Beyond the Shadow of Night(73)

“No, no,” she said. “It’s not that. I’m thinking. He did talk. He talked a lot. But it was all about him and Father growing up together in Ukraine and what happened to them during the war years. I never realized Father had such a hard time of it. It’s so easy to forget that your parents had a life before you were born. I guess that’s a pretty universal thing.”

“I get that,” Brad said. “Does that mean he didn’t tell you why he killed your father?”

“Not yet.”

“Uh, so you’re going back?”

Diane nodded. “I need to find out, and he sounds like he needs to tell me. But it’s good. It was quite friendly, considering what he did. And we talked about what Father was like.”

“What he was like? In what way?”

“Whether I really knew him.”

“And?”

“And I’m beginning to think . . . well, perhaps I didn’t. At least not as well as I thought I did. And I have to admit he knows a hell of a lot about my father’s life, considering there was such a long time when they didn’t see each other—over sixty years.”

“You always told me your father never really liked to talk about the old times. You said you assumed it was all too painful for him and he wanted to put it behind him.”

“That’s what I thought. I asked him once what happened to him during the war and why he came to America. He said the whole thing was horrible and I didn’t want to know. I told him I did, that he should try talking about it. He got angry with me, like he was about to have some sort of fit or breakdown, so I backed off, told him to forget it, and I never broached the subject again.”

Brad shot her a glance. “You never told me that before.”

“Sorry.” Even after all this time, she wasn’t sure why she was still unable to tell Brad the whole truth about her father.

Another few minutes of silence passed. During that time, the things Diane hadn’t said about her father ran through her mind. There was the trick he would pull whenever she hinted—as she had once or twice a few years before—that she was thinking of moving in with Brad. There was the tiredness that seemed at odds with his ability to walk miles every day. There were the continued reassurances—announced in a weak, throaty voice—that he’d be okay on his own because he liked his own company and no longer felt wanted by the world anyway. Most importantly, there were also the nights—anything up to three of them a week throughout his life—when he would talk in his sleep, spouting out seemingly random words of Ukrainian in a deep and threatening tone. Diane had faint memories from when she was a little girl of asking him why he talked in his sleep, and how he’d told her never to talk about his “episodes” to anyone—even him. When her parents split up she’d even thought that it might have been a factor. It was only soon afterward, when she stayed with her mother, that she found out the truth, which was much worse. Perhaps, she’d mused many years later, she stayed with him to prevent him having some sort of breakdown—to stop those truths coming out. Moreover, perhaps he knew the threat of that might just make a good reason for her to stay. So, had it been her concern to keep the peace at all costs, or his emotional blackmail? She could take her pick: both were partly true.

Back at Brad’s place, he cooked, and they talked all evening. They talked about the place where they’d worked together and about coworkers past and present. They talked about the vacations they’d shared. They talked as they walked around Brad’s flower garden—the one Diane had planned and planted largely on her own.

They didn’t talk about Diane’s parents, or Baltimore, or the murder case, or what she was going to do and say at the county jail the next day. That was good.





Chapter 24

Treblinka, Poland, 1943

It might have been an hour since Asher escaped from Treblinka or it might have been three, but he stopped, exhausted, and fell to the forest floor. He’d heard gunfire, horses, and vehicles on various occasions, but had evaded all of them, running when he had the energy, walking when he didn’t.

Now he was utterly spent, and the sun was going down. In the near darkness he climbed a tree and tied his jacket to a branch for safety, thanking God this wasn’t one of those bitterly cold nights. He fell asleep immediately, and was woken before dawn by a rain shower. It was welcome, and he collected and drank the water as best he could. Before daylight broke he got down and started moving again.

This time, weak and stiff, he could do no more than stumble between the trees, but he eventually reached a river. He looked long and hard at the rushing torrent, listened to its hypnotic thunder, and concluded it would probably kill him, and hence would be a last resort. He turned back under cover of the forest and started walking alongside the river.

Soon he spotted a building between the veil of tree trunks and slowed to a stealthy prowl. It was a farmhouse on the edge of the forest, with a small field beyond. His eyes were drawn to the cattle in the field, to the chickens to the right of the farmhouse, but mostly to the small orchard next to the wooden barn on the left, which backed onto the edge of the forest.

Within minutes Asher had entered the orchard’s edge via the forest and was picking plums, pears, and small apples, cramming what he could into his mouth, storing more in his pockets and in the crook of one arm. He heard a door open and ran into the barn. On one side was a ladder leading up to a hayloft. He climbed up and headed for the darkest place, where he sat in silence. He heard nothing, so ate, gorging himself on sweet fruit. Then, as bloated as a medieval king, he fell asleep.