When We Meet Again (16 page)

It took him forty minutes at a slow run to reach her house. He had followed the road that the prisoner transport normally took, hugging the shadows for fear of being seen. By the time he made it across the cane fields to her backyard, he was damp with sweat. He wiped his brow and took a deep breath. There were two lights on in the house: one in the main room, and one in the room he believed to be Margaret’s. He’d seen the inside of the house only once, the day Jeremiah was attacked, but he had memorized its layout.

Slowly, he crept from the shadows along the edge of the bean field, then in silence, he crossed the neat rows of crops until he was alongside the house. He found four pebbles on the ground, moved behind the old oak tree that shadowed the side yard, and aimed.

His first pebble missed its mark, but the second one he threw pinged off Margaret’s window. He held his breath, but there was no reaction. He threw again, and this time, he could see a shadow moving inside the room, but still, no one came. He wound up once more, and he threw his last pebble. It clinked off the pane, and for a second, nothing happened. Then, to Peter’s relief, the curtains rustled and Margaret appeared. She slid the window up and looked out.

“Who’s there?” she said softly into the darkness.

Peter stepped from behind the tree without saying anything. The moon was barely a sliver, but the sky was clear and full of stars, so there was a wash of pearl light softening the darkness. He knew she would see him as her eyes adjusted, and a moment later, she did.

Peter watched as her eyes widened and her beautiful rose mouth parted in a smile. But just as quickly, concern fell over her features. “What are you doing here?” she whispered. “You’ll get in trouble.”

He took a few steps closer, being careful not to make any noise for fear of triggering the attention of her parents or sister. “I had to see you,” he whispered. “Can you come out?”

She hesitated and looked over her shoulder. “Not until my parents and sister have gone to sleep. Can you wait?”

“I would wait forever to be with you,” he responded solemnly.

She smiled again, and Peter’s heart swelled. He was hers, and she was his, and that was all he needed.

“Meet me in the clearing,” he said, “the one you made for Jeremiah.”

She nodded and closed the window quietly, pulling the curtains closed against the night.

It was nearly two hours later when she finally appeared in the sugarcane field. Peter had taken one of the sheets from the clothesline stretched across the edge of Margaret’s backyard, and though it was still slightly damp, it made for the perfect ground cover. He’d picked wildflowers from along the edge of the road on his way here and used sugarcane blades to twist them into a beautiful bouquet of reds, oranges, and pinks, the colors of a Florida sunset.

He heard her footfall before she arrived, and though he knew in his heart that it was Margaret, he crouched, ready to run, just in case someone else happened upon their spot. But then she broke into the clearing, wearing her familiar faded red dress, her brown hair falling in loose waves over her tan, slender shoulders.

“Peter,” she whispered, and that was all it took to undo him.

He stood slowly and pulled her into his arms. Her body was warm, soft, strong. “You’re my home,” he murmured and buried his face in her neck. Her hair smelled like strawberries.

They kissed, gently, slowly for a long time, for tonight, there was no hurry. Peter could tell from the moon that it wasn’t quite midnight, and he knew the guards wouldn’t stir until after dawn. He couldn’t quite believe that he had hours with her, with Margaret, the woman he loved more than anything in the world. She was his hope, his salvation, his future.

“Peter,” she murmured, her lips leaving his. He felt at once like a starving man. He wanted more of her touch, the softness of her lips on his. But then she put a slender hand on the flat plane of his stomach, just above his waist, and his whole body tingled. She looked him in the eye and then slowly knelt down on the blanket, beckoning for him to follow.

“Margaret?” he whispered as he knelt beside her. He didn’t want to assume anything, didn’t want to take advantage of her in any way. He yearned for her in a way he hadn’t known was possible, but he was a gentleman.

“I’m yours,” she said, interrupting his train of thought. And in case there was any doubt, she pulled her red dress over her head in one swift movement, and Peter stared in awe at her beautiful, perfect, naked body, which seemed to glow in the silver moonlight. “I’m all yours, Peter,” she whispered.

