The Curator's Daughter

by Melanie Dobson

  Did the SS officer or his wife suspect her guilt? Or had the Gestapo finally returned?

  The legs of a gray uniform exited the automobile first; then Kolman stepped out onto the gravel.

  And her bicycle clattered to the ground.

  “Hello, Hanna,” he said, the visor on his cap slightly askew, an olive-colored scarf draped around his neck.

  “Kolman—”

  Someone else was in the back seat. A flash of blonde hair, the glimpse of an arm.

  Kolman reached back into the vehicle and pulled out a girl who could be no more than four. Maybe just three.

  “I’ve brought you a gift,” he said as if this person were another bottle of French wine, as if Hanna would be pleased with his extravagance.

  She stared down at the girl and saw the mutual terror in eyes as blue as the cornflowers that grew each summer in her meadow, their blossoms wilted now from the cold. “You can’t just bring me a child.”

  “Her name is Lilly.” Kolman released her hand and lifted a suitcase out of the trunk. “Lilly Strauss.”

  Hanna steadied herself against the truck. “You have a daughter?”

  “We have a daughter.” Kolman nodded at the child. “Lilly, meet your new mother.”

  In hindsight, she should have greeted the frightened girl, secured her in her arms.

  Instead Hanna ran. All the way up to the abbey, to the labyrinth where her mother used to pray.

  The Reich had made her a wife and now it was forcing her to become a mother.

  As she dug her hands into the dirt, buried the stories in a tin, it felt as if she were burying the remnants of her life in this labyrinth as well.

  28

  EMBER

  “So the Dakota Ban is over?” Brooke asked, pointing a fork at her cell phone like a spear.

  “I suppose so.”

  This afternoon, like most Mondays when the sun was out, Brooke had called from a café in Minneapolis while Ember ate lunch on steps by the World War II Memorial, right in front of the fountain.

  Brooke knew she’d grown up in Idaho, but Ember had never told her friend about the Aryan Council. About Lukas or Elsie. For the past twenty years, Brooke had been her normal on those days when the walls she’d built around her were crumbling.

  “It’s about time,” Brooke said. “He’s a good guy, you know.”

  Ember shook her head. “I don’t know that. I only spent a few hours with him.”

  “You spent the night!”

  She swirled lemon LaCroix in its can. “We slept in the same house. It’s different.”

  “But he apologized.”

  “Indeed.”

  Brooke stopped to eat a bite of her salad. “And took you out for dinner.”

  “Lobster at the marina.”

  “And then he transported you on his boat to the bus station.”

  “I forgave him, Brooke. Really. But you know what a nice guy he pretended to be before he invited me to join him on that football field.”

  “No one, except you, thought he was nice back in high school. Even Alecia was wary.”

  A duck paddled along the perimeter of the pond. “So he’s changed.”

  “I’d say. Have you heard from him since Boston?”

  “He texted from Paris. Just making sure that I got home safely. And then . . .” She took a long sip of LaCroix, knowing that Brooke was about to freak out.

  “Ember?”

  “He has a long layover at Dulles this evening and asked if I wanted to get coffee before he takes off again.” Actually he’d asked if she and Noah wanted to have coffee, but she told him that Noah already had plans.

  “And his ulterior motive for a coffee date would be?”

  “I don’t know. My world’s flipped upside down.”

  “Maybe he’ll ask you out when he gets back. On a real date with white tablecloths and tiny forks and cocktails with fruit in them.”

  “He won’t.” She took another long drink. “He kind of thinks I have a boyfriend.”

  “Ember—”

  “I couldn’t help it. Noah texted, and . . .”

  “You wanted Dakota to think you were taken by a ten-year-old?’

  “It seemed like a good strategy at the time.”

  “Well, you’ll have to unstrategize.” A giant rolling of eyes followed Brooke’s words lest the impact get lost in the transmission.

  “I’m not interested in Dakota.”

  “Ember,” Brooke said again, leaning closer to the screen. Her friend always flared her nostrils like a dragon when she was about to break down a lecture. “Would you like the man if you just met him? At church or work or something?”

  She didn’t want to admit it, but . . . “I suppose I’d be intrigued.”

  Brooke sighed. “Finally, some honesty.”

  “I’m not trying to be deceptive. Just avoiding a repeat.”

  “You think Dakota’s going to be homecoming king again?”

  “Hardly.”

  “Then give him an opportunity to redeem himself.”

  She thought of the sign hanging on the cottage door about second chances. “If I do, it will be the last one.” Two was more than enough.

  Brooke dug into her salad and took another bite. “So you’re going to tell him that Noah is a kid?”

  “Not yet.”

  “There’s no one quite like you, Ember.”

  She smiled. “I’m taking that as a compliment.”

  “That’s how it was intended.”

  Her phone buzzed from the alarm, and she turned it off. “I have to go dissert for a few more hours.”

  Brooke rolled her eyes again. “Dissert is not a word.”

  “It most certainly is.”

  “Right—”

  “Look it up. And give those children of yours a hug from me.”

  She tossed her foam to-go container in a trash can and crossed back over Independence Avenue, weaving around tourists who nibbled on ice cream sandwiches and half-baked pizza slices from carts along the National Mall.

