The German Wife(107)

Someone was in my house.

Should I chase them? Run to the phone? Get Felix out of the house?

The back door slammed. I finally unfroze and ran to the laundry room—making it to the door just in time to catch the barest glimpse of movement as someone disappeared over the low back fence, into the yard of the house behind us.

I quickly dialed Jürgen at work and told him what had happened, my heart still in my throat. Remembering the hostility we’d experienced from Detective Johnson, I didn’t bother calling the police.

When Jürgen got home, he went right to the neighbors behind us to ask if they’d seen anyone, but there was no one home, and the intruder was long gone. He then set about making me a cup of tea.

“And you think it was Calvin’s brother-in-law?” he asked as he set the tea in front of me. I raised the cup to my lips to find it was far too milky and sweet for my taste. It reminded me of Adele’s tea. That both helped and hurt.

“I didn’t see his face,” I said. My hands were still shaking. “I’m just assuming.”

“And did he take anything else or just...?”

“Just the photos,” I said, my voice breaking. At first, I couldn’t find anything missing. For a moment or two, I almost convinced myself I’d imagined the person in our house. Then I realized the photos were gone from beside our bed. “I need them back.”

Jürgen gave me an anguished look and sat opposite me to take my hands.

“I know, my love,” he soothed, then paused. “Should we call the police?”

“Is there any point?”

“I suppose not,” he sighed. “I should call Calvin, though.”

“No,” I blurted. Jürgen looked at me, surprised. “Lizzie is just so hateful, Jürgen. You have no idea.” I struggled to explain just how distressing her visit the previous day was. It had been such a short encounter—just a few minutes—but her hatred for us was evident, and I still couldn’t figure out how to take her odd comment that I’d assumed was about Avril. “I don’t want to inflame things with her.”

“But the photos, my love,” Jürgen protested. “Telling Calvin what happened might be your only chance to get them back.”

I covered my face with my hands. Jürgen moved to sit beside me, his arm gently resting over my shoulders.

“I promise I won’t make this worse. I just know how much those photos mean to you, and we can’t go on like this. Calvin was in a meeting when I left, but I’ll go back in to work and—”

“No!” I shivered, shaking my head. “Please. Can you take the day off? I don’t want to be alone.” His arm around my shoulders tensed, and I turned to press my face against his neck. “I’ve dealt with plenty of anxious moments on my own over the years. I want things to be different now. I want things to be better here. I want you and me to ride out the hard things together.”

“Okay,” Jürgen murmured, without hesitation. “I’ll call in and let the team know I’m needed at home.”

That night, we went out and picked up hamburgers for dinner, and then all four of us cuddled up on the sofa to watch television—Felix at one end, then me, then Gisela, then Jürgen at the opposite end of the sofa, which was as close as Felix could allow him.

“Progress?” Jürgen mouthed, nodding toward Felix over Gisela’s head. He flashed me a lopsided smile.

“You’re clutching at straws if you think this is a win,” I whispered back, but I was teasing him. The last few days had been awful, but even in the midst of that, I found myself feeling grateful. It was some progress that Felix was finally sitting on the sofa with Jürgen.

Once the children were in bed, Jürgen checked every latch on every window, and then he checked the doors—making sure everything was locked, even though we’d already been through this exercise before we went to pick up dinner. I followed him around, double-double-checking, just for my own peace of mind. At the front windows, I scanned the street for signs of trouble.

“Come to bed, my love,” Jürgen said, taking my hand. “I’ll hold you until you fall asleep.”

As we climbed into bed, I turned automatically to the table beside me to look for the photos. When I remembered they were gone, my heart ached.

It was bad enough that our house had been violated—but the objects taken were so personal, and those images had no value to anyone other than me.

I wondered if whoever took them—be it Lizzie Miller’s brother or a stranger—had any idea what they’d really stolen in taking the simple stack of paper that represented my last mementos of Adele and Georg and even Laura, and of course, Mayim.

Jürgen and I destroyed every trace of her from our lives, just as the Gestapo told us to—but that one photo came back to me at the time I needed it most. Was it some kind of penance that even my photo of her kept slipping from my grasp?



41


Lizzie

El Paso, Texas
1943

“That’s it, Ava. Just tie the stalk to the stake there—good girl. And, Brianna—take just a little bit of that mulch and put it around the base of the plant.”

I knew my whole life that I was not cut out to be a mother, but I’d made a startling discovery—I was a fantastic “aunt” to Becca’s two girls, and quite a good gardening teacher. I’d ripped up the roses and the hedges from our yard and converted every square inch of our lot into a Victory Garden, just as the government was encouraging us all to do. Advertisements in magazines gave instructions for growing and preserving our own food to make rations go further, and for the first time in years, my fingernails were black with soil, and I was contributing something.