“The gentlemen will be right down,” he said calmly, as if it was just a small thing that was about to happen.
Eva turned toward the elevators on the far side of the lobby and began to walk slowly toward them, stopping a few yards from the brassy doors.
She watched the dial above the one that indicated a descent from the fourth floor had begun. Watched the crescent that showed the journey from the floors above to the lobby. Felt Melanie’s presence a few feet behind her.
A happy, melodic sound trilled, and the doors slowly opened.
And then it was as if June’s time machine really did exist because Sascha and Arman walked out of it.
They had aged, too. Just like she had. They had surely seen things no person should have to see, lived through what no oneshould have to, had maybe done things they thought they’d never do. Just like she had.
But beyond the outward appearance of fifteen years having passed, they were still Arman and Sascha, the brother she adored and the man she loved. She knew as soon as they enveloped her in their arms that Papa had not survived the gulag. Her tears of elation were those of sorrow, too.
Arman pulled back so that Sascha could encircle Eva in his arms unimpeded. He kissed her neck and forehead and cheek and then her lips.
“I’ve been looking for you for so long,” he whispered in German into her hair. “I was afraid…” His words trailed off for a moment. “No matter where I looked I couldn’t find an Eva Kruse from Norka,” he continued a second later. “From other places, yes, but not from Norka. I finally found my mother in Budapest. She said you’d lost track of each other when she remarried but that you’d stayed in Germany. Nobody I talked to knew where you were.”
“I thought you were dead, Sascha,” she whispered back. “Everyone said you were dead, that I should let you go. I tried, but I couldn’t.”
He wrapped his arms more firmly around her and she felt the burden of five thousand days begin to crack and splinter in that tightness.
“Come with Arman and me,” he said. “We are heading back to Minneapolis tonight. We are staying with friends who have family there. You will, won’t you? Please say you will come with me? Please?”
She reached up to touch Sascha’s face.
“I have never left you, Sascha.”
30
Melanie watched through the porthole window of the airplane as Omaha came into focus from out of the cloud cover. Nicky knelt on the seat next to her with his face against the glass in jubilant glee.
“See all the little cars on the snowy roads?” she said, tousling his hair gently, already missing having her nephew to herself. It had been surprisingly wonderful to care for him the last two weeks.
The voice of an airline attendant came over a loudspeaker telling the passengers the plane would be landing in a few minutes and everyone needed to check to see that their seat belts were securely fastened.
“Let’s get your seat belt on,” she said to Nicky as she helped him resettle onto his seat and buckled him in.
Melanie leaned back into the seat cushion and took a deep, calming breath. Flying was still a novelty to her and a bit unnerving. She closed her eyes to picture Eva on her flight the previous evening to Minneapolis, with her brother and Sascha most likely on either side.
How remarkable it was that Eva had been reunited with them. After Eva had introduced her brother and Sascha to Melanie and June, they’d gone to the hotel’s restaurant for what seemed like endless cups of coffee so that they could tell Eva what they’d endured and how they’d been released.
Eva had been unaware that the gulag system had begun to significantly change after Josef Stalin’s death four years earlier, and that tens of thousands of prisoners had received amnesty and been released—and were continuing to be released.
Sascha and Arman had been amnestied in 1954 and traveled to West Germany as soon as they had the resources to do so. They began the search for Eva, Irina, and Tanja right away. It took ten months to locate Irina and Tanja in Budapest with help from Displaced Persons officials and relief agencies, and many more after that to discover that five women by the name of Eva Kruse had emigrated from the many DP camps in West Germany, and then still more months to find that three of those women had come to the United States: one to Dallas, one to Chicago, and one to Los Angeles.
Sascha and Arman had documents and sponsors in place—in St. Paul—to complete their immigration to the United States themselves, but had been holding back on moving forward until they’d exhausted every effort to find Eva. They thought perhaps they had exhausted every effort.
When Melanie and June had left Eva at the hotel, they’d hugged goodbye as if they’d been friends for decades rather than just a month.
“Stay in touch?” Melanie said as they broke away.
“I promise,” Eva said.
“I suppose you’ll have a Minnesota address after today?” June asked with a smile.
“I hope so.”
Melanie and June had driven back to Max’s for the night and then June gave her and Nicky a ride to Los Angeles International that morning.