  She and Alex had spent the past twenty years hiding in plain sight, the bond of their secrets gluing them together. Tracy knew their story—Alex had told her before they married—and the Kiehl family knew at least part of it.

  Someday soon she would entrust Brooke with the entire version.

  You’re not that girl.

  That’s what Brooke liked to tell her, about the insecure fifteen-year-old who’d stepped into her high school in 2000, shaking inside and out. The wounds were much deeper than a homecoming night prank. They’d started the day she was born.

  Even though she’d promised herself to wait until after she completed her dissertation to search again for Elsie, she’d spent the weekend reading everything she could find about the Aryan Council, every interview from those who escaped, the FBI public files, the court records when Lukas was convicted. But they were all things she’d read before. The interviewees talked about Joseph Heywood and some talked about her mother, but no one mentioned their daughter, Sarah, or their son and certainly not a baby girl.

  This time the archives and their detailed records didn’t hold the truth.

  So strange, this feeling of being erased. Her history gone except what she and Alex remembered together. Sometimes, she’d learned over the years, she had to be okay with the not knowing. Only a miracle would help her find a baby who’d never even been certified at birth.

  Inside the museum, one of the few remaining Auschwitz survivors was sharing her story with a long line of students waiting to meet her. Words did matter, Ember thought, especially the stories. Stories could change the minds of their youth.

  While she might never be able to find out what happened to Elsie, Mrs. Kiehl needed to know where her mom had gone. If the information was available, Ember would find it. To reunite a daughter with her mother by finding the truth.

  Rebekah May was waiting when Ember returned to her office, sitting in Ember’s chair, a cell phone in her hands.r />
  Ember sighed as she dropped herself into the chair reserved for her officemate. “Another letter?”

  The woman rotated her screen.

  A picture of Ember was on it. Taken through the window of her condo, hovering over a giant bowl of ice cream at the kitchen counter, Noah with his golden spoon beside her.

  Ember shook her head, her voice trembling when she spoke again. “He knows where I live.”

  “I’m afraid so.” The woman lowered the phone. “Is that your son?”

  “No, he lives across the hall with his dad.”

  “I need to call his father.”

  Ember gave her the phone number. What were they going to tell Noah? Routines like their daily ice cream date steadied him. Steadied both of them.

  “Where was this postmarked?” she asked.

  “Boise. He or she must have someone here in Washington, helping them.”

  Ember tapped her heels on the carpet. “How did he find my address?”

  “He probably hired someone to tail you home.” Rebekah nodded toward Ember’s laptop. “But usually these kinds of people are trolling social media accounts instead of mailing letters.”

  “I avoid social media to the best of my ability,” she said. “The only people I friend are those I know in real life.”

  “A wise choice.” Rebekah clicked on her cell phone again. To a scan of the envelope, postmarked from Idaho, and a brief diatribe on lined paper.

  Ember’s heart sank when she looked down.

  The envelope was addressed to Ember Ellis at the Holocaust Memorial Museum.

  But the letter was addressed to Sarah.

  29

  HANNA

  Hanna returned to the kitchen at dusk, her face streaked from the anger expunged with her tears. Kolman was still in his uniform, eating potato pancakes straight from their frying pan.

  “Where’s the girl?” she asked.

  “Playing in the attic.”

  “How am I supposed to work at the museum and care for a child?”

  “Restoring our Reich is the most important work we can do,” he said. “We’re raising the next generation for our country.”

  “You have to take her back,” Hanna said. “To her family.”

  “There is no taking her back. We’ve already adopted her.”

  Was this what Kolman had planned all along? If she didn’t conceive, he would begin bringing her Kinder? Four of them, according to the woman at the zoo, to solidify his position with the SS.

  Hanna shook her head. “You can’t adopt a child without my permission.”

  He stabbed a pancake with his fork and folded it. “Are you expecting a baby?”

  “Not that I’m aware of.”

  “Himmler is requiring his officers who don’t have children to adopt.”

  “But where are her parents?”

  “She lost them both in a raid,” he said sadly.

  Hanna collapsed into a chair. No child should be without parents, but another woman would make a much better mother for Lilly. Like the SS wife at the zoo. “I’ll find her a good home.”

  He pulled an envelope from the inside of his jacket, placed it on the table. “It’s her medical certificate. I took the liberty of having a social worker sign all the adoption paperwork for you.”

  Hanna opened the envelope, hoping for more information about Lilly’s family, but the certificate listed her name as Lilly Strauss. “What was her former surname?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “The adoption papers would have it.”

  “The agency kept most of the papers, but the social worker sent these along.” He placed a manual beside the envelope. The German Mother and Her First Child.

  As if she could learn motherhood from a book.

  Then he tossed a copy of NS-Frauen-Warte on top of it, the magazine featuring a chubby blonde-haired girl in the loving arms of her mother.

  Hanna looked back up at Kolman; his lips were pressed together, as stiff as his hair. This man she’d married had told her little about his past. It was entirely possible that this girl really was a Strauss. Kolman might have neglected to mention that he had a child.

