And yes, I want the people who run this children’s home to decide it might be wise to contact this family and let them know their adopted daughter has an aunt who just learned of her existence. What if Amaryllis is wondering where she came from? What if she is troubled, as any eight-year-old might be, by not knowing? Maybe Amaryllis desperately needs to know the mother who bore her wanted very much to keep her but couldn’t. I can give Amaryllis that assurance. I can tell her a lot about her mother if given the chance.
I’m fully aware that the adoptive family may not want anything to do with me. It’s possible they haven’t even told Amaryllis she is adopted. But what if the opposite is true? What if they have?
I walk back into the kitchen. “May I borrow the Studebaker tomorrow, George?” I ask. “I need to go to Oakland.”
29
Before...
MAY TO JUNE 1940
When I returned to the Maier house from my unsuccessful trip to Am Steinhof, the older children were not yet home from school, and Martine, who’d been given a sedative, was asleep in her bed. The friend whom I’d phoned to come for Martine, a fellow officer’s wife named Therese, had called for the family doctor, and he had just left after supplying additional calming pills for Martine, should they be needed. Therese had also learned that Johannes had been contacted by the Viennese field office overseeing the transfer of disabled children to Am Steinhof and was now arranging to be granted several days’ leave. Therese had spoken to him on the telephone.
“What did he say? Can he get her back? Is that why he’s coming home early?” I asked Therese. We were standing in the Maier kitchen as Therese made us both a cup of tea.
“I don’t know that he can get her back,” Therese said doubtfully.
For several seconds, I couldn’t make sense of her answer. Of course he could get her back. Of course he could.
Couldn’t he?
“Did he actually say that?” I said, when I was able. “Did he say he can’t?”
Therese poured the hot water atop the tea leaves in their strainers. “He didn’t say that’s why he’s coming back early. I think he’s coming back because of Martine.”
“But surely he’s going to try,” I said, incredulous. “He has to try to get Brigitta back.”
“I would. You would. So I guess he probably will, too. We didn’t talk long, Helen. I could hear other people in the room with him. He wasn’t alone.”
“I can’t believe this is happening.” I folded myself onto a chair at the kitchen table. “I didn’t mean for it to.”
“I know you didn’t,” Therese said. “And deep down Martine knows, too.”
“I’m afraid this is it for me. Even if we get Brigitta back—and I will not rest until we do—I don’t know if Martine will ever forgive me for not telling her that woman had been here.”
Therese removed the strainers and brought the two teacups to the table. She handed one to me and took the chair opposite me.
“I think in time she might,” Therese said. “Just don’t expect too much from her too soon. She needs someone to blame, and right now it’s you.”
“But Iamto blame.”
Therese shrugged. “I don’t know that there’s any way to have avoided this. I think it was always the Nazis’ plan to do what they did today, to do what they’re doing everywhere else, every day.”
“Surely you are not in agreement?” I was astonished at Therese’s casual tone. “The way they treat the old, the sick, the disabled, the Jews, the Roma, men who love other men? It is as if they want no one around them but their idea of perfect people. Surely you don’t agree with this?”
Therese took a sip of her tea and then set the cup back on itssaucer. “It doesn’t really matter what I think, does it? I don’t have the power to change what is happening, and neither do you. The Nazis are the ones in control, and they have decided this is the way it will be. And so it is.”
“But we can’t sit here and drink tea and do nothing! Isn’t that the same thing as being in agreement?”
“I don’t think it is. And you need to be careful what you do and say, Helen. Austria is not a safe place for dissenters, especially if they are foreigners. You shouldn’t be saying what you are saying right now to other people. You really shouldn’t be saying it even to me. I’m telling you this for your own good.”
I was quiet for a moment, letting that warning settle over me. Perhaps Therese was right that I had no power to change the current situation. But that didn’t mean I had no power at all. “I have to try to get Brigitta back. I have to.”
“It’s not completely your fault they took her. I think she was on their list. Even before you talked to that woman.”
“But I should have told Martine that Fraulein Platz had been here.”
“Maybe so, but would Martine have known to flee with Brigitta that very day? To send the two of you to Innsbruck? She wouldn’t have known they were taking children from other schools. It hadn’t happened yet.”
