Melanie began to read aloud. “ ‘My name is Arman Kruse. I am here in Los Angeles with my friend Sascha Prinz and we are looking for my sister Eva Kruse, born in Norka, Russia in 1926. You have the name of my sister but your lady says you are from Poland. Please if you are my sister, call me at Hotel Normandie. I apologize my English is not good. I do not speak Polish. Sincerely, Arman Kruse.’ ”
Melanie looked up from the note. “There’s a number, Eva. At the hotel.”
“I told you, Eva!” Yvonne said happily. “I told you I had great news! And why on earth did you tell me you were Polish?”
“I…” Eva began, but she could summon no words. Sascha was alive. And Arman, too.
And what about her papa? Where was he?
Eva turned on her heel. “I have to go.”
“Don’t you want to come in and use the telephone?” Yvonne called after her.
“Do you know where this hotel is?” Eva said to Melanie, who had also turned away from the door and was following her down the two front steps.
“That one will be easy to find. Hotel Normandie is on Normandie Avenue.” She turned to wave to Yvonne. “Thank you!”
The woman was still standing there watching them as Melanieeased away from the curb. June, whose window was rolled down, must have heard the entire conversation.
“I know exactly where that hotel is,” she said.
“You okay, Eva?” Melanie asked when they were five minutes into the drive. She was looking at Eva from the rearview mirror.
Eva didn’t know what she was. She was afraid to be happy. Afraid it was still a dream or that someone was playing a terrible trick on her. Afraid she didn’t deserve this turn of events. Afraid to believe that it didn’t matter if she didn’t.
Fifteen years had passed since she had seen Sascha or her brother. She’d been a teenager then, little more than a child, though at the time she hadn’t felt like one. Now she was a thirty-year-old woman who’d lived through war, internment, starvation, and deprivation. She’d killed a brute of a man and then dug up his disgusting, decaying body. She’d lied to people, deceived them. She’d lived the last fifteen years with recurring nightmares of what she’d seen and what she’d done. On top of that, she’d had everything taken from her—everything.
Was she still the girl Sascha had once loved? Wanted to be with? Would her brother even recognize her?
“Eva?” Melanie said again.
Eva looked up at the eyes watching her in the rearview mirror. “I’m scared.”
June turned around from the front seat. “But you’re not alone.”
Eva swallowed a thickening in her throat and nodded.
They covered the next few miles in silence.
When they arrived at the hotel, Melanie and June did not ask if Eva wanted to go in by herself. They all got out of the car and went inside.
Melanie handed Nicky over to June, and the two of them tookseats in the lobby near a window so that Nicky could watch cars coming and going on the streets outside it.
Eva approached the front desk with Melanie right beside her.
Her palms were tingling with sweat and expectation.
“How may I help you?” The desk clerk’s tone was welcoming but Eva could not bring herself to ask for Arman and Sascha. She had not said their names in such a long time.
When she did not speak, Melanie did: “We’re here to see Arman Kruse or Sascha Prinz. They are guests at your hotel.”
“Certainly.” The man consulted a ledger opened in front of him and then picked up the handset of a nearby phone, shiny and black. “And who shall I say is here?”
Melanie opened her mouth to answer but Eva cleared her throat and spoke first.
“Eva Kruse,” she said. “Tell them Eva Kruse is here.”
The clerk made the call. Said her name. Replaced the handset.
