"I never gave up hope that we would reunite."
"Never?" Amelia questions.
My head sways from side to side. "Amelia, I bought his and hers sofa chairs more than a half-century ago. Your chair has been waiting for you beside mine all this time, never sat in, never used. I knew someday you would find your chair to grow old in next to me."
Amelia presses herself up into a more upright position on the bed, pushing through her evident discomfort. "A chair?" she questions, inquisitively.
"Your chair," I correct her.
Amelia smiles—that smile that hasn’t changed, the one where her eyes tilt in the corners, following the curve of her upturned lip. Age has nothing on her beauty. "I look forward to sitting in my chair," she says, her head resting softly into her pillow.
"You need sleep, darling." I lean forward and place a kiss on Amelia’s forehead, letting my lips linger for a second longer than necessary. "Tomorrow is the first day of the rest of our lives."
"I’m going to hold you to that, Charlie Crane."
My legs feel heavy and tired as I walk out of Amelia’s room, down the hall, and back into the waiting room where I plan to wait for the rest of my life to begin.
"How is she?" Emma asks as I take a seat on one of the blue padded chairs. Emma must have put lotion on her hands because the small area smells of lilac and vanilla. It smelled like newspaper when I left. "Is she all right?"
"She is Amelia. Of course, she is all right, dear."
Emma stands up and moves two seats down to sit next to me. "Reading Grams’s journal has changed so much for me, Charlie. She was so secretive about it all." Emma wraps her long hair behind her back and straightens her posture while staring tiredly through the wall.
"It was a way of blocking out the pain," I explain without knowing the truth, but I can only imagine her reasons were similar.
"Yeah, speaking of pain, what happened to your arm?" Emma asks. "The journal didn’t say much about that."
I glance down at the prosthetic arm I wear as a Band-Aid—the kind of bandage that hides pain rather than assisting in the healing process.
Chapter 19
1942
Terezín, Czechoslovakia
Aroutine is what we had for the first two months of spring: a steady onslaught of murders, death by sickness, and deportations to the killing camps. All along, I felt like a bomb was about to drop on us all.
"Crane!" A commander was shouting my name from a distance. I recognized the voice, as did the hairs on my neck. Any time Sven called my name, it was an awful sound. "All of my men are to meet at headquarters at thirteen hundred hours. Understood, ja?"
"Ja, Herr," I responded, holding my flat palm straight out in front of me. "Heil Hitler."
"Heil Hitler," he responded before walking off, staring longingly at Amelia as he passed by her. I hated the way he looked at her. It wasn't long ago that he confessed his desire for Amelia.
"Jewish woman or not, she is a beauty. What a waste," he said. It was the day I was caught speaking to her, but the conversation appeared to be appropriate between a soldier and a Jewish prisoner because I had been careful not to be caught in any other situation. However, Sven wanted to be the one controlling Amelia. Since then, he had kept an eye on her. He had also given her unnecessary orders, causing me to fear what else he had in mind.
My guilty conscience didn't know if his attraction to Amelia had something to do with me, or if he still would have spotted her if we weren't caught conversing that day. I knew of men barging into the women's cells at night, and then taking advantage. I prayed Sven wouldn't hunt Amelia down for that same reason.
I lifted my arm, allowing my sleeve to scrunch at the elbow so that I could see the time on my wristwatch. There was an hour before I needed to be at the administration building. We had meetings often, but they were pre-scheduled and at the same time each week. Something was different about the upcoming meeting. We were going to receive news about that hypothetical atomic bomb falling from the sky.
We all saw it coming.
I paced my area, overhearing Amelia tell another prisoner she would be right back. Often, she would run out of paper, or a pencil would break. Amelia would tend to the supply closet and return promptly as I had watched many times over the last five months.
The coast was clear, so I took a different route to the supply closet, meeting Amelia there. She gasped when I stepped into sight. Most of the prisoners were on edge, waiting to hear they stepped out of line for breathing the wrong way. People had been killed for that too.
"Charlie, you frightened me," she said, clutching her chest.
"Something is happening, Amelia. I don't know what it is, but I have a bad feeling."
