish people, writing down their stories. The Nazis can’t let anyone find out the truth of what they’re doing.”

  One of the ducks lifted its wings, attempting to fly, but its wings were clipped.

  “Another of Frau Weber’s customers has been sent away,” Luisa whispered. “They barely had time to pack their things.”

  Hanna leaned back against the wooden slats, her head pounding.

  “The woman told Frau Weber there isn’t enough work for her family in Nuremberg. The government has found a place for them to relocate.”

  “It’s a lie,” Hanna said, “about the work. With all the men being sent to the front, there are plenty of jobs in Nuremberg.”

  “Not if you’re Jewish.”

  She closed her eyes, remembering the despondent men and women she saw corralled together in Paris. “Where could they possibly be relocating them?”

  “To a tent camp outside town at first, where Nazi Party members used to stay during the rallies. More trucks transport them away from there, but no one seems to know where they go next.”

  The stories they’d gathered were only part of the biographies. What happened to these people after they left Nuremberg?

  “Where is Frau Weber?” she asked.

  “Someone is watching her apartment. She can’t meet you here anymore.”

  Hanna wanted to know every detail, where Luisa lived now and how Frau Weber knew she was being watched, but details seemed to be dangerous these days. “We’ll have to find another way to exchange the stories.”

  “The walls feel as if they are closing in around us.” Luisa checked the scarf on her head, pulling it close around her face. “Do you really think it matters, our collecting these stories?”

  Hanna pondered the question. “I think it will matter very much to the families when this is over and perhaps to the rest of the world.”

  “The world doesn’t care what happens to the people of Germany.”

  “They will once they know the truth,” Hanna said. “We can’t fight the Nazis now, but these stories will condemn them after the war.”

  Luisa unclasped her purse, and Hanna knew their time was coming to a close. Luisa’s parents had died decades ago, before she came to live at the lodge, and the two of them had grown up together, the best of friends. Now the only family they had left was each other.

  “Do you still have the key to the lodge?” Hanna asked.

  “I do.”

  “It will always be your home.”

  “I can’t return,” Luisa said, shaking her head. “You’re married to a member of the SS.”

  “It’s the safest place of all when he’s traveling.”

  Luisa pulled an envelope from her purse. “Here are the last of the stories.”

  “I’ll make sure—”

  Luisa’s eyes grew wide before she looked back out at the weeping willow. The officer and his family had wandered up beside them, the wife holding a brown bag with bread for the ducks.

  The girl tore a piece from the loaf and held out a portion of it for Hanna. “Would you like some?”

  She took the bread, her hand trembling. Luisa was gone, but the envelope had fluttered to the ground, a flag waving between the chairs.

  Hanna didn’t dare reach out for it now, but she scooted her chair over as if she were trying to get closer to the ducks, covering the envelope when she reached forward with her offering of bread. The duck gobbled it, and the girl handed her another piece.

  If she kept her gaze forward, her eyes on the ducks, she hoped the officer would keep his gaze focused on the water as well.

  The wife sat in the chair that Luisa had just vac
ated, a young boy on her lap.

  “Where did your friend go?” the girl asked.

  “The elephant house. Her family is waiting for her there.”

  The officer turned to Hanna. “Are you alone?”

  “Gunther!” his wife reprimanded, but he didn’t rescind the question.

  “My husband is traveling. He’s also with the Schutzstaffel.”

  The man looked doubtful. “What is his name?”

  “Standartenführer Strauss.”

  “I know your husband,” he said. “I didn’t realize his wife had moved to Nuremberg.”

  “I grew up here.” Hanna tossed another piece of bread into the water. “But I’ve only been back since the spring.”

  “I suspect your husband is traveling as much as mine,” the woman said, gazing over at her husband as if she might heil him. “We should have lunch together when our children are in school.”

  “I’m actually working at the museum,” Hanna explained.

  The woman looked at her as if she had the plague. “Your husband’s making you work?”

  She shrugged. “I like to stay busy.”

  “But what about your children?”

  Why did everyone in this Reich think she should have a child? She’d thanked God almost every day that she hadn’t gotten pregnant while Kolman was home.

  “We don’t have any children yet.”

  “You won’t be able to work at the museum after your first one is born,” the woman said. “I know we’re supposed to have four, but I can barely keep up with my two.”

  “I’m not sure how I could possibly stop working.”

  The officer rounded up his family quickly as if Hanna might contaminate all of them with her progressive thoughts. When they continued down the path, Hanna secured the envelope inside her coat; then she hurried to the entrance before bicycling home. She’d hide those papers in the labyrinth at first light.

  As Hanna neared the lodge, a silver Mercedes-Benz pulled up behind her, trailing her to the drive. Her heart pounded as she stepped off the bicycle, holding it close to her side as she waited for the door to open, her breath labored more from fear than bicycling up the hill.