He shot me a side glance. “Pretty much everything now. We had a family discussion.”
“Are you serious?” My voice rose several levels. “What does a ‘family discussion’ entail?”
“Not much. My dad pulled me into my grandfather’s study with my mom and grandma. My grandfather told my parents about how Ruth grew up with him, but not much else. Afterwards, my dad asked me why Grandpa had been so upset and Grandma so—weird—and—” He shrugged.
“And what?”
“I told him about the letters. About Edward and Ruth. About how I’m trying to help you find out about your family history.”
Emotions muddled together in my chest, baking soda and vinegar, the collision an explosion I didn’t know how to deal with. Of course I wanted Noah to talk to his dad. But I didn’t love Harry Barbanel knowing about my search—maybe because he so obviously disapproved of me, and I hated the squicky, dirty feeling being disapproved of gave me.
I guess Noah felt the same whenever he faced his dad.
“What does he think?” I asked. “About you helping me?”
Noah shrugged. “Want to get dinner?”
“Noah!”
He sighed. “He doesn’t love it.”
“I suppose he thinks you should stop me from digging any further.”
He nodded briefly.
“So he probably wasn’t thrilled to see us together here.”
“Probably not.” He grinned at me. “Though on the other hand, my last girlfriend was Catholic, and they were half convinced I’d marry her, so maybe they’re thrilled.”
Two bolts to the chest. One: being compared to a previous girlfriend, as though I might occupy a similar status (why did I overthink everything?). Two: Who was this previous girlfriend? When had they broken up? How could I subtly learn everything about her? “Oh?”
“There’s a place on Main Street named afterMoby-DickI’ve been meaning to try,” Noah said. “Let’s go there.”
So much for the girlfriend-prying. I went along with him into town, our hands still lightly held. “So you told your dad about the romance and the letters—did you also tell him about the necklace?”
Noah glanced at me and briefly paused. “No.”
“No? You hesitated.”
He half laughed. “No. I didn’t think it would be helpful.”
“Because he’d think I was prying even more?”
“It would have gone over really poorly, yeah.” He paused in front of a restaurant’s awning. “Here we are.”
And we went inside, leaving lost necklaces and old girlfriends and disapproving families behind.
Later, sitting on Mrs. Henderson’s porch as the cicadas sang and the moon shone down, I called Mom.
Mom already knew about Kindertransport, because moms knew about things like Kindertransport and taxes and the ins and outs of health care and whether or not the weird bump on your arm meant you were dying. But she’d never heard about American Kindertransport.
“What qualifies you as being one of these one thousand children?” she asked. “How’s it an organization? It sounds like a loose collection of people with similar stories.”
“I dunno, maybe it’s a broad identifier.”
I could hear her frowning. “But then it could be much more than a thousand, and what would they call it?”
“Maybe it’s about a specific time period or they came over a particular way. I haven’t looked it up yet, but the rabbi gave us the email of her friend who she said researches similar stuff. Itsoundssort of like O’ma, right? O’ma’s parents sent her away for safety, right?”
