Secrets She Kept (7 page)

“
Nein
, Lieselotte. I wear the uniform because I must. I am not one of them. You must know this.”

I had known, at least had begged in my heart that he was not one of them, but I’d needed to hear him say it. How I’d needed to hear him say it! “What happened to Herr Weiss and his family?”

“We got them across the border.”

‘“We?’”

“Who doesn’t matter.”

“It matters to me.”

But he ignored me. “Your mother’s coat saved their lives. The nights turned bitter. They slept in your shed one night, then in ditches two more. Had it not been for the fur, the children might have frozen. Your mother saved them. You saved them.”

The wonder of having helped to save a life
 
—several lives
 
—stole my
breath. It gave meaning to Mutti’s sacrifice, to the danger of lying to Vater and to Rudy. “Have you saved more? More Jews?”

Lukas sat back. He pulled his hands from mine and the warmth was gone. I wanted him to take them up again, but I wanted even more to know. “It’s not something I can talk about.”

“Are you afraid I will report you? I would never!”

Very quietly he said, “You almost gave me away today. You almost gave all of us away.”

He was right, so very right. “I’m sorry. It will not happen again, if you’ll only
 
—”

“It is not a game to play. It is not
 
—”

“Not for children? Is that what you think, that I am a child not to be trusted?”

“I didn’t say that. Of course I trust you. It’s just not so simple. There are other lives
 
—not only my own
 
—at risk. I cannot talk about anything, for their sakes.”

“I could help. I could help again.”

“
Nein.
It is too dangerous.”

“No one would suspect me. I can
 
—”

“
Nein
. Lieselotte, your father is a ranking member of the Nazi Party, and with the help of Dr. Peterson, rising every day. Your brother is more eager to please the Gestapo than Muller is to lead it. One mistake
 
—one word spoken in anger or in your sleep
 
—and you could be arrested. There would be nothing I could do to stop that. And I won’t have it on my conscience. I won’t have you in danger.”

I would have protested more loudly, vehemently, but for the first time Lukas did not look at me as he had before. I did not see a child reflected in his eyes. And suddenly he was embarrassed, reaching for his coat.

He cares for me.

“I thought you were staying to eat with me.”

“Perhaps it’s better if I
 
—”

“I’ll heat the soup. You find the bowls
 
—in the cupboard, there.”

I wouldn’t look at him, but busied myself at the stove, stirring the fragrant stew. This was something new, something different with Lukas. And if this had changed, what more might change?

I heard him rummage in the cupboard, pull the spoons from their holder.

“Tumblers are on the shelf by the sink.”

Less than five minutes later we sat at the table, like two members of a family. Lukas searched my face, and whispered, “I’ll pray, then?”

“Ja.”
I bowed my head, certain my heart sang. “You pray.” With Mutti and all the angels in heaven, my heart sang.

HANNAH STERLING

DECEMBER 1972 – JANUARY 1973

Three anxious and excruciating weeks passed while I waited for Ward Beecham’s call. He’d felt certain he could track the two addresses in Germany. Whatever he discovered might close the door on my past with Mama or open it wide. Either way, there was so much I wanted to know. Why had Mama and Daddy both lied to me
 
—never told me Daddy wasn’t my father? And since he wasn’t
 
—who was? I couldn’t see myself closing the door on the past without knowing. What would that search mean for my teaching position in Winston-Salem? And what about my future relationship with Aunt Lavinia? Was there anything else she wasn’t telling me? All my life I’d trusted her implicitly. Now there was no one to trust.

Ward and I had agreed that all correspondence to and from Germany
would go through him. It felt safer that way, he was still on Mama’s retainer, and I needed a confidant and ally. I certainly didn’t have one in Aunt Lavinia, despite our tenatative truce.

Clyde emptied the house of everything I didn’t want and sold what he could to a secondhand shop and the local junk man. The boxes and few pieces of furniture I’d saved were stored in Aunt Lavinia’s attic. I closed up the house and turned the key over to Ernest Ford and multiple listing two days before Christmas Eve. Ernest posted a
For Sale
sign on the property before the ink was dry. It felt like the beginning of the end.

The day after Christmas Ward Beecham phoned me at Aunt Lavinia’s. “I’ve received a reply. You’d best come by the office.”

Ward reached across his desk, handing me a sheet of embossed ivory letterhead, the name and return address in German, the body of the letter in English. “I was only able to track the address on one of the envelopes. I couldn’t get a return on the others.” The furrow creased between his brows, “I’m not sure if you’ll think this is a belated Christmas present or a lure through a dark tunnel.”

I smiled tentatively, eager and afraid at once.

Dear Esquire Beecham,

I write on behalf of my client Herr Wolfgang Sommer, who is naturally distraught to learn that his daughter, Lieselotte Sterling, is now deceased.

Herr Sommer searched many years for his daughter to no avail and believes now that she must also have assumed he perished during the war. Though he deeply regrets this lonely passage of time, he would be most happy to make the acquaintance of his granddaughter, Hannah Sterling.

Herr Sommer invites Fräulein Sterling to his home in Berlin at her earliest convenience and trusts that she will consider his
home as her own. He has advised me to transfer the amount of five hundred American dollars to your account for her travel expenses.

