Secrets She Kept (14 page)

“No. Obviously not.”

“I did not ask for this party or this dress or
 
—”

He pressed his fingers to my lips. “They will hear you.” He stepped nearer, guiding me deeper into the shadows of the building. “Your father is planning for you
 
—for your future.”

“My future is not in his house. It’s not in his hands.”

“And which of tonight’s officers wins that pleasure
 
—the dashing SS or the grand old Standartenführer?” I heard the glint of accusation, the shred of uncertainty in his voice. But he should have known better, should have known
me
better.

“How can you ask that?”

“I’ve been away a long time, Lieselotte. More has changed than I realized.”

Was he being sarcastic, or sincere? “You? Have you changed so much?”

“We all change. . . . You’ve only to look in the mirror to know.” His eyes left mine and his fingertips caressed my cheek and stroked my neck.

I stepped back, out of his reach. What did he mean? Innuendoes and liberties were not what I’d envisioned, not what I’d dreamed of our first meeting. It should have been simple and wonderful and warm.
He
should have been simple and wonderful
 
—and warm. But he’d turned suddenly old and superior. He stepped toward me, but I stepped back again, and again. “Welcome home, Lukas.” There was no welcome in my voice as I rounded the corner of the hall.

“Lieselotte
 
—”

I could take no more from him or anyone else, and though I bit my cheek, I barely held back the tears. I heard Lukas come after me, but the front door opened then and he stepped into the shadows as light spilled across the hall’s entrance and into the street. The next couple left the party, and two came behind them. They would all go soon.

Vater would have my head on a platter if I did not thank them for coming, was not there to accept their good wishes. How could I do that with a broken smile, with smeared eyes? I slipped through the dark to the kitchen door, wiped beneath my eyes with the hem of my slip, and smoothed my hair. I straightened the shoulder straps of my dress and then my spine, despite my aching arches, and lifted the latch.

No, I was not a child. And this new Lukas in Abwehr uniform was not my dream.

HANNAH STERLING

JANUARY 1973

Anxious for Grandfather’s failing health, confused that Frau Winkler seemed so frightened of him, frustrated that Grandfather thought he needed to spy on me, and pensive because I was no closer to understanding my mother, it took hours before I finally closed my eyes.

When I opened them, sunshine flooded my room, all the more blinding because it sparkled off a dusting of late-night snow. I stretched and rolled over, realizing I’d overslept by two hours and surprised that no sound in the house below had caused me to stir earlier. Still, it felt a relief to have slept beyond my questions.
Maybe there’s a simple explanation for everything. Maybe we all need to calm down a little.
I checked the bedside clock again and reality dawned.
Carl will be here in thirty minutes!

By the time I’d raced through my hair and makeup and thrown on
the warmest skirt and sweater I owned, I had five minutes to eat. But every sign of breakfast in the kitchen had been cleared away. The stove sat cold, the room unlit. There weren’t even dishes in the sink.

I set the coffee on the burner. The pot was cold, as though it had never even been heated.
That’s so unlike her.
. . . I took the stairs to the second floor, stopping outside Grandfather’s room, wondering if Frau Winkler was there, if all was well. Muffled voices came from beyond the door. I recognized one as Dr. Peterson.
He’s here early.
A small worry niggled at the back of my mind, one I didn’t want to entertain.

A knock came from below.
Carl
 
—right on time.
But I couldn’t go
 
—not yet. I took the stairs two at a time to the third floor. Frau Winkler’s bedroom door stood ajar, the bed unmade. The closet and bureau drawers stood open and empty, as though she’d left in a great hurry. The worry in the back of my mind formed a knot in my neck.

By the time I reached the stairs, the knock from below came again. I couldn’t leave Carl standing in the cold. I grabbed my coat and purse and camera from my room and hurried down, pausing on the second floor. Grandfather’s door was still closed, the voices still audible.

The knock came again, more insistent. I raced down the stairs and through the kitchen. When I yanked open the door, it jarred the overhang and dumped snow on Carl’s head. I laughed despite myself. “You look like a snowman!”

“I’m a frozen man, to be certain!” He brushed the snow shower from his head and shoulders. “Where is Frau Winkler? She usually greets me with a sweet and a cup of coffee
 
—not an avalanche.”

“I wish I knew. I overslept and when I came down . . . this is all I found. She’s gone.”

“Gone to market?”

“No,
gone
gone. Her room’s empty
 
—bag and baggage.”

“Did she tell you where she was going? When she’d be back?”

“No. I’m sure she wasn’t planning on leaving. Last night she said . . .”

“She said?”

“That she needed this job. She was worried about
 
—” But I wasn’t
certain what.
Grandfather? Talking about the past, about my mother? What could that have to do with leaving?
“Wait here. I need to see my grandfather.”

