When We Meet Again (30 page)

“But what if the road we choose is a mistake?” I asked softly. I was no longer talking about his decision to leave Germany or my grandfather’s life, and from the look of sympathy that crossed Werner Vogt’s face, I had the feeling he knew it.

“Emily,” he said slowly, “I would tell you that the things we do in life can be mistakes, but the road we find ourselves on never is. The road brought you here.” He thought for a moment and then his face lit up. “I remember something Dahler used to say. A quote from one of the books he was reading, I believe. I might get the words slightly wrong, but it went something like this: ‘Our greatest accomplishment is not in never failing, but in getting up each time we fail.’ I’m certain I’ve misquoted it, but you get the idea. And if he were standing here with you today, Emily, I think he’d tell you the same thing. In life, we all fail, all the time. But the victory is in getting up and continuing on.”

I could feel tears in my eyes as Werner got up to walk me to the door, telling me that he needed to rest for a while but that I could write anytime if I had more questions for him.

“Your grandfather would be proud of you,” he said, placing a hand on my cheek in the hallway.

I sniffled. “You don’t even know me. I’ve done a lot of things that weren’t so great.”

“But you’re a kind person. You don’t make it to ninety-five years of age without being able to tell whether people are fundamentally good or not. So you’ve made some mistakes, kid. We all have. But don’t let those mistakes ruin your life. It’s not worth it.”

Werner’s words were still ringing in my head long after I had gotten back on the Turnpike.
The road not taken.
I had spent so much of my life wondering what would have happened if I’d kept Catherine. What if I’d told Nick nineteen years ago? What if my father hadn’t left? What if my mother hadn’t died?

Yes, things would be different. But I wouldn’t be me.
One cannot look back,
Werner had said.
Only forward.
And so I decided that I would do just that. But first, I had to put the past to rest.

That night, I sat down at my computer and began to draft the most important thing I’d ever written: a letter to Nick explaining everything once and for all. It wasn’t enough to tell him about Catherine and the shame I’d felt from leaving. I also had to tell him the rest.

I’ve never stopped loving you. Not for one second. Life is too short not to be honest, Nick, and I need you to know that. Sometimes, all we have is now. I don’t ever want to regret not telling you exactly how I feel. I know you’re married, and maybe that’s why I feel comfortable in telling you this. I know nothing can or will ever happen between us again, and I know that’s entirely my fault, but I just wanted you to know. I wish you the very best in life, Nick, because there’s no one who deserves it more.

It was just past midnight by the time I drove to the post office, in my slippers and pajamas, to mail the letter to Nick’s office. If I didn’t do it tonight, I might talk myself out of it in the morning, and I didn’t want to change my mind. Letting it go, hearing the fluttering sound as I dropped it into the mailbox, I felt like a weight had been lifted.
You can’t look back. Only forward.

I spent the next week searching in vain for more information about Peter Dahler, but I continued to come up empty. He had seemingly vanished off the face of the earth. I tried calling galleries all around the Southeast, tracking down people Gaertner had mentioned in interviews and searching the Internet endlessly for back issues of magazines and newspapers that had profiled Gaertner and other German artists, but the man who was likely my grandfather was nowhere to be found, and I was running out of options.

I had dinner with my dad a few days after my meeting with Vogt. Things were still awkward between us, and it seemed that we’d slid backward a bit since our time together in Savannah. Our conversation felt stilted, and I couldn’t quite seem to adequately express my concern over his health. “I’m fine,” he said before abruptly changing the subject each time I questioned how he was feeling or whether he would be having any chemo or radiation treatments soon. “The last thing you need to be doing is worrying about me.”

But I was worried, and as we danced around other topics—politely inquiring how work was going and commenting on memories of our trip to Germany—it felt like the elephant in the room just as much as our long estrangement did. The only moment I felt like we really connected was when he asked me if I’d heard from Nick.

“As a matter of fact, I did,” I said, quickly recapping the phone call I’d received from him.

My father smiled. “He sounds like a good man, Emily.”

I looked away so that he couldn’t see the tears in my eyes. “He is,” I said softly, and the conversation had ended there.

