Sara Goldman.
I gasped.
“What? What is it?”
“I found them.” My great-grandparents. My mother’s grandparents.I swiveled my laptop so Noah could see. “Look!”
“Wow! Excellent sleuthing.”
I took Noah’s face in my hands and smacked a loud, triumphant kiss on his mouth.
In painstaking German, crafted mostly through Google Translate, I wrote to the organization through which I’d downloaded the censuses to see if they had any related paperwork. And I looked up Lübeck, the town where my grandmother had apparently been born. It was a German port, with inhabitants since Neolithic times. Jews weren’t allowed inside, so in the early 1700s they set up in a nearby town of Moisling; when Lübeck annexed Moisling in 1806, they came along. By the early 1900s, over seven hundred Jews lived in Lübeck.
How hard could it be to find a handful of Goldmans among a mere seven hundred Jews? I wrote to the Lübeck city hall to see if they had my grandmother’s birth record, or my great-grandparents’—then shot off a similar request to the Lübeck synagogue, which had been around since 1880, and was apparently the only still-functioning pre-war temple. It looked like it, too. Quite a lot of red brick.
Three days later, the synagogue sent me birth certificates for O’ma and her parents, as well as a marriage certificate for the latter.
“I’m shocked,” I told Noah next night, when he picked me up as I finished closing the Prose Garden. “I felt like I was looking for a needle in a haystack.”
“But you said they didn’t tell you about any relatives?”
I sighed. “No. And I tried googling, but nothing came up. Still,it’s proof they existed. Proof they had a life.” I looked out the car’s window at the moon. It was ten thirty, and usually I’d go home and to sleep, but Noah had been insistent I come out. “Where are we going?”
“It’s a surprise.”
“I hate surprises.”
He leaned over and kissed me. “Tough luck.”
We drove up North Beach Street, but instead of turning toward Jetties, we took a slight right, then turned up Cobblestone Hill. We drove along a road I’d never been on, passing land with massive dark houses, and parked along an empty lawn in the center of a cul-de-sac.
“This way,” he murmured after we parked. Even this late, the air was hot and humid, a lackadaisical breeze barely stirring the heavy air. Noah took my hand and led me to the end of the pavement. A sandy path took over, squeezing its way between two sets of tall hedges marking different properties. This no-man’s-land ended at the top of wooden steps built into a dune and leading down to the beach. Standing at the brink, we had a sweeping view of the water.
I froze. Turned out I didn’talwayshate surprises. “Oh my god.”
Noah wrapped his arm around my shoulders and pulled me into his side. “I know.”
The water glowed with neon blue sparks, washing to shore and back, eerie and beautiful and unearthly. Awe cascaded through me. I hadn’t known the world could be like this. “Whatisit?”
“Bioluminescent jellyfish. They’re called comb jelly.”
We walked down the steps to the sand, kicking off our shoes and approaching the water. The waves crashed against the shore, beautiful and glowing and strange, pulling at something deep within my gut. Sometimes, when I saw nature like this, stunning and bizarre, I felt like I’d been presented with an aching secret I didn’tunderstand, something tremendously ancient and important.
Only this time, I didn’t ache as much as I often did. Noah’s presence filled the hole in my chest. With him, I could appreciate the beauty. And it didn’t make me long for something I would never have.
Noah pulled off his shirt, and my thoughts narrowed back on him. “What are you doing?”
“Going in.” Happiness lit his face as he grinned at me.
“Are you serious?” I gaped at him, then at the glowing water. “Is it safe?”
He walked backward toward the water. “Guess we’ll find out. Unless you’re scared?”
“Fighting words, Noah Barbanel.”
His grin was as bright as the moon. “Guess you’ll have to fight me, then.” And before I could protest, he dove forward and picked me up, throwing me over his shoulder and running into the water, the spray splashing up at me. I struggled valiantly, laughing and hollering. “Don’t you dare!”
“Can’t stop me.”