  “Where did you adopt her from?” she asked.

  “A home near Berlin.”

  Hanna left the book and magazine on the counter and climbed up to the attic. Lilly was staring at the miniature tricycle, then at the hobbyhorse beside it.

  Had she lost all of her toys during the raid?

  She studied the girl’s straw-blonde hair, a single braid that coiled across her crown, the rest pouring down her back. Pale eyes that changed between green and blue in the attic light. She was the perfect specimen of Nordic blood.

  Something tugged inside Hanna, her own memories of childhood. And she saw herself in this girl’s face, in the hours after Vater returned from the hospital alone. Eight years old, and the grief of it almost overwhelmed her.

  With her mother’s death, Hanna had been lost until Luisa arrived at the lodge. It was her cousin who’d held out a hand, offering friendship when she so desperately needed a friend. They’d spent a decade playing, working, and dreaming together until Hanna left for college.

  No matter who fathered Lilly, she also needed someone to care for her.

  “Your name is Lilly?” Hanna asked.

  “Ja,” the girl said quietly.

  “What is your surname?”

  “Strauss,” she said as if she’d known no other name.

  “How old are you, Lilly?”

  “Four.”

  “And where is your Vater?”

  “I don’t know.” The words seemed to wobble out of her mouth as if she wasn’t quite sure of them. She was so young; she might not even know if Kolman was her father.

  Lilly pointed at the tricycle before asking her own question. “What is this?”

  Hanna eyed her curiously. “You don’t know?”

  “Nein.”

  “Ein Dreirad,” Hanna said slowly. Perhaps the trauma of losing her mother made her forget some of her words.

  “Dreirad,” Lilly repeated.

  “Very good.” Hanna held out her hand. “Let’s find you a place to sleep while we sort this out.”

  A full-size hobbyhorse stood at the end of Jonny’s former bed, and Lilly climbed on it, tentative at first. Hanna pushed the girl slowly until Lilly began a steady rhythm on the wooden floor. Then she smiled as if the rockers transported her to another place, as if she’d ridden straight out of Germany, into a world where parents lived forever.

  Hanna tied an apron over her blouse and boiled dumplings for the girl, frying them in butter. Lilly engulfed the dinner of melted cheese and Spätzle as if she hadn’t eaten in days.

  With Kolman busy at the desk, Hanna sprinkled salts into the warm bath upstairs and found a white nightie in Lilly’s suitcase. Once the girl smelled like soap and chamomile, she climbed into bed. “Thank you for supper.”

  “You’re quite welcome.” Hanna eyed her from the doorway. She should probably read her a story or kiss her on the forehead or at least help her say prayers, but she couldn’t pretend like Kolman that they’d suddenly become parents. If Kolman wasn’t this girl’s father, there must be family left in Berlin. Someone would be looking for her.

  Kolman was in the great hall, transferring notes into a ledger. “You’ve taken well to her,” he said, his eyes on the book.

  She sat in the wingback chair beside him. “Was the team digging near Berlin?”

  “The caseworker brought her to me after I put in the request.”

  “You can’t collect children, Kolman. Not without my permission.”

  His eyebrows slid up. “You would have given permission?”

  She didn’t answer.

  “You collect things, Hanna. It’s what you do. Why not collect a family?”

  “Because that’s not how families are made.”

  “Who set the rules for how a family is formed?”

  Himmler did, she wanted
to say, with his mandate that SS officers needed to father at least four children.

  But family, good or bad, was blood running through one’s veins. If she and Kolman had a baby, God forbid, she would care for it. She just hadn’t signed the papers to care for a four-year-old who wasn’t hers, a girl who must have blood family someplace else.

  “Are you sure you didn’t fetch Lilly from Hanover?”

  He turned slowly, the lightning bolt on his collar pointed toward her. “What are you asking?”

  “Did you father this child?”

  He swore. “Of course not.”

  “Then we need to look for Lilly’s family. Someone must be searching for her. A sibling or grandparent or aunt . . .”

  “The social worker already looked. It’s not like the government wants to take children from their homes, Hanna, but either way, this is not about you or me or what we want. This is about caring for our own people. Building a new society.”

  She sank back into the upholstered chair, remembering the thousands who’d gathered on the rally grounds below this hill in 1934. The Cathedral of Light, the Nazis had called it, with columns of searchlights shooting upward into the night sky, as if taunting the Almighty with their power.

  Kolman had probably been there with all the party’s elite. The Nazi Party had made themselves into a family, canopied by this mission to step into the role of God and redeem what people had messed up—the purity of the human race.

  She’d go to Berlin on her own, once Kolman left again. He couldn’t argue with her if she found Lilly’s family. The Nazis wanted to create the perfect family, not pull one apart.

  She tapped her fingers against a filing cabinet. “Lilly needs things. Clothes and such.”

  “You can shop for her on Monday.”

  “But the museum—”

  “You no longer need to work there.”

  All their months together in the field, Kolman had respected—valued—her and her work, but now he saw her as something different. Like one of the fixtures, it seemed, inside his new home.

  She ripped the apron off, tossed it onto the floor. “I’m not resigning my position.”

  “Then find someone to watch her.”