That night, after my father and I parted ways, I sat in my kitchen and stared at the mysterious painting, trying to read the expression in my young grandmother’s eyes. What was she thinking? What would she tell me if she were here?

A few days later, I finally got together with Myra for drinks, and immediately she could tell that something was going on.

“You’re like a completely different person. You just seem . . . balanced, in a way I’ve never seen you,” she said, staring at me across the table at the Bösendorfer Lounge downtown. Her eyes grew wide as I recounted everything that had happened since we’d last talked, ending with my letter to Nick and my decision to try to forgive my father. “But I can’t believe you’ve never told me about the guy in Atlanta before!”

“I thought you’d judge me.”

“Then you don’t know me at all, sweetie.” She reached across the table and squeezed my hand. “You went through something very difficult when you were a kid, and now you’re taking control of the situation. I’m proud of you.”

That Wednesday, I got a phone call out of the blue early in the evening as I was sitting out on my front porch, sipping a glass of wine. Myra was supposed to meet me in an hour for dinner at Maxine’s, a little neighborhood bistro just down the street, and I was taking advantage of the beautiful spring weather and trying to clear my head.

“Emily Emerson?” the gravelly voice on the other end asked immediately when I answered my cell.

“Speaking.” I sat up a little straighter in my chair. The caller had an accent that sounded German.

“I understand you have been inquiring about Ralph Gaertner’s personal life.”

I resisted the urge to explain myself and instead asked, “Who is this, please?”

There was silence on the other end of the line for a moment. “My name is Arno Fromm.”

It sounded vaguely familiar, and I racked my brain for a second before settling on a possible answer. I was pretty sure I’d read his name sometime in the last week in one of the articles about German artists. “You’re a painter too,” I said firmly, though it was just a guess.

“Yes, I am,” he said after a pause. “But what is your interest in Ralph Gaertner? I got a call from Bette Handler in Savannah. I understand that you’re a journalist. My friend has been dead for several months now, and I don’t want anyone poking around and stirring things up.”

My reporter’s instinct should have told me to play along a little longer, to trade information for information. But I wasn’t thinking like a reporter. I was thinking like a granddaughter. “I think Ralph Gaertner knew my grandfather,” I said. “I’m trying to track him down.”

“Your grandfather? Who is your grandfather?” Fromm’s voice had become even more suspicious.

“His name was Peter Dahler.”

The sharp intake of breath on the other end of the line told me I’d struck a nerve.

“Do you know him?” I asked when Fromm didn’t say anything. When there was still no reply, I added, “My grandmother was a woman named Margaret—Margaret Mae Evans at the time—who lived near a prisoner of war camp in Florida during World War II.”

“No, that is impossible,” Fromm said immediately. “Margaret died many years ago, in childbirth. So did her child.”

“You knew her?” I asked, surprised. When he didn’t say anything, I said into the suspicious silence, “She didn’t die in childbirth, Mr. Fromm. She died earlier this year. Her son—my father—lived, and he desperately wants to find out what happened to his own father, as do I.”

“This can’t be true,” Fromm said, but his voice sounded suddenly hollow.

“I swear it is.”

“No,” he said quietly before clearing his throat and adding, “If you’re truly Margaret’s granddaughter, I must see you in person to know if you’re telling the truth.”

“How did you know my grandmother?” I asked. “Were you there in Belle Creek too?”

He hesitated. “Yes.”

My heart skipped. I was getting closer to an answer. I could feel it.

“If you want to speak with me,” Fromm said after a pause, “you’ll need to come to Atlanta.”

Atlanta.
There it was again. The magnet pulling me back. “When?” I asked.

“As soon as possible.”

“You think this Fromm fellow could be telling the truth?” my father asked the next morning when I called him from the airport in Atlanta. I’d taken the first flight I could get, and I hadn’t invited my father along because I was still concerned about pushing him too hard if he was sick. Still, I thought he deserved to know about the potential lead.

“I looked him up last night. It would make sense that he would have known Gaertner. He’s also a painter who hails from Germany, and if what he’s saying is true, he was a POW in Belle Creek during World War II also.”