“And I am yours.” He laid her down gently, and then he took his time running first his hands and then his lips over every inch of Margaret’s body. He wanted to know all of her. And when he finally gazed into her eyes and slid inside of her, he felt her tense around him as she cried out, and it was like heaven itself was embracing him.

When it was over, he wrapped her in his arms and pulled her against him. They stared into each other’s eyes for a long time in silence.

“That was my first time,” Margaret finally said shyly.

Peter smiled and pushed a tendril of her hair behind her ear. “Mine too.”

“I never knew love could feel like this,” Margaret murmured. “It is gentle and fierce, forgiving and demanding, and once it finds you, it lives in your heart forever.”

“A quote from Emerson?” Peter guessed.

“No. My words, this time. You make me a poet.”

Peter kissed her. “If only we could stay in this moment forever.”

“But we can’t,” Margaret said, “so let’s make the most of every second now.”

In the darkness, they made love twice more, talking and laughing and holding each other until the first rays of the violet dawn began to pierce the sky along the eastern horizon. Never before had Peter been so sad to see morning come. “I must go, Margaret,” he whispered, his heart heavy with regret.

“Just stay a moment more.” She kissed him, long and hard, and although he knew that every second after daylight put him in danger, he didn’t care. Nothing else mattered but her.

It was May 9, 1945, and the war was officially over. But for Peter, the journey had just begun.

D
o you think Peter Dahler himself could have been the artist behind the painting?” I asked my father as we headed out into the afternoon air to follow Nicola’s directions to the competing gallery where Bettina worked.

“I don’t know,” my father said. “You said there was no indication that he was an artist in anything Jeremiah or the letters said. I tend to think that someone with that kind of talent doesn’t just stumble upon it late in life. Surely he would have always been sketching.”

I nodded. I had the same feeling. “So what about Wyeth and Gaertner? Do you think the artist who painted Grandma Margaret is somehow affiliated with them? Maybe Peter Dahler was friends with one of their pupils.”

My father shrugged. “I don’t know enough about art to make an educated guess, I’m afraid. After we visit with Bettina, maybe we can look them up and see if that gives us any ideas.” He waved his iPhone in the air. “Although if both Gaertner and Wyeth were American painters, their pupils must have studied in the States, right? It makes me wonder how the painting found its way to a gallery in Munich.”

“None of it makes any sense,” I agreed.

We found the Galerie Bergen easily; it was marked by a huge white sign with purple lettering over a storefront with floor-to-ceiling windows. We headed inside, and my father asked the man who greeted us if Bettina was in. They exchanged a few words in German, and then the man strode away, returning a few minutes later with a small, slender woman in her twenties with a close-cropped dark pixie cut. She introduced herself in German as Bettina Schöffmann, and my father asked in German if she spoke English.

She glanced at me. “Only a little,” she said with a thick accent. “Not well.”

My father nodded and turned to me. “Mind if I speak to her in German and translate for you?”

“Sure, go ahead.” The decision to travel with him suddenly seemed a little less foolish.

My father asked Bettina something in seemingly fluid German, and she smiled and looked briefly at me before replying.

“She says you look just like the woman in the painting,” my father translated. “She says it’s like the painting coming to life before her eyes.”

“Please tell her thank you.”

My father translated my words and then asked Bettina something else. They went back and forth in German for a few minutes, and I was just getting antsy when I heard Bettina clearly say, “Atlanta, Georgia.” My father drew a sharp breath and looked at me before responding.

“What did she say?” I asked.

He said something else to Bettina in German, and then he turned to me. “She says that the painting arrived from a gallery in Atlanta. The Ponce Gallery.”

I blinked at him. “The Ponce? In
Atlanta
?”

He nodded. “She called the gallery to ask about it, since the instructions seemed so strange to her, but the curator there said he had received an anonymous typewritten note, along with the sealed one that was forwarded to you, asking for the painting to be restored specifically by the Galerie Schubert-Balck and sent on to you.”

I shook my head in disbelief. “So it traveled all the way across the ocean and back? And it came from the city I grew up in?”

My father nodded solemnly.

“The plot thickens,” I murmured as my father turned back to Bettina and resumed their conversation. After a few minutes, she turned to me.