I must convey to you that Herr Sommer is elderly and infirm. Unable to provide the hospitality he would like, Herr Sommer requires his physician, Dr. Gunther Peterson, or myself to act in his stead.

Sincerely,

Heinrich Eberhardt

Attorney at Law

“Hannah?” Ward Beecham asked. “Are you all right?”

All right?
“This says I have a grandfather . . . a grandfather I never knew existed. And he’s German . . . Wolfgang
Sommer
. . . That’s not even the name on Mama’s marriage certificate.”

“Apparently. Yes, that’s right, on both counts.”

“Everything my mother told me about her past was a lie.”

“We don’t know anything about the man, other than he appears to have money sufficient to buy you a ticket.”

“If he was a bad man, why would she have left me this address to reach him? She never told me about him, but she opened this door for me to walk through
 
—after her death. I don’t understand.”

“Maybe she regretted not telling you, not letting you know about him.” He hesitated. “But she might have been ashamed of him too. She might have had good reason not to use his name or respond to his letter. We don’t know.”

“Aunt Lavinia said people did crazy things during the war. She suspects Mama took advantage of Daddy, that she got him to marry her so she could get away from something bad she’d done.”

“I find that hard to believe.”

“Do you? She let me believe my whole life that Daddy
 
—Joe Sterling
 
—was my father, and that she had no family at all. That she was Austrian, for Pete’s sake.”

“Maybe your father
 
—Joe
 
—wanted it that way. Maybe she thought she needed to protect you from her family or from the American community. We weren’t known for treating Germans
 
—even German Americans
 
—very well, you know.”

“But after Daddy died, she could have
 
—”

“Honored his memory.”

“She didn’t love him! She wouldn’t have put a headstone over his grave if Aunt Lavinia hadn’t shamed her into it. He wasn’t a good husband, any more than she was a good wife. I know that, but he was good to me
 
—as good as he knew how.”
Why are you taking up for them? Why am I taking up for him?
“She lied to me, and she didn’t exactly make it easy for me to figure out all we have.” That truth kept a tornado spinning in my head, and hurt like a rock crushing my chest.
It’s like she’s playing games with me from the other side of the grave!

“I’m just saying that your mother must have had her reasons. I don’t know what those were, but I’m willing to give her the benefit of the doubt and caution you to be careful with this man who claims to be your grandfather. Just because he invites you to Germany doesn’t mean you should go.” He shook his head. “We don’t know anything about him or this lawyer. I need to think how best to proceed.”

But this was the first clue I’d found to my mother’s past and possibly to my own. If I had a grandfather in Germany, might I also have a father there? Could the other envelopes from Germany, the one Ward was unable to trace, lead me to him? Understanding my past might give me a clue to my future. I wasn’t about to let Ward Beecham talk me out of it. “There’s one way to find out, isn’t there? Book my plane ticket.”

Aunt Lavinia fought me every step of the way, begged me not to go, and cried as the taxicab pulled from her drive. Brokenhearted and trying not be angry with her, I set my jaw, refusing to look back. I wasn’t leaving forever, just for now, for me. I promised to write.

The plane
 
—my first plane ride ever
 
—bumped all the way to New
York. Courage waned as my breakfast came very close to revisiting my teeth. But I couldn’t go home or back to Aunt Lavinia, not until I found some answers.

For two hours I wandered JFK’s eclectic airport stores, discovering scarves and sweatshirts and coffee mugs all touting the Big Apple
 
—a world as surely foreign to a Southern girl as Berlin. Boarding took another hour, but at last we pulled to the runway. I sat back, closed my eyes, chewed my Doublemint, and felt the world fall away.

I changed planes in Munich. It was late morning when my plane taxied to the gate in Berlin’s Tempelhof airport. The little German I’d gleaned from an English-German dictionary on the plane through the night did not help much through customs. Weary and bleary-eyed, I finally stood in the middle of a terminal aisle, doing my best to read signs and thumbing through the book for inspiration.

“Fräulein Sterling?” A silver-haired gentleman of perhaps fifty-five spoke softly.

“Mr.
 
—Herr Eberhardt?”

“
Ja,
very good, Fräulein.” He smiled.

“Oh, I’m so glad to meet you. How did you know who I was?”

He gestured toward my dictionary, then glanced around the terminal.

No one else looks so green or lost.
I didn’t know whether I should be miffed that he pointed out my inability to blend in or show my relief at being rescued. I felt very much like Alice having fallen down a rabbit hole. “Thank you for meeting me.”

“You must be greatly fatigued from your journey. Allow me.” He lifted my carry-on from my shoulder
 
—a weight gladly released
 
—and grasped the heavy suitcase whose contents had been rummaged through and turned upside down in customs. Gratefully, I trailed him through a maze of corridors, out the door, into a frigid German morning, and to a waiting Mercedes.

“If it is convenient, Fräulein, we will go directly to your grandfather’s home. I spoke with him last night and he is most anxious to make your
acquaintance. Certainly, you are ready for a hot meal and some uninterrupted sleep.”

