“You knew? And you never told me!”
Walter looked at Sophia with droopy eyes. “I wanted to tell you on the drive to West Oak Forest, but I didn’t want to burden you with too much.”
“Before then, Walter. You could have told me years ago.”
“Honestly, I had started to forget. As cruel as Ma Deary can be, farm life suits me. I’m at peace here, so I just never thought about it.”
Sophia put her sausage back in the foil. If she needed any more proof that she was one of the Brown Babies, Walter had just given it to her.
“What do we do now? What about Karl and Lu?”
“We keep our mouths shut. No sense making a song and dance about nothing. We tell them when they are older.”
“I can’t live like this, not anymore. It feels like I’m just drifting, with nothing to anchor me. I have to find my real mother. I need answers.”
Walter held his hands over the flame. “You sure about that? Ma Deary would blow a gasket if she caught wind of any of this.”
“Mrs. Gathers said she’d help me. I’ve come so far in just a few weeks. I need to see this to the end.” Sophia unwrapped the sausage again and took a bite.
“Okay.”
“Okay, what?”
“If you want to see this through, I’ll help you.”
CHAPTER 46Philadelphia, PA, April 1954
OZZIE
The kitchen smelled freshly scrubbed with bleach, and the transistor radio that sat in the window was tuned to the morning news. Ozzie sipped his second cup of coffee while listening to the daily reports.
Rita had come up from the basement in her housecoat and slippers. A basket of laundry rested in the crook of her arm. “Morning.” She repositioned the basket, reached down, and kissed him on the top of his head. She smelled of Ivory soap.
Rita’s first year of law school had taken up her days with legal principles, civil procedures, and moot court exercises. Ozzie didn’t know how she still managed to get chores completed in between. The house was always spick-and-span.
“What time are you heading off to school?”
Rita placed the basket on the dining room table, which she often used as a laundry counter. “Once I sort these clothes and get dressed, I want to stop by the library to follow up on a case I’ve been studying.”
“What’s it about?” Ozzie turned toward Rita and watched as she folded a bundle of towels.
“You’d find it interesting. Back in 1924, two men were shoved onto a train. One of them dropped a package of explosives that caused a penny-weighing machine to crash down onto a woman passenger’s head.”
“Jesus.”
“She was injured so badly that she became mute.” Rita moved the pile of towels aside and picked up a fitted sheet. “We’re having a debate about who was at fault for the woman’s injuries, the man or the railroad company.”
“Sounds interesting,” Ozzie said as Rita carried the folded laundry upstairs.
In some ways, he envied Rita’s studies. For the nearly two years he’d been home, he had little time for reading. He had only retained German well enough to mail his quarterly search ad in for the classified section of theMannheimer Morgen,with the hope that Jelka would see it. The ad hadn’t yielded a response yet, and beyond translating the notice, he hadn’t stretched his mind in any capacity. He couldn’t find the time. His favorite author, Richard Wright, had published a new book,Savage Holiday,and he hadn’t even had time to purchase it, let alone read it.
Then Rita marched into the kitchen with such a heavy step that it caused Ozzie to look up from his coffee. “What’s wrong?”
Her eyes blazed as she harshly whispered, “Great-aunt Reese just said you haven’t paid her the rent yet?”
Ozzie’s fingers tightened around his mug. “I know.”
“Well, when do you plan on paying it? It was due two weeks ago. She said if she don’t get the money from us, the electricity is liable to be shut off.”