“I wish you good luck,” she said slowly and formally. “I hope you—” She stopped and trailed off, then she said something to my father in German.

“She hopes we find what we’re looking for,” my father translated, and Bettina nodded.

“Thank you for your help,” I told her.

“You are welcome,” she said. “The painting, it is very beautiful. Is painted with love.”

My father and I thanked her again and left the gallery. My father’s face was scrunched in concentration, and as soon as we rounded the corner, he pulled out his iPhone and began typing.

“What are you looking for?” I asked.

“I’m looking up Ralph Gaertner. If I’m remembering right, I’m pretty sure he was from Atlanta.”

My heartbeat picked up. I kept pace with my father as he hurried along, reading rapidly as we walked back toward the river.

“What does it say?” I finally asked eagerly.

“Well, Ralph Gaertner
did
spend most of his career in Atlanta.” He turned the phone around and showed me an image of a painting. In it, a woman stood on a cliff beside a lighthouse, her hair wafting in the breeze beside her, her hand shielding her eyes as she looked out at the ocean. Over the deep blue water, the sky was purple at the edges—either sunrise or sunset, it appeared. The woman’s face was in the shadows, though you could tell she was strong and beautiful.

“That’s a Gaertner? It’s pretty. But it doesn’t really look like our painting, does it?”

“I don’t know. I can see what Nicola Schubert was saying about the similarities.”

I gave him a skeptical look. He held up his hands in mock surrender. “Look,” he said, “I’m the first one to admit that I know next to nothing about art—I had one art history class in college, and that’s about it. But you have to admit, the sky sort of looks similar to the painting you received, doesn’t it? It’s darker here, but it has the same purple shades, and the same sort of dreamy quality to it, don’t you think? It adds a bit of credence to the idea that Gaertner taught our artist.”

I took the phone from him and studied it more closely. The sky in the painting was deep and layered. The title of the painting was
East,
so I assumed the colors were supposed to be those of a sunrise from somewhere on the Atlantic coast of the United States. My father was right about the dreamy feel to the wispy, color-saturated sky.

I handed the phone back to my dad, who pocketed it. “It’s a long shot, but maybe there’s a link between Gaertner and Peter Dahler,” I said. “Want to try Franz Dahler again?”

“Sounds good to me.”

As my father and I strolled back over the river, I marveled at how the late-afternoon sun cast the sky in a deep shade of blue as it dipped lower in the sky. The rooftops of Munich seemed to glow in the honeyed light.

We buzzed Franz Dahler’s apartment, and again, there was no answer. We tried twice more before turning away. “What if he’s out of town or something?” I asked as we emerged back into the
Viktualienmarkt
. “Or what if he’s dead?”

“That’s not very optimistic.”

I could feel myself bristling. His words felt like a criticism. “If he’s Peter Dahler’s brother, he’d be in his nineties. People in their nineties die.”

“Look, don’t give up yet. If we’re meant to find him, we will. I’m a big believer that in life, things happen the way they’re supposed to.”

I couldn’t resist rolling my eyes. Since when was my father a philosopher? “Yeah, well, forgive me if I don’t share the same opinion. In my life, it’s more like if something can go wrong, it will.”

My dad was silent for a moment. “Or maybe the tide is turning, Emily. I’d like to think that’s true.”

“I’m sure you would. But it’s not that easy.”

We were quiet as we wove our way back through the bustling farmers’ market. My father consulted his iPhone again as we walked and led us down a side street to the right. “How’s your appetite? I know it’s only five thirty, but I could eat. There’s a place a block or two away that’s recommended on TripAdvisor.”

“I’m starving,” I replied. “Lead the way.” I followed him down another small lane to a restaurant on the corner with a big sign outside that said
GASTHOF MEYERHANS
. To the left of the building, there was a tree-shaded area, dotted with tables and trimmed with tiny white lights. A sign bearing a blue Löwenbräu logo announced that it was the restaurant’s
Biergarten
. The restaurant itself looked old-fashioned and charming, with window boxes overflowing with flowers, antique shutters, and a gabled arch over the front door.