The German Wife(65)

But we were at peace, and anyway, Henry wouldn’t have to remain in the Army forever. All we needed was to force structure into Henry’s life—to prop him up for a few years until the economy recovered and he could find a civilian job.

“My friend at the hotel knows an enrollment officer and thinks he can get you accepted. You need to do it.” I drew in a deep breath. “I am asking you to do it.”

Henry blinked. Then he frowned.

“But, Lizzie—” he started to protest, but I reached to take his hand, squeezing it forcefully as I said, “We can’t go on this way. We just can’t, Henry.”

I watched the emotions play out on my brother’s face. First came shame and guilt and remorse, then frustration and irritation and embarrassment and anger. But all of this faded as quickly as it rose, and then Henry looked away as he nodded. By then, he simply looked resigned.



27


Lizzie

Huntsville, Alabama
1950

“How are you doing, Henry?” I asked one night a few weeks later. He was pushing his casserole around his plate, his expression distant until he looked up and gave me a tired smile. His mood seemed a little low, but it was hard to be sure since I’d barely seen him for more than a few minutes at a time in weeks. Henry had been going in early and coming home late, and he’d even taken some weekend shifts.

“Just not used to the long hours on my feet. I’ll get used to it.” He stifled a yawn, then pushed his chair back. “I might turn in. I’ve got an early start again tomorrow.”

“Walt sure is working you hard,” I remarked as he stood. Henry shrugged.

“I’m volunteering for every shift I can get. I’m thankful for the work.”

He took his plate to the sink, and as he did, a scrap of paper fell from his pocket, fluttering to the floor and landing under the table right near me. I leaned and picked it up.

“Do you need this?” I asked. A large S was marked at the top of the page, and beneath it was some kind of schedule—the days listed down the left-hand side, followed by columns of scribbled times. The slip was in my hand for a second—long enough for me to register that Friday morning was underlined—before Henry plucked it from my fingers.

“Phew. Lucky I didn’t lose that,” he said with a strained laugh. “That’s my work hours for the week so I can fill in my time sheet on Friday.”

The explanation made perfect sense and should have been reassuring. But if he were telling the truth, why did Henry snatch the paper back from me?

Overall, my brother seemed settled. There had been no more midnight incidents, no more wild stories about intruders, no more unnecessary calls to the police. He had thrown himself into the job at the lumberyard, just as I’d hoped he would.

If he was a little withdrawn, it was probably because he was bone-tired from trying to make a good impression at work. This was a good thing. For years, I’d hoped and prayed for Henry to find a job that stuck, and despite the rough start, it seemed my prayers had finally been answered.

“Did you ever talk to Jürgen Rhodes about...about that detective? And Henry?” I asked Calvin one morning.

He sipped his coffee thoughtfully, then explained delicately, “You and Sofie Rhodes getting off on such an unfortunate foot makes things with me and Jürgen a little awkward.”

“Oh.”

“He lived and breathed to bring them here, Lizzie. For years. Whenever he speaks of his wife, his adoration of her is evident. I thought about warning him the day Henry called the police, but the opportunity never arose, and then I figured that if there had been any trouble, Jürgen would have mentioned it to me.” Cal set the coffee cup down and seemed to brace himself before he asked gravely, “Has something else happened?”

“No, no,” I hastened to assure him. “It’s been a few weeks and, like I hoped, Henry seems to have settled right down. I was just curious.”

But I kept thinking about that conversation with Cal over his coffee. It took me a few days to figure out why it left me feeling so uncomfortable.

I needed to think of those Germans as monsters—especially Rhodes, given what Calvin suspected about his past. It was unsettling to think of the same man as an ordinary person, with a family he loved and a wife he adored.

When Becca called to invite me to another lunch with the Fort Bliss wives at what she was already calling “our usual restaurant,” an image of that Whites Only sign in the window flashed through my mind, and I shivered.

“Do come,” Becca pleaded. “I need all the moral support I can get. Avril’s on a one-woman seduction campaign, determined to make Sofie Rhodes her new best friend. You know how she gets. And the upside is, I’m sure she’ll have some delicious gossip from it.”

Discomfort sat like a stone in my gut. I always hated those lunches and I knew how that particular one would go. Avril would be all sweetness and light, batting her eyelashes innocently, but there’d be real venom in her words. I didn’t want to feel sympathy for Sofie Rhodes, but by the same token, I knew that Avril would be coming along to that lunch with the sole purpose of betraying her new “friend.”

I thought about my garden. I thought about the bliss and ease I felt being out there, dirt beneath my nails and clean air in my lungs.

“I’m just so busy at the moment,” I told her lightly. “I’ll have to miss it this week.”