She felt his smile. ‘Yes, my love, you have most certainly done your best.’
They stayed like that on the ground for a long time, until the chill coming up from the earth reminded Ava it was time to go back to the house. She sat back and surveyed the jars, confident that she’d located every last one, but at the same time knowing she’d likely come back again and again over the coming days, just in case there was one she’d missed.
‘Would you have believed there were so many?’ Ava asked.
David stood and walked in a small circle as he looked at the piles she’d made. ‘Never. I could never have imagined she’d saved this many children.’
‘Will you help me carry them all back to the house? I will carefully empty each one there, and make a record of the contents of each letter so that we retain a copy here.’
‘And perhaps we could save all the jars? We could think of something special to do with them, to remember Hanna by?’ David suggested as he began to fill the wooden crate that Ava had brought out with her. ‘It will be a way to show Max, too, to make sure he understands the power of each jar and what it contained.’
‘Thank you,’ Ava said, pausing to look up at him for a moment.
David only smiled, before lifting the crate to bring it closer to her. He was often a man of few words, but when he spoke he usually did so to make her smile or share something worthwhile, and today he’d done both. And despite her sadness, she closed thedistance between them and took his face in her hands, kissing him gently on the lips, hoping he knew what he meant to her.
She’d made many mistakes when it came to matters of the heart, but David wasn’t one of them.
ELIANA
There had been a time when Eliana had not known if she could ever forgive Ava for the pain she’d caused her. When Ava had found them in the attic, Eliana had wondered if there would ever be friendship between them again, whether she could ever forget the way Ava had looked at her or treated her.
Eliana’s father had called it Hitler Fever. He had a theory that even those who wouldn’t usually be caught up in such nonsense couldn’t help but catch it from those around them, as if it truly was a fever that could spread unwittingly among people, and he’d also had a not so pleasant analogy about those that turned a blind eye to Adolf Hitler.So long as the dog doesn’t defecate in their garden, they don’t care about the dog. So long as their families are safe, they won’t do a thing to help us. Until the dog comes into their garden; that is when they will realise their mistake.And he hadn’t been wrong, for that was precisely what had happened.
She looked up then, pulled from her thoughts as Ava and David stood in the fading light outside on the patio. The glass jars that had been recovered from the garden had been cleaned and filled with candles, and as Eliana looked up at them, they reminded her of the fireflies she’d seen with her family while on holiday once, as a young girl. Only these weren’t fireflies; they were reminders of all those names, all those children, all those families who hadn’t survived.
Ava had asked for the jars to be repurposed; they were the only decorations she’d wanted, as a way to feel her sister’s presence, and Eliana could see from her wide eyes that she loved them.
And as Eliana watched, the only witness to their wedding vows,sheremembered. She remembered every moment of pain, every sacrifice, every loss, but she also remembered the love that had carried her family through all those hours and days and months trapped in the attic. She remembered her first gasp of fresh air when she’d eventually left the house, the way her breath had caught when she’d met Ethan for the very first time.
And as she looked at her brother, and saw the way he was looking at Ava, at the woman he’d loved for so long without Ava even knowing it, Eliana thought about how much her mother and father would have loved this moment, seeing two people who had once been on such different paths reunited in the name of love.
Eliana glanced to her left, seeing Ethan, remembering him, imagining him beside her. She held out her hand and felt his presence, could imagine the way he’d take her palm in his and wrap his fingers around it, the way he’d catch her eye and smile at her like no one else could. The way he’d gently lift her hand and press a kiss to it.
Tomorrow, she would tell them the truth. Tomorrow she would be honest with Ava and tell her that Ethan had perished along with his family, dying just days before the camp he’d been sent to was liberated. But today was a day for happiness and love; and for that, she would forever be grateful.
