Nightingale (24 page)

She did, however, stop to knock on his door—just in case he might be sleeping, but Sadie couldn't wait. She shoved it open, crashing it against the bathroom door, barreling in. “Papa!”

Esther froze. No, Linus wasn't napping. Not with Rosemary seated on the bed beside him.

And, from the looks of it, they hadn't been playing cards.

She untangled herself from his arms as Linus looked up, a murderous expression on his face. “What are you doing here?”

Sadie stopped. Turned around, her face crumpling. Esther held out her arms, and Sadie fled into them, wrapping her pudgy legs around Esther's body.

“Linus.” She smoothed her daughter's hair. “We—uh…”

Rosemary stood up, adjusted her dress—Esther noted she hadn't the excuse of a uniform to hide behind. No, Rosemary appeared right dolled up, with her red hair in victory rolls and a pretty floral green dress on that made her appear fresh and young and in love.

“I brought you zucchini bread,” Bertha said quietly from behind her.

Oh, yes. Bertha.

She turned and Bertha held out the bread. “Give me Sadie.”

They made a trade, Sadie's eyes filling. “Mama will be along soon,” she said, kissing her puffy cheek. Sadie's big, wounded eyes tracked past her to Linus as Bertha took her from the room.

Then, holding the zucchini bread as a sort of…offering? Shield? Esther turned.

The anger had washed from Linus's expression—well, most of it, at least. “Why did you bring her?”

“She's your daughter. Don't you think it's time you met her? Especially since we're supposed to be married in three days?” She let her gaze land on Rosemary when she said it. The brazen hussy she was, Rosemary didn't even blink.

Linus's jaw tightened.

“Or had you forgotten that part?”

“I'd like to. Thanks to you, my mother is forcing us—”

“Thanks to me! How about thanks to your—your…”

“I'm not the one who was seen kissing a Nazi, thank you.” Rosemary folded her arms. “He's the enemy.”

“He's a human being who, by the way, saved Linus's life, so you might want to remember that.”

Rosemary frowned, glanced at Linus, who simply stared at Esther. “It's—wait a second. You've been with that medic? The one who—”

“Yes, saved your life. He sent me your letter, Linus. Like you asked him to.”

Linus glanced at Rosemary. “I think Esther and I have to talk. Alone, Rosie.”

“Linus—what does she mean he saved your life?”

“Please?”

She tightened her jaw but traced her eyes over Esther as she brushed past her.

Esther stared at the zucchini bread. The cinnamon scent drifted out of the oily spots in the brown packaging. She set it on the bedside table and sat on the opposite bed.

Her hands shook as she pressed them together. “Yes, I got your letter. Which is why this entire thing has baffled me.” She got up, went to fill a glass of water for him. “You don't want to marry me, do you, Linus?”

He closed his eyes.

“Why are we trying to resurrect something we never had? We made a mistake. We were stupid and we didn't think.” She returned, sat across from him. Set the glass next to the zucchini bread.

“Because we have to. Because we…” He reached for the glass, drank the water. “Because it's the right thing to do.”

She stared at her hands. “What if I took Sadie and left? Moved away.”

“With him?”

She glanced up, met his eyes, surprised by the anger in them, his voice. “No. Maybe. What does it matter? He saved your life, Linus. He
could have left you there to die. And he kept his promise—he mailed your letter.”

“That was swell of him, especially since he also tried to see my girl.”

She stared at him. “You asked him to. You wanted all memory of me dead—gone! You told me you wanted to put that night in a box and bury it. That seemed like a coffin to me. He didn't steal anything from you.”

“Don't you want that night gone?”

She got up, walked to the window, where the light splashed onto the grounds. “I do. I want it gone. But I love Sadie, so if I had to live through this again to get her, I would. She's worth this for me.”

“Then you should know that if you leave, my father will track you down and bring you back.”

She stiffened. “He hates me.”

“But Sadie is his grandchild. He's not going to let her go. For my mother's sake, if nothing else.”

“But they threw me out. Your mother hates me.” She watched as a couple of teenagers rode their bicycles through the circle of lights.

“That's when they thought Sadie wasn't mine. It's different now. She knows Sadie's my daughter. And don't think my father won't find you—he's done it before.”

She took a breath, looked at him. He picked up the zucchini bread. Smelled it. “I love the smell of this bread. Bertha sent me a couple packages overseas. It's amazing how long zucchini bread lasts.”

“That's because Bertha is your mother. Of course she sends you bread.”
And cherishes your daughter.

He drew in a long breath. “When I was nine years old, my mother caught my father philandering, again. She told him that she wasn't going to take another of his children under her roof. It wasn't hard for me to
figure out who my real mother was. A real mother would do anything for her child. Including stay behind and take care of him, pretending he belonged to someone else.”

He set the package on the table. “I figure he got her pregnant when she worked for his family. Probably he and his father had a similar conversation. Only, he possessed the courage I don't. He married the woman he loved.”

“I don't think a man loves a woman when he cheats on her.”

Linus's face tightened. “Rosemary was the girl I was supposed to marry. Until…” He shrugged.

“You are
not
blaming this on me, are you?”

“You are very pretty.”

“You make me sick. You were the one that showed up in that borrowed car, took me out. I remember at least three drinks that you ordered. And I also remember saying no. A couple times.”

His considered her a long moment. Then his expression dissolved. “I'm sorry, Esther.” He looked up at her again, met her eyes, his dark eyes a texture she didn't recognize. But, finally. “I'm sorry. It
was
my fault. I showed up that night with one thing on my mind. And it wasn't about your honor.”

She nodded but turned away before he might see how those words tunneled deep, loosened a tightness inside her. “And now?”

“And now we get married.”

“And Rosemary?”

His silence made her look at him, and she saw it in his eyes. “You—you don't plan to leave her, do you?”

He swallowed, and for a moment she saw in his eyes herself, the woman who had longed for someone she couldn't—shouldn't have.

“I love her, Esther.”

“Then tell your father the truth. Tell him you don't want Sadie. Tell him to leave me alone. I'll go away; you never have to see me again.”

“No. Sadie's a Hahn. She stays.”

“That's your father talking. But,”—she folded her arms against the shaking deep inside—“what should I expect, you're just like him.”

His eyes widened, and for a moment she thought he might throw something, again. She sucked in a breath, willing herself to press him to the truth.

When she did, it took her breath away.

“I could marry Rosemary. And keep Sadie.”

His words dug the strength from her. She hated that they made her reach out, balance herself against the marble trim. “And what? I'd become your housekeeper?”

His silence made her hate him.

“I won't be your prisoner.”

“I think, either way, you already are.” He opened his zucchini bread, smelled it again.

She took the water left in his glass, considered it for a moment, then in a move she never expected, she threw it in his face. “See you at the altar.”

Esther's words on paper haunted Peter the most. The private places she'd hint at in her letters, the nuances of hope in a future he couldn't quite surrender.

Could you tell me, please, how he died?

Linus was a
good man who loved his town and his family. I will miss him.

I lived, like you, on a farm in Iowa, although I regret that my family didn't share the ties of yours. We too lived on dust and the taste of despair for too many dry years, but my father kept us in bacon and bread. It seemed, however, the dust parched him of any affection.

Yes, I had a sister, Hedy. We would lie in bed at night, the one we shared in the sweltering attic of our home, and roll our fingers over my father's discarded globe. We'd land on such countries as Italy or France or even Peru and conjure stories of places we longed to visit. Hedy and I traveled the world, around and back, before she left home at age seventeen. She died when
I was ten years old.

I love being a nurse. I thought it would unlock the world for me. Instead, it has been my salvation these past three years, in a prison I alone created. I hope, someday, to learn more, even to pursue a medical degree, become a surgeon. But sometimes that dream feels like trying to catch a star, hold it in my pocket.

The day I received your first letter, we had a man who jumped from the roof of the hospital. He climbed to the edge and I followed him, in an attempt to lure him from danger. As I did, the night swept through me, and for a moment, I feared I too would jump. It passed, thank the Lord, it passed.

Do I believe in love? I fear how much I long for it. It makes me taste my own hunger, and I can't help but despise it. But yes, I do. I do.

“God doesn't love a woman like me.”

“God loves you more than you can imagine.” He spoke the words aloud, into the darkness, bringing back the shape of her fingers in his, the texture of hope in her eyes.

He pressed his hand to his chest, counting the healing bumps of his ribs, remembering her tones as she'd saved his life in the trauma room. He understood wanting to save lives. That impulse, perhaps, they shared. And knowing he had someone who cherished his words, his life, his dreams—someone he could write to in the hollow of the night, or after work stripped him down to exhaustion—it eased the
loneliness inside. Perhaps he'd just needed someone to look into his life and tell him to hold on.

And maybe he didn't love her, either, but for the first time since he'd stepped aboard that train in Dresden, he recognized part of the man he'd left behind. The man he wanted to be.

The man he hoped to go home to.

He sat up, swung his legs over his cot. Stared at Arne's empty bed.

“I'm sorry, he didn't make it,” Dr. Sullivan had said as he'd emerged from the surgical theater. Arne's blood smearing his white surgical shirt dredged up too many demons.

Peter would have to write to Arne's parents. And his kid sister, what was her name? Eva?

He got up, tiptoed out of the tent. Let the night scour the grief from him. He edged along the shadows, listening to the gurgle of the Baraboo River, the sway of the night through the reeds. Crickets buzzed against the pane of darkness.

He squatted against the corner of the tent, running his hand through his hair, now longer than he'd ever let it grow.

Faithfulness had fatigued him, stripped him, turned him brittle.

And what if, after everything, he returned home to nothing?

And you'll die here, just like your father. I wonder if he cried out when they gassed him….

Fritz's taunt wore through him. Peter pressed the heels of his hands into his eyes.
God, please.

He'd made a deal. His conscription, his service for his father's freedom. Signed his name. Handed over his freedom to the SS.

“Why, Father?”
Even now he could hear his voice from the past, so much anger coiled tight even as he'd thrown into his duffel the debris of
his decision—his picture of his parents, taken at the Iowa County Fair in 1932. His medical graduation ring and, of course, his Bible. He'd crammed it all into the leather duffel bag that he'd dragged to America and back then sat on his narrow bed in the room that overlooked the red-tiled roof all the way to the Frauenkirche, the sun winking off the cathedral like some sort of ethereal fare-thee-well. He'd certainly departed from the life he'd spent the last three years scrabbling for. “We should have left, gone back to America. Why didn't we do that?”

“God called us back to Germany for a reason, Peter. Who knows but it was for this very season that we are here—”

“To do what?” His voice exploded out of him. His father stood in the doorway, his hands in his pockets, and he didn't even have the decency to flinch. Just stared at his son.