The German Wife(97)

“I don’t want you to come with me, Sofie,” he whispered sharply. “Not now. Not ever.”

“But—”

“Otto did the deal with the SS—we rent the prisoners off them at a discount. We had the first shipment of workers from the camps a few weeks ago, but they were...” He trailed off, then stopped. I was startled by his choice of words—shipment, as if the prisoners were a resource one could send around the country in boxes. The silence stretched, and all I could hear was my pulse in my ears.

“What?” I prompted him urgently.

“I don’t want to talk about this with you,” Jürgen whispered.

“Tell me,” I pressed. “Tell me what was wrong with them.”

All of those rumors I’d heard on the streets of Berlin were flying through my mind. I’d suspected all along that the Jews in those places were in terrible danger. Did Jürgen know for sure?

“The prisoners are not being well cared for and that’s all you need to know.”

The point of pulling the blankets over our heads was to muffle our conversation, but we didn’t need to bother that night. Jürgen’s voice was so faint that even right beside him, I had to strain to make out each word. It was clear that he was deeply troubled by this development but wanted to protect me from the worst of what he knew and what he’d seen, as he always did.

I couldn’t bury my head in the sand. Whatever he was involved in, I was a part of too.

“Just men?” I asked. I shifted closer to him, suddenly feeling very cold, despite the suffocating blanket over our faces.

“No.”

I closed my eyes and an image of Mayim flashed before me, her face vivid, as if I’d only seen her that morning.

“You haven’t seen Mayim, though?” I had to know.

“The camps are huge, Sofie. Tens of thousands of prisoners in some.”

“Do you think she’s in one of those camps?”

“I don’t know,” he whispered. Jürgen folded the blanket back down, exposing our faces to the cool air in the hotel room. I turned toward him.

“Tell me the truth,” I whispered.

“I would only be guessing.”

“I don’t care.”

I pulled the blanket up again, and Jürgen whispered, “Most of the Jews are imprisoned in ghettos now.”

“That’s better than a camp, I suppose. She would be okay there?”

“Of course, my love.”



38


Lizzie

Huntsville, Alabama
1950

It was hot that night and I couldn’t sleep. I kept reliving the hurt on Sofie Rhodes’s face when I clued her in to what a raging gossip Avril Walters was.

I felt better having visited her. I knew I’d been rude—obnoxious, even. I’d intended to be. It seemed that until I figured out what was going on with my brother, the best way for everything to settle back down was for Sofie Rhodes to stay the hell away from us.

I gave up tossing and turning and poured myself a cold glass of water, then went onto the front porch, where the air was at least moving a little. I rested my head against the back of the porch swing and closed my eyes.

“Can’t sleep either?” Henry said. He walked along the edge of the porch and took a seat beside me.

“It’s hot in there,” I sighed.

“I’ll wager it’s worse upstairs.”

“Sorry.”

“Don’t be,” he chuckled, but quickly sobered. “You left the back door unlocked.”

“Did I?” I said, wincing. “Oops.” He’d been checking every night before he went to sleep, and this was the second time I’d forgotten.

“You’re not taking this seriously, Lizzie.”

“I am,” I protested. “It’s force of habit, that’s all. We’ve been here for a year and I’ve never locked that door. And besides...”

“You haven’t seen him,” Henry surmised. “So you’re not as scared as you should be.”

“Haven’t seen him?” I said hesitantly. I shot Henry a concerned look, concerned at his use of present tense. Henry sighed impatiently, then lit a cigarette. He stretched his legs out, settling into the seat, and then drew in a deep breath.

“I checked myself into a VA neuropsychiatric hospital in January after I was here for Christmas. I lied when I said I was working at a fair in Nashville. Christmas was the lowest I’d been for a while.”

“What? Why didn’t you tell me?” I asked, startled. My heart ached at the thought of him going through that alone.

“Do you know that in all the time you’ve been married, even after all the shit I’ve put you through in the last five years, I’d never seen you and Cal argue until the last time I visited? I figured if your marriage was in trouble and you were stuck here in backwater Alabama with a bunch of Nazis, you’d need me to have my head right if it all hit the fan.”

“Huntsville isn’t so bad. And me and Cal are fine.” I hadn’t realized he noticed us bickering. Henry was always more perceptive than people gave him credit for.

“I love Cal. I really do. But your husband is a part of all of this. He’s working with them.”