“A woman,” I said. “Someone I knew before your mother. The woman who saved my life during the war.”
“Someone you loved?” Lizzie asked.
I inhaled. As I let the breath go, I nodded.
“Yes.”
“Did...” Emma looked from me to her mother and back again. “Did Gran know?”
I smiled and chuckled. “Your grandmother was the one who helped heal me after I returned home, thinking Kate dead.”
Emma nodded and slid her hand into her mother’s. I met Lizzie’s eyes and she gave me the same smile her mother used to give and then we all turned our attention back to Selene.
“Kate Campbell’s name at birth was Gisela Holländer,” Selene began, and then went on to explain the parents she’d been born to, the quality of her life—the extreme wealth, the apartment in the city, the country house, and the travel. The circle of friends they belonged to. The way she was treated by her parents, how she was expected to behave, the friends she was to surround herself with, the piano lessons, social graces lessons, extra tutoring to ensure she excelled not only in school, but understood politics.Theirpolitics.
“She hated it,” Selene said. “All of it. And her mother made no qualms about her disdain for her. And her sister.”
I frowned. “I thought... Wasn’t she an only child?”
Selene shook her head. “She had a younger sister. Younger by six years. Catrin. Cat. Kitty Cat. When you met Gisela, she was of the assumption that her sister had died years before. She learned she was still alive after you returned to the front.”
“She sent a letter that said she had to go home,” I said, remembering. “I thought she’d meant Manhattan. I thought she’d gone back to where she lived with her aunt... Victoria?”
“Victoria. Yes,” she said. “Victoria was actually born Helene. Gisela was nine when Helene married a man named Elias Fuchs, a wealthy Austrian businessman who ran in the same circles as Gisela’s parents. Elias was the only son of one of Austria’s wealthiest couples, who had died years before, leaving him, their sole heir, the entirety of their fortune. What his parents didn’t know when they were alive, was that he had been using his hefty allowance to help the opposition of their political leanings.” Selene paused and took in each of us before continuing. “Like Gisela, Elias didn’t agree with his parents’ ideologies. Or those of the man they supported. He was secretly working against them, attending parties to gain knowledge, which he then passed on to certain friends he’d made. American and British friends. In Helene he met a kindred spirit, and the two of them worked together as part of an underground group that had existed since the First World War. No one would suspect the wealthy, sparkling couple attending parties at her sister and brother-in-law’s bidding could be spies. So when they left on a long-planned vacation the year Gisela turned thirteen, there was intense shock and sadness within the group when their plane crashed and they died.”
She went on to explain that they’d actually faked their deaths, setting them up to begin a new life in America, Gisela’s knowledge of the plan, and how they’d sent for her, under false pretenses, two years later.
“When Gisela was fourteen, she began correspondence with a girl her same age,” Selene said. “It was a program set up between her exclusive private school and one in California where the parents of the children quietly supported Nazism. Of course, Gerhard and Gabriela loved this. They had hosted several prominent European celebrities over the years, and the thought of getting in with Hollywood... Well. Gabriela was keen. And so they both supported the pen-pal relationship wholeheartedly. And when Gisela was invited to go visit her for two weeks the summer after she turned sixteen, they practically packed her bags for her, sending her off with a trusted friend of the family.”
Selene shifted in her seat, suddenly looking uncomfortable and glancing worriedly from Lizzie to Emma to me.
“I understand this is a lot of information and I’ve come to your home uninvited,” she said. “I—if you want me to stop at any time I can.”
“Please keep going,” Emma said.
Selene looked to Lizzie, who nodded, then to me.
“Can’t stop now, kid,” I said. “This group loves a good story.”
She nodded. “Where was I?”
“The pen pal,” Lizzie said, leaning forward, her elbows on her knees.
“The pen pal didn’t really exist. At least not in the form of a sixteen-year-old girl. The letters were actually written by the woman in charge of handling the mail that came in and out of the school—and who was part of the network Gisela’s aunt and uncle worked with. Using a code Helene and Gisela had made up during their many walks and talks, she sent letters filled with innocent-sounding details of her life by the ocean, browning her skin in the sun, and luxurious vacations with her imaginary parents. A month in France, a jaunt to Seattle, two weeks in Hawaii...and a long, boring week in her grandmother’s home on the Upper East Side of Manhattan.
“For two years Gisela exchanged letters with this imaginary girl, cementing a narrative. A history. Trust.”
“What about the trusted friend?” Emma asked. “Did she know what she was getting herself into?”
“Indeed,” Selene said. “In fact, there were a few people associated with the Holländer household who knew, as they’d been recommended for hire or introduced to the elder Holländers before Gisela was born. By her aunt Helene.” She looked to me. “She had eyes and ears everywhere in that house.”
“As soon as Gisela landed in California, the woman she’d been exchanging letters with handed her a set of papers. Inside was her new name, a new birthday, and a hometown listed as Manhattan.
“She spoke English, but with a heavy German accent, and so she didn’t say a word on the train that took her cross-country to New York and her aunt Helene, now Victoria, and Uncle Elias, now Frank.
“She was homeschooled until she could speak without a trace of an accent,” Selene said. “Then went to high school, made friends, and on the weekends she volunteered as a candy striper at a nearby hospital with her aunt. It was there she found her love of caring for others. And in the back of her mind...a mission.
“The three of them, Victoria, Frank, and Kate were a tight-knit group. At home they listened constantly to the radio. Due to Uncle Frank’s job, still providing funds for spies overseas, they were privy to information others weren’t about the war coming. After Kate graduated from high school, she immediately enrolled in nursing school. She was determined that if war should come, she would be able to help her fellow Americans. It was her way of trying to make amends for her country’s transgressions.”
