He handed me a stack of my mail. Even after nine months, a fair amount still wasn’t forwarded. He saved it all—every catalog and flyer.
“You could have just dropped this all in campus mail like usual,” I said.
“Well, I also found this and didn’t want to trust it to the mail—campus or otherwise,” he said, passing me a photo album with a weathered leather cover.
“God, I’d forgotten this existed,” I said, opening it to see the pictures Mom and Dad had collected from my youth. Eighteen years of birthdays, graduations, my bat mitzvah, gatherings with my grandparents before they passed. Mom had compiled it all and given it to me as a wedding gift when Dad had given us the tree. Being Mom, she’d used archival-quality paper and glue, and each page was laid out as perfectly as a spread in Vogue. Despite her efforts, some of the pictures had yellowed and faded, much like my memory of the events in them. I couldn’t recall the flavor of my eighth birthday cake or what our neighbors had given me as a bat mitzvah present, but the memories were still there. Mom was featured prominently throughout the album, as Dad had been the family photographer since time immemorial. I had her dark, glossy hair and high cheekbones. Her attention to detail and her desire for order too. One picture in particular grabbed my attention. In it, I was looking intently at the candles on my sixth birthday cake while Mom beamed directly at the camera. At Dad. The look of love in her eyes went deeper than skin and bone. It seeped into her soul. She adored him.
Could she possibly have known about Margarethe? About the child Dad and his wartime love might have shared?
I couldn’t imagine that Dad would have kept such a secret from her, but there was a part of me that hoped she’d been spared the knowledge.
“Are you still with me?” Greg asked.
“No,” I replied automatically. But his question wasn’t what I’d interpreted it to be. “I mean, yes. Sorry. Nostalgia lane.”
“I can imagine you’re prone to it these days,” Greg said. “Change does that. I’ve caught myself looking over our wedding photos a time or two myself.”
The wedding photos. He’d kept them, and it hadn’t even registered with me that I hadn’t asked for them. I used to take them out every year on our anniversary, and we’d look over the glossy photos of me in my flowing Vera Wang wedding dress and Greg in his tux dancing and eating cake at his parents’ country club. We’d drink the same vintage champagne we’d had at our wedding and dance to “Wonderful Tonight” in the living room.
“God, our anniversary is tomorrow,” I said, horrified at the realization. “Would have been,” I corrected.
“You’d forgotten?” he asked.
“Not so much forgotten as haven’t had time to really breathe,” I said. It was true enough. Beach trips notwithstanding, between hunting for Margarethe, visiting Dad, and deliberately burying myself in work, I’d not allowed myself the free time to gather a coherent thought.
“I didn’t,” Greg said. He opened the drawer to his desk and produced a black velvet box and set it in front of me.
“Why on earth would you have gotten me a gift?” I asked, dreading the contents. I’d returned the engagement ring that had been in his family for three generations. He’d given me some nice pieces over the years, but I rarely wore anything beyond a simple necklace and occasionally a bracelet if I was feeling the need to be dressy. My gold wedding band sat collecting dust in my jewelry box. It was silly to keep it as I never planned to wear it again, but it seemed wrong to sell it. Keeping it tucked away in a box was easier than taking action.
“Call it nostalgia,” he said. “You’ve had a hard year, even without the divorce. I wanted to do something nice for you. Open it, please.”
I reached for the box, dread burbling up in my stomach as I cracked it open. Nestled inside was a pair of princess-cut diamond earrings. Good-sized ones to boot. They were beautiful, but something I’d take out to wear perhaps twice a year. I’d be too afraid of losing one to enjoy wearing them. But it was the sort of thing Greg did when he wanted to make a grand gesture.
“This is way too much, Greg,” I said. “Very generous, but I can’t accept them.”
“You can,” he said, standing and coming around to my side of the desk. “Please do.”
He perched on the desk in front of me and pulled me to my feet, then wrapped his arms around me. He lowered his mouth to mine, kissing slowly, deliberately. I allowed myself to relax into his embrace, enjoying the nearness of another person. He still smelled of Old Spice and mint gum. Wholesome and familiar. So very Greg.
“We can try again, baby,” he said as he pulled away. He rested his forehead on mine as his ragged breath grew even. “I can do better. Focus on us. We’ll take vacations and make love more often. Whatever you need.”
I took a step back, blinking as I considered his words. To come back. To come back home would be so easy. But it was a step backward.
“I’m sorry, I can’t, Greg. I just can’t.”
“Can you at least tell me why? I think I deserve that much.”
“The reason hasn’t changed. You say you want to focus on us and to have more sex and travel to make me happy. I want those things to make you happy too. If they don’t, there’s no point.”
Greg exhaled deeply and pulled me back into his arms for a hug.
“I knew it was a long shot, but I’d never have been able to live with myself if I hadn’t tried.”
CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE
CHARLOTTENBURG
JOHANNA
July 21, 1944
Berlin, Germany
Ansel delivered the news to me personally. Harald had been executed that morning with no trial. He’d been accused, along with two others, of conspiring to kill the Führer. They had been closer to success than many of the previous attempts, which was part of the reason for the hasty justice. Had it not been for a heavy wooden table in the meeting room where Harald had detonated the bomb, he would have succeeded in his plan.
They brought me to a small, windowless concrete room with only two chairs and a table. Ansel had been given the honor of questioning me. Whether it was out of deference to our relation or despite it, I wasn’t sure. I wanted to break down and sob for my sweet man, the gentle academic who was forced into the ranks of these brainless thugs. I wanted to wallow in tears as was my right as a widow, but I would not give this hateful man the satisfaction of seeing me broken.
“Tell us what you know about the plot your husband orchestrated,” he said as he took his seat. He at least did me the courtesy of removing the handcuffs they’d placed on me for transport.
“Nothing. Why would he involve his wife in such matters?” I asked, appealing to the male-centric values the Reich espoused.
“Come now, I am not some greenhorn detective, Johanna. You two spoke of everything. You can’t expect me to believe that he kept something like this from you.”
“He did,” I insisted. “I suspect he wanted me to be able to answer truthfully that I knew nothing in case I ended up in this very situation.”
“You never noticed his behavior to be odd? Making strange phone calls in the middle of the night? Acting strained or distraught?”