Amsterdam, Netherlands—Wednesday, July 27, 1938
Celestia sat in the third-floor parlor with the blind students Rick had brought from Berlin. They were all such sweet children. Many nights since they’d arrived, she’d cried herself to sleep.
In each precious face, she saw her granddaughter. Had her family not left Germany, Chaisley could have ended up being just like them. Hunted simply because they were blind. Irreparably flawed in the eyes of a madman.
Of course, if her family hadn’t left Germany, Chaisley wouldn’t have been blinded in London by a bomb. Celestia’s precious son and his wife might still be alive as well. She resisted the urge to thump her cane on the floor. These thoughts were taking her nowhere good.
Almighty God was in control—even though He had no part of evil. It was only because of sin in this world that things were as they were.
“Mrs. Frappier?” Lydia’s musical voice jolted her. “Are you all right?”
“I’m fine, dear.” Amazing how these children could sense her feelings without her saying a word. She must be more cautious from now on. No use in unsettling these sweet ones. Not when they’d already been through so much.
No child—noperson—should ever be treated as less than human. Over the years, the overprotectiveness of her granddaughter had melted away as she’d watched Chaisley blossom and grow.
As much as she hated for Chaisley to put herself in harm’s way now, Celestia was praising God for what He’d done through her.
These young people were proof of that.
It had been almost three weeks since their arrival, and they’d begged and pleaded to have jobs to do to help others find their way to freedom.
Immediately, Celestia went to work teaching them all the different forms of braille. The young people were quick to learn. They’d already mastered New York Point version of writing and reading and also the Boston Line Letter. It had taken all of one day for them to master the original braille from 1829.
Today, she had them in the parlor with their braille slates to start on the work of learning Chaisley’s more intricate code embedded in braille music. With four extra sets of hands, she’d be able to get messages out quicker to her granddaughter and Grafton. And since she’d become the hub here, Celestia needed the help.
The music form of braille was similar to what the students already knew, but they had to learn all the musical terminology on top of understanding paragraph form, bar-by-bar form, and bar-over-bar form.
Since the musical alphabet only contained A–G, Chaisley had come up with a way to show all twenty-six letters of the alphabet for sending missives. Depending on the octave designation, the letter could change. A–G in one octave were the actual letters. One octave up would represent H–N. Two octaves up represented O–U. Three octaves up represented U–Z.
Numbers were easy to incorporate and a dash at the end of a line indicated a change in form for the next.
Changing between paragraph form, bar-by-bar form, and bar-over-bar form should confuse anyone trying to read their communications.
The fact that they had to even think of such a thing made Celestia’s stomach churn. But Grafton reported that two of his letters never made it through, which meant she’d been correct.
The Germans were reading—or at least attempting to read—their mail.
Perhaps more of the network should learn the code. But it was tedious. Especially for anyone who didn’t already understand and read braille and music. Maybe she should at least give the idea to Grafton.
They were preparing for the worst and still hoping for the best. Some in their circle of connections believed that Hitler would take over all of Europe and Asia, and then woe to anyone who disagreed with him or who he deemed unworthy.
Then there were others who believed Hitler would start a war, but they could stop him before he killed too many people or did too much damage. While Celestia had always been a pessimist in nature, she wanted to be an optimist when it came to this. It was much easier to think that all this work they were doing was simply worst-case scenario and wouldn’t be necessary.
But something deep down inside her told her that wasn’t to be.
Yes, she would do whatever she could to help people.
Yes, she would buck up and not sweep the reality of what was happening under the rug.
Yes, she would pray every chance she had that they could help as many as possible.
Right now, it was beautiful to have everyone here. Chaisley, Melanie, Timothy, and Rick needed the rest and refreshment before heading back into the fray. She would revel in every moment she had with them.
“How are you this morning, Mrs. Frappier?”
Grafton caught her by surprise. Especially since he never used such formal speech with her.
He waggled his eyebrows at her. “Have you been on your best behavior?”
