Sarah lowered her bag into her lap. “Things are about to change for our family.”
Annika shivered. She didn’t know if she could bear another change.
“My father lost his position in the mine,” Sarah said, “and now all the Austrian Jews are being summoned to Vienna.”
“Will you go?”
Sarah shook her head. “We’re moving to Bolivia to live with our cousin. He’s already found Father a job.”
Tears sprang from a well deep inside Annika, spilling over onto her cheeks.
“It’s warm enough to swim all year in South America,” Sarah said, talking faster as if to convince herself along with Annika. “And we won’t have to worry—”
“I don’t know what I’ll do without you.”
“I’ll write,” Sarah promised.
“And I shall write you.”
Sarah hugged her. “Friends for life.”
“Geh mit Gott,”Annika said, trying to be strong.
Go with the blessing of God.
But even as she said the words, her heart was bleeding. No matter how many extra schillings she saved from their grocery money, hiding them from Vati in her metal box, she’d never have enough for passage to South America.
Sarah slipped into her canoe, and sadness washed over Annika as her friend paddled away.
Perhaps it was time for her to say a final good-bye to that wide-eyed girl who wanted to play. Perhaps it was time for her to grow up as well.
CHAPTER 11
“I’m late, I’m lost!I’m late, I’m lost! I’m going to miss my own wedding.”
Well, not mywedding, but the panicked words from Robert Munsch’sRibbon Rescueloop through my head as I attempt—quite poorly—to traverse the metropolis known as Ohio State University, searching for a parking space to house Charlotte’s Prius.
“What time is Dr. Nemeth’s class?” Charlotte asks from the seat beside me, her eyes hidden behind JackieO sunglasses, her silver-white hair curled with soft waves.
“Four.”
She checks her cell phone. “It’s three fifteen now.”
“We’re close,” I say, trying to reassure both of us that this road trip wasn’t in vain.
In hindsight, perhaps I should have accepted Dr. Nemeth’s offer to drive to Mount Vernon, but Charlotte has been asking toshop in Easton, and at the time, it seemed like a good idea to visit those stores and Dr. Nemeth on the same day. I hadn’t wanted a man who’d found me via the Internet to come to the bookshop either, but it wasn’t like Dr. Nemeth couldn’t visit on his own—the address to Magic Balloon is right on the website.
Charlotte’s phone rings, Bach’s Minuet in G major interrupting my thoughts. She quickly mutes the ringer.
“Who’s that?” I ask.
She shrugs. “Probably a telemarketer.”
I nod toward the phone. “You can answer it.”
She tucks it into her navy-blue handbag instead.
We pass century-old brick buildings, one with a clock tower, and then modern ones enclosed in glass. A reflecting pool. Shady buckeye trees. The gray perimeter of the football stadium and Grecian columns on the library. No time for it now, but I wish we could escape into the library for an hour and peruse the books.