“They fed us every little bit on the plane, but a hot bath and a bed would be fabulous.”

Herr Eberhardt’s eyes widened, as if I’d said something too personal and entirely inappropriate. I turned away, feigning interest in the passing landscape, realizing that I had a great deal to learn about German men and their culture.

I must have dozed, despite my embarrassment, for the next thing I knew the driver stood by my open door, coughing discreetly. Herr Eberhardt waited on the cobbled walkway with my luggage at his feet. The driver offered his hand, and it was all I could do to let him pull me up from the deep leather seat and the lethargy of plane fatigue.

A low stone fence bordered every front yard or garden on the street
 
—just enough to keep trespassers out and small children in. Or to mark boundaries, territories. The house, of matching gray stone, loomed three stories high and ran narrow for its shape. Daddy would have called it an efficient roofline
 
—
lots of living below, minimal expense above.

Herr Eberhardt introduced the stocky older woman who answered the front door as Frau Winkler, Grandfather’s cook and housekeeper. Frau Winkler eyed me with more suspicion than welcome, but hefted my bags up the stairs with a grunt.

“Will you meet your grandfather now, Fräulein?” Herr Eberhardt took on a more kindly, almost fatherly, tone
 
—perhaps to make up for Frau Winkler’s frost.

“Yes
 
—please.” It was what I’d traveled thousands of miles to do, hopeful and glad that someone wanted to meet me
 
—perhaps wanted to claim me as his family. That meant as much as
 
—maybe more than
 
—discovering Mama’s secrets. But now that it was time, my feet dragged like somebody’d stuffed pie weights in the toes of my pumps.
What if he doesn’t like me? What if I remind him of Mama?
I knew I looked very little like her, though we’d at least shared a resemblance before the cancer.
Will
he think that’s a good thing or bad? Whatever happened between them that Mama never answered his letter?

Herr Eberhardt knocked softly and pushed open the heavy wooden door, revealing a dimly lit room. “Herr Sommer?
Hier ist Eberhardt mit deine Enkeltochter, Fräulein Sterling. Konnen wir eintritten?
”

The form in the bed did not move or speak or snore. Herr Eberhardt guided me to the bedside, then crossed the room to pull back the curtains, allowing the late morning sun to pour in. The white-haired and bewhiskered man in the bed moaned softly, turning his head from the light, though his eyes never opened. There was nothing of Mama in his face, not that I could tell.

“That woman! She has not even roused him for the day,” Herr Eberhardt hissed.

A tray of cold, half-eaten food sat on the bedside table. “It looks as if he’s eaten,” I offered.

Herr Eberhardt picked up the plate and sniffed. “Stew, I think, from last night. This is no way to treat an employer. He should be shaved and dressed by now. She knew you were coming. Dr. Peterson must be informed.” Herr Eberhardt set the plate quietly on the tray and motioned me toward the door, pulling me into the hallway. “He will not want you to meet him like this.”

“I don’t mind, really. I took care of Mama in her last weeks. I know what sick old people are like.”

“Herr Sommer does not think of himself as a sick old man. He wishes to welcome you to his home
 
—your home
 
—as your grandfather. We will do him the honor of granting that wish. I will make certain Frau Winkler has your room ready. You may rest and refresh yourself, enjoy a meal, which I trust she has prepared. I’ll return later today and make proper introductions. Herr Sommer’s use of English is . . . limited.”

Eager as I was to meet my grandfather, I wasn’t sorry to see him as a pitiable old man without his knowing. It quieted some of the percussion in my stomach, made me feel even more kindly toward him. I nodded. At that moment anything leading to a hot bath and a warm bed suited
me just fine. But at the door I turned and took one last look at the sunken man beneath the eiderdown. I hoped I could make up to him whatever Mama had done.

Frau Winkler, in her broken English, told me that Grandfather had insisted I stay in Mama’s girlhood room on the third floor, that he was certain I’d want that. I’m not sure I did. But I was curious, just the same.

To sleep in my mother’s bed from a time when she was younger than me, to see the pictures she’d hung on her walls and set on her dresser and even the German scrapbook on her closet shelf gave me a glimpse of “Lieselotte” as a girl. Still, it seemed more eerie than wonderful. The only thing familiar was an old copy
 
—on closer look, an 1843 first edition
 
—of
A Christmas Carol
, by Charles Dickens. In English, of all things. I’d always loved that story. Inside, it was inscribed,
Zu meine Lieselotte, mit liebe, Vater, November 1938
. I thumbed through my dictionary to translate each word, then sat back in wonder. Such an inscription, such a gift! He surely sounded like a man who loved his daughter.

It was as though Grandfather had kept Mama’s room as a shrine
 
—or like he expected her to return at any moment, just as she’d gone and at just the same age. The styles and fabric of the dresses hanging in Mama’s closet all looked like they’d stepped out of an old Humphrey Bogart and Ingrid Bergman movie
 
—
Casablanca
, maybe
 
—only for a younger woman. I’d have loved to try one on, especially a rich teal satin, surely a party dress, but it seemed too much like walking over a person’s grave. I shuddered and closed the closet door.