“No coffee, then.” He pouted.

“Yes, there is
 
—help yourself. It’s on the stove. But let’s go somewhere to eat. I’m starving and there’s no breakfast here. I won’t be but a couple of minutes. I just want to make sure Frau Winkler’s okay, and that Grandfather’s okay.” I left Carl standing on the doormat and, before I could lose my nerve or rationalize what I was doing, knocked on Grandfather’s door. The voices stopped immediately. A moment passed. I knocked again.

“Eintreten.”
Grandfather was fully dressed and shaved, sitting in an armchair by his broad picture window. Dr. Peterson sat opposite him, writing in a notebook.

“Good morning, Hannah.” Grandfather’s voice came weaker than it had last night. Dr. Peterson glared at me as if I were evil incarnate. “You slept well.”

“
Ja,
in fact I overslept, Grossvater.” I tried to make light, wasn’t quite sure how to go about asking all I wanted. “I’m wondering where Frau Winkler is, if you’ve seen her this morning.”

Dr. Peterson answered for Grandfather. “Frau Winkler’s been dismissed
 
—finally.”

“Not dismissed,” Grandfather corrected. “She simply had family matters to attend to
 
—an older brother’s illness. She does not know when she will be able to return.”

He’s lying.
“I see. Why did you say she’s been dismissed, Dr. Peterson?”

He shifted his feet. There was no mistaking the warning glare Grandfather sent his way. “I beg your pardon, Fräulein Sterling. I spoke out of turn. It has been my wish that your Grossvater employ a more responsible cook and housekeeper. I have not been pleased with her thoughtless care for my patient, let alone my friend. It was a rash thing to say. Please forgive me.”

“Yes, of course.” But I didn’t believe him. “I’d planned to go touring again today, Grandfather, but I’d be glad to stay and prepare something for you to eat. Have you had breakfast or anything at all?”

“
Nein
, Hannah. Do not change your plans, my dear. Go and see our fair Berlin.”

“You will need to hire someone right away, Wolfgang. You cannot manage without help here.”

“We shall see, we shall see.” Grandfather seemed suddenly weary beyond his years and illness.

“Let me at least cut you a sandwich before I go,” I insisted. “And I’ll bring some coffee.”

“A sandwich!” Dr. Peterson scoffed.

“Well then
 
—”

“A sandwich will be fine, and most welcome. And then I insist that you go. Perhaps this evening we can have something more.”

“I’ll be right back. It won’t take a minute.” I closed the door behind me, uncertain what had just happened. I’d barely opened the door again, to ask Grandfather which meat he preferred for his sandwich
 
—pork or beef
 
—when I heard Dr. Peterson.

“You should have told her it was her fault your housekeeper was sent away
 
—all this prying and digging up a past best forgotten. You must not shield her from the truth; she’s persistent and will simply cause trouble. Send her home now, Wolfgang, before it is too late.”

“Peterson, Peterson,” Grandfather sounded exhausted, but pleased at the same time. “You must not fret so. Nothing need change between us
 
—that is surely your greatest concern. But I will not send her away
 
—not now. It pleases me to have her here. I have been too long alone. What she is able to learn cannot hurt us. Yet, if we should decide to confide in her
 
—”

“
Nein!
Wolfgang, you promised!”

“I only say if we change our minds, it will be for good reason. She will do what is needed. She is my granddaughter after all.”

I found Carl waiting patiently by the kitchen door. “Ready?”

“Not yet.” I was still trying to absorb what I’d heard, to understand what Grandfather meant.

“What’s wrong?”

“I don’t know.” I pulled Frau Winkler’s worn apron from the hook behind the door. “I just need to make Grandfather a sandwich before we go, and take him some coffee.”

“Turned chief cook and bottle washer, have we?” One brown eye winked.

I half smiled, pleased by his flirtation while still confused by what had transpired upstairs. “I don’t know.”

Carl set his cap on the table and turned serious. “How can I help?”

“Pour the coffee.” I pulled the breadboard to the counter and cut two sandwiches, one for Grandfather and one for Dr. Peterson. It was a gesture of goodwill, and perhaps, after all, the doctor was hungry too.
He must have been here since early this morning. Is Grandfather worse? What did he mean that it’s my fault Frau Winkler was sent away? Because of last night? Because of what she told me about Mama? But she knew nothing. Why did Grandfather make up that tale about her brother being ill if it isn’t true?
My head ached and it was barely ten thirty. I couldn’t wait to get out the door and talk with Carl
 
—the only normal person I’d met since coming to Berlin.

