She and Hermann eventually parented four children—threesons and a daughter—and then added agrandto their parenting title for a total of six grandchildren along with an astonishing number of great-grandchildren and seven great-great-grandchildren in recent years, though onegreatwas plenty for her. None of her tribe understood why she didn’t want to visit this place. All they saw was the beauty and mystique of the mountains and lake, while she... All she saw were the ghosts.
For almost eighty years she’d faithfully paid rent for the graves above the lake, and no one had ever asked about Luzia or her story. Most Austrians were too afraid to talk about those lost years between 1938 and 1945, veiling them behind the black drapery of time. The power and strength of the Nazis clouded many a vision during that era, and a whole generation wished they’d made other choices.
But admitting the wrongness took a heart humbled, crippled even, and many in this land, her included, chose a crutch instead of gambling between heartache and healing.
So many times over the years, she wished that she could go back and stop the Gestapo before they took Annika away. Not that she regretted the life Annika had given her, not for one moment; it just wasn’t hers to live.
She closed her eyes, remembering again the dance so long ago that she never should have danced. She should have run from Max, like she ran from Ernst in the park. If so, perhaps the woman who had truly loved him would be alive.
It was much too late to change anything from the past now, but that woman—Callie, she’d said—she knew Luzia’s name.
What else did she know?
Her body may fail her, but her memory was still as sharp as one of the bevels used to carve a violin. She remembered mosteverything, including that conversation yesterday, but before her body gave way—or at least, that’s how Sigmund described her spell—she couldn’t remember if Callie told her where she’d heard about Luzia.
And she desperately needed to remember.
Her hand slipped instinctively down to her leg, tracing the faint scar that no one else could see. Some things she needed to remember, and others she’d spent a lifetime wishing she could forget.
The strains of an orchestra stole into the library. Strauss and his “Village Swallows from Austria”—the waltz that she and Max had danced. She glanced around, thinking perhaps her mind was failing her after all, but she realized that Sigmund must be playing music in another room.
And the melody of Strauss strengthened her.
Her son had vague memories of the youth camp that had taken over the estate, but he didn’t remember the evil that ran rampant here before or during the war. He knew all about National Socialism, of course, but knowing was much different than experiencing. She’d prayed for his entire life that the only evil he and his siblings would ever have to fight was that which tried to infiltrate from the inside. And she’d prayed that each of them would fight with all their might.
There was much to lose in telling her story now, and yet... perhaps something to gain as well. Hermann had been gone for fourteen years, and she’d read in the papers that Ernst Schmid had died in Berlin a decade after the war, no children surviving him. He was one of many Nazis who’d never gone to trial, cloaking himself as a victim of the past regime.
Only Hermann knew what Ernst had done to her; she’d toldhim when he proposed marriage long ago, and he had kept her secret, raising Sigmund as his son. He’d also helped her search for Marta.
She dropped the handkerchief into her lap, remembering the baby she’d held to her chest as they traversed the Vienna streets, kissing her cheeks before she transferred her into Klara Dornbach’s care.
Sometimes her arms ached for the violin, but they ached even more for her sister.
After the war and then the years of zoned occupation, she and Hermann had traveled to Paris, searching for Klara and Marta in the ruins of war, but they never found either of them. Her sweet sister, she feared, had suffered as Annika had, while Luzia bore only a single scar on her leg.
Her family was all gone, exterminated by evil, and the guilt of it almost crushed her. But God had kept her on this earth for another season. And with Hermann’s help, she decided that she would honor her parents and sister by living, that she would continue Annika’s legacy by serving God and her husband and children.
And Max Dornbach—she didn’t know what happened to him. Near the end of his life, Hermann told her that he’d sent Max away before they married, afraid that the man’s impulsiveness would betray them. He had other motives besides his fear—Luzi knew that—but he had protected her for a lifetime, harbored the secret about her and her child.
She’d prayed for years that God had kept Max on this earth for another season as well.
Sigmund stepped back into the room, his cell phone in hand. He’d turn seventy-nine in August, and unlike his biological father, he had grown into a man of character, a man who wanted to protectthose in his care like the father who’d stepped in to raise him. He’d become a doctor, like his grandfather, but he always called a female colleague when it came to his mother’s medical care.
“Liselotte just called,” he said, sitting on the arm of the chair beside her.
“Did she say that I’m done?”
“She said your body is in perfect working order. The fainting was a fluke.”
“My body is far from perfect order.”
“You’re made of steel, Mama.”
She reached out, took his hand. “I want you to call Callie and her friend.”
He studied her for a moment. “Jonas said they came to the house on Saturday. They were searching for treasure.”
“I don’t know about their treasure; please tell them that.”