“Which makes me feel even more strongly that Ralph Gaertner was imprisoned there as well,” my father said. “It makes sense, right?”

“Maybe. But doesn’t it seem way too coincidental that somehow, two talented artists were locked up together? Fromm and Gaertner? Wouldn’t someone—like Werner Vogt, for example—have remembered that there was some sort of contingent of incredibly skilled painters in a single tiny POW camp?”

“Perhaps they weren’t painting in Belle Creek,” my father pointed out. “Maybe they became friends there and picked up painting together later. Besides, it was only Gaertner who became really successful. Maybe he was just a great teacher and helped Fromm along. If you think of it that way, it actually makes sense.”

“Maybe Fromm will have some answers.”

“Why do you think he wanted to see you in person?”

“I don’t think he believed me about Grandma Margaret. I think he wanted to see for himself whether or not I look like her.”

“He must have known her fairly well, then.”

I hesitated. “Listen, maybe this is crazy, but do you think there’s any possibility Arno Fromm
is
Peter Dahler?”

“What?”

“I mean, what if he changed his name when he moved to the United States? If he knew Gaertner and knew Grandma Margaret . . . Isn’t it possible?”

My father was silent for a minute. “Perhaps. But it seems sort of unlikely, doesn’t it? After all, if we’re to believe that someone who knew my father sent you the painting, then it stands to reason my father knows you’re out there, right? And Arno Fromm sounded like he’d never heard of you.”

“Oh. I guess you’re right.” My heart sank and I nodded, though I knew he couldn’t see me. I sighed and changed the subject. “How are you feeling, anyhow? Have you seen your doctor this week?”

“Yes, Emily, and there’s no reason for you to worry. I’m feeling fine. But thank you for your concern.”

“You don’t have to thank me. You’re my father.”

He cleared his throat. “I’m glad you called, Emily. I really am. I’ve failed you so many times. I don’t deserve this chance to know you now, but I’m so glad you’re giving it to me.”

I was silent for a moment. Maybe I wasn’t doing the right thing. Maybe my father belonged in the past. But I knew what it felt like to screw up and to feel that you’d lost your chance with someone you really cared about. I thought about the quote Werner had mentioned from my grandfather, and I smiled. “Dad, I think that maybe it isn’t the failing that matters. It’s the getting up and trying again.”

A
fter hanging up with my dad, I went straight from the airport to the diner where Arno Fromm had asked me to meet him, in the Castleberry Hill district west of downtown. The building, on a side street in a gritty-looking industrial area, looked like an old train car.

The place was bustling as I walked in, and the scents of grease and coffee were heavy in the air. I had no idea what Arno Fromm looked like; I couldn’t find a clear photo of him on the Internet anywhere. And I hadn’t expected that he’d recognize me either, but within twenty seconds of walking in the door, I noticed an old man sitting in a corner booth, waving to me. His hair was silver, and his pale skin was heavily lined.

I headed down the narrow aisle toward him. He stood with difficulty and stared at me as I approached. “Arno Fromm?” I asked.

“It’s you,” he said, taking my hands in his. “My God, you really are Margaret’s granddaughter.”

There were tears in his eyes, and suddenly, I was sure that my father was wrong, that despite his reaction on the phone, it was possible that Fromm was, in fact, Peter Dahler. “Are you my grandfather?” I blurted out. “Are you Peter Dahler?”

He blinked a few times, seemingly startled by the question. “No,” he said. “No, no. I am not Peter, nor am I your grandfather.”

“Oh.” I felt foolish and disappointed. “I’m sorry.”

“Please don’t apologize. Of course you must have many questions for me. I have many for you as well.” He reached out for my face, hesitating when his hand was just a millimeter from me. “May I?”

I nodded, and he touched my cheek gently as he stared into my eyes. “You look just like her. You must understand, this seems so impossible. But you have her mouth, her nose. A painter can always tell by the features, you know. But tell me, what happened to her? How is it that she lived after all?”

“I don’t even know where to begin.”

“Of course.” He took a step back and gestured to the table. “Please. Have a seat. I will order us some coffee, and we will discuss what we each know.”