“We’re looking for Dad’s old war flame,” I said, slipping Dad a wink. “He wants to know what happened to her as well.”
“So many stories like these,” Mrs. Patterson said with a knowing shake of her head. “So many families spending decades praying to be reunited. So few prayers answered.”
“That’s the truth,” Dad said, solemnly nodding his head in agreement. “An ugly truth about war, no matter what the outcome.”
“I spent a year looking for my sister before I came to America,” Mrs. Patterson explained. “By that time, there seemed so little for me left in Germany that I saw no reason not to follow the handsome American lieutenant to California.”
“And we’re glad you did, Mom,” Stephen said, raising his lemonade as if toasting her.
“I should say so, rascal,” she said affectionately. “But even from Monterey, I spent all my spare time writing to whomever I could think of that might be able to lead me to some hint of her whereabouts.”
“It was the same for me,” Dad said. “If there was an organization, foreign or domestic, that I thought might have a lead on her, I sent them a letter. English. German. French. I learned what I needed to write a passable letter in all three and sent them everywhere. Kept my secretary, bless her, busier with that than my dental records.”
“Tell us about your sister,” I urged, shifting in my seat. “Did she have a job? Was she married?”
“Yes to all of that,” Mrs. Patterson said. “She was married, though the brute isn’t worth mentioning. She wrote for a women’s magazine for a time. Drumming up support for the war movement and other such balderdash. But she was cleverer than that. She used her connection to the SS to spread antiwar propaganda for the resistance.”
“She sounds incredible,” I said. I couldn’t imagine my mother doing something so audacious. She wasn’t one for subterfuge, no matter what other skills she had.
“That sounds a lot like my Margarethe. She was doing something with propaganda, it seemed, though she wouldn’t tell me much about it. She figured the less I knew, the safer I’d be.”
“That was practically my family credo during the war years. You say your sweetheart was called Margarethe? My sister was Margarethe, but we called her Metta. She was the most gorgeous girl. We all loved her so.”
“Margarethe used that nickname once or twice in letters. She was about as big as a minute and had a gift of disguising herself as a boy. She was probably brilliant at doing secret errands for the resistance. No one would have thought it of her.”
“How curious . . . Did you know her last name?”
“No,” Dad confessed. “She didn’t want me to know. It was her trying to protect me again.”
“There must have been lots of women named Margarethe then,” Stephen chimed in.
Mrs. Patterson nodded. “It was fairly common. And I have to say, if you were looking for your sweetheart without the help of a last name, you had even more of an uphill battle than I had.”
“Needle in a haystack doesn’t even come close,” Dad agreed.
“Do you have a picture of your sister?” I asked, inspiration coming to me.
“Unfortunately, most everything I had was lost. Either before coming here or in a fire when the boys were small. The dangers of living in California and all.”
“We have one of our Margarethe,” I said, darting to Dad’s bedroom. I found the picture on his bedside table, where he’d kept it next to a picture of Mom and me when I was younger.
Panting, I handed Mrs. Patterson the photo of Dad and Margarethe, and her soft brown eyes grew watery. She pressed her fingers to her lips, then pressed them on the glass over the image of Margarethe’s face.
“I can’t believe it,” she managed to say. Nick put an arm around his mother and looked ready to snatch the picture away to keep her calm. “How did you find this?”
“It’s mine. I had one of my staff snap it,” Dad supplied. “That was my Margarethe and me, one of the last times we saw each other.”
“Her name was Margarethe Hoffmann. Later Ziegler. She is my sister,” she confirmed. “Though you called her Margarethe, we called her Metta.”
Her shoulders began to rack with sobs. I felt a breath catch sideways in my chest until it wedged its way free, seemingly raking daggers across my lungs as it finally escaped. I gripped the arms of my chair, trying to steady the room. I didn’t know how I’d expected the answers to come, but this certainly wasn’t what I’d envisioned. Dad had gone pale, manfully swallowing back sobs of his own. I felt pricking at my eyes and tried to fight tears back as well.
This mystery woman from the photo, this enigma of a woman, was real. And not just to me and Dad. Mrs. Patterson composed herself, aided by tissues readily supplied by her sons.
“She stopped using her nickname after she married that awful man. He wasn’t fond of nicknames and the like.” She looked past me, gazing at the wall, as though a projector replayed those moments from her past on the obliging surface. Her voice had grown husky, but she’d mastered her tears.
“Can you tell us anything?” I asked, taking her hand in mine. “If we work together, we stand a better chance of finding out what happened.”
“The last time I saw her, she had me turn myself over to the Americans in France to keep me safe. She had me go ahead so that if he sent his goons after her, I still might get away. She was going to join me a day or two later, but I never saw her again. I wrote. I sent inquiries. I did everything I could think of. If I couldn’t find her then, I don’t see how we can find her now.”
“We’ve told Mom that the tech is so much better now, but it’s her German stoicism talking. We wanted to do this for her,” Nick said. “We knew that not knowing what happened to Aunt Metta always bothered her.”
I peppered her and her sons with questions. Being her sister, she knew Margarethe’s full name, date of birth, and a few other facts that would make finding some answers a much simpler affair.
“I always wondered who the American was who helped her get papers. She told me so little.”
“That was me,” Dad said, looking distant for a moment.
“Well then, Max Blumenthal. I owe you my life. I never dreamed I’d get the chance to thank you in person.”
“Well, I can’t regret anything that led to saving your life, but I only wish I’d managed to do the same for Margarethe—Metta.” Dad seemed to be making friends with the nickname, but wasn’t wholly used to it. She’d been Margarethe to him for half a century, after all.
“No one wishes that more than I do, Max. I’d have never let her stay behind if I’d known it was her only chance. I’ve lived with that regret for more than sixty years.”
“I believe you,” Dad said, taking her hand. “And if I know anything, she wouldn’t have risked the safety of the baby if she thought it was her only chance to leave. She wasn’t sacrificing herself for you intentionally.”
“You knew about the child?”
“Well, there’s a good chance it was mine.”
“Thank God for that, Max. That might be the only blessing in this whole sad affair.”