The sun was warm, beating down on them. “Have you been here all day?”
Dr. Weiss nodded. “I’m doing everything possible...”
“I know,” Max assured. He couldn’t imagine how crippling it must feel to be stuck in a country that didn’t want you there, with no place else to go.
The door to the consulate opened, and a small man in a suit stepped out. “I’m sorry, gentlemen,” he said. “The consulate is closing for the night.”
Groans rippled down the line.
“We’ll reopen at nine.”
The crowd began to disperse around them. “You have everything—safe?” the doctor asked Max in a whisper.
Max nodded. “I can try to retrieve your things before you leave.”
Dr. Weiss shook his head. “The only valuables we’re allowed to bring with us are wedding bands.”
He slipped something into Max’s hand, but Max didn’t dare look down. He put it into his rucksack instead.
“I will keep everything safe for you.”
“Thank you,” Dr. Weiss said before tipping his hat.
The doctor crossed the street, and then Max saw Luzi, sitting on a bench. She wore a plain yellow blouse and skirt, a small hatpinned over her hair, but there was nothing plain about her, even on a seemingly ordinary day like this one.
Had she been waiting all day?
She opened a silver thermos and poured a cup of something warm for her father. Without thinking, Max stepped off the curb, wanting to speak with her, but before he moved closer, the words of Frau Weiss echoed in his mind.
Was his presence really a threat to Luzi?
He would never hurt her. And he couldn’t possibly ignore her when she was right in front of him.
Luzi glanced over her father’s shoulder, met Max’s eye. The slightest nod from her, and then she looked away, but he saw the fear in her eyes.
Luzi was afraid of him.
Heart raw, he ducked behind the trunk of an oak tree and watched her walk away as he’d done at the ball, except this time she walked arm in arm with her father. She held her head high, as if she dared anyone to defy them as they walked home, but Dr.Weiss’s head was bowed in defeat.
Max had to find a