It felt so good to sit across from Carl in a warm café, to have someone wait on me without Grandfather and Dr. Peterson or Herr Eberhardt sitting across the table, frowning in stony silence or critical observation, to eat food without complex emotions or guilt attached to it. When the young waiter smiled at me, I was reminded that Frau Winkler had never really smiled, reminded of how very much she’d been on edge. “Such a house of gloom and tension!”

“What did you expect?” Carl sipped coffee so dark it looked like North Carolina tar.

“I expected life here to be pretty much like life at home, only everybody’d speak German. That maybe I’d learn some German, that I’d get to know my grandfather, that I’d learn something about my mother.
He wanted me to come, after all. He invited me, even paid for me to come. But it’s as if he doesn’t want to acknowledge that my mother lived, as if there was something vile about her and her associations that he refuses to speak of. And there’s something else, something I haven’t told you.”

Carl’s forehead creased.

I pulled the envelopes from Mama’s safe deposit box from my purse and pushed them across the table to him. “These are all I have. These are the only clues Mama left me.”

“Envelopes?”

“German envelopes. Look at the date stamps. It looks like a series of letters sent over a period of time . . . and then they just stopped. I can’t read the address in each case, but they’re mostly in the same handwriting. The one that doesn’t fit is the one from Herr Eberhardt’s law firm, though I think that might have been from a time before he worked there.”

Carl squinted at the address. “I don’t recognize this street name. That is not surprising.”

“Why? I thought as a driver you’d know every street in Berlin.”

“Nein
 
—not from this long ago. Names of streets and entire sections have changed . . . conquerors claim the privilege of renaming their territories.”

I searched his face to see if he was teasing me, but he wasn’t. I stuffed the envelopes back into my purse and sighed. “None of it adds up
 
—not the envelopes, not Frau Winkler, not Grandfather. Frau Winkler said she didn’t know Mama personally, but that she seemed a nice girl. She said she was engaged, but didn’t know who to. I need to know who that was.”

“It matters?”

I set my cup carefully in its saucer, toying with the handle. “Yes, it matters.”

“That had to be before she married her American soldier.”

I needed to confide in someone. I sighed again, shaking my head, so uncertain. “That American soldier, the one I loved and called Daddy, the one who loved me and raised me from the time I was a baby, was not my
father.” I looked up, sure I’d shocked him. “I want to know who my real father was. If he was this man she was engaged to, then
 
—”

“Then perhaps I can help you.”

“You?”

Carl stared into his coffee cup.

“You can help me? Carl?”

He sat back. “There are stories and secrets from the war. Everyone has them. Someone knows them. We must find that someone.”

“But how? What do you mean?”

He set down his fork. “See that old woman over there?” He nodded toward a white-haired woman, head bent, arthritic fingers awkwardly clutching a soup spoon. She sat across from her middle-aged daughter
 
—the resemblance between the two strong. “She has a story from the war, surely. That balding man in the corner, the one with the newspaper and the thin mustache?”

I nodded.

“He has a story. Every person in this room
 
—every older person you see
 
—has a story they’ve probably kept hidden since the war. What they did, what they didn’t do, what they failed or refused to do. Who their actions impacted, who lived because of something they did, who they allowed to die because of what they did not do . . . What happened to them because of what others failed to do, what happened to their families . . . who they shielded . . . who they betrayed.”

I held my breath.

“Just because you see them sitting here, eating soup, sipping coffee, buttering bread, it doesn’t mean they have changed inside
 
—in their thinking. Their outward circumstances have certainly changed since then, yes. But what they think about life, how they viewed the Reich and Hitler’s accomplishments or even his executions . . . I would be very surprised if much of that has changed in their minds.”

“But Germany lost the war. They’ve repented what they did to the Jews, the Poles, everybody. I see museums in progress everywhere here to recount the horrors, to remember so history’s not repeated. I’ve read
that they bus school children to museums to drill in the horrors so it never happens again. I know that doesn’t erase Nazi cruelty, doesn’t make up for it, but
 
—”

“Just because we lost the war and were forced to stop doing what we did, just because the status quo openly acknowledges the immorality of inane cruelty, doesn’t mean each person’s thinking reformed. The younger generation, maybe they see things differently. But the ones who lived through that time, who were already adults, making decisions . . .” Carl shook his head.

“But how could they
 
—”

“They saw their Führer as a savior for years. They were willing to go along for their own sakes. Anti-Semitism was rife
 
—we embraced those prejudices before Hitler ever came to power. He simply ran with them. Some were seduced, and some were afraid, it is true, but most supported the Third Reich. They saw it, lived it
 
—it was their life, and they saw themselves stepping up, a cut above their ‘lesser’ neighbors.
Nein
, what most Germans believed didn’t go away because we lost the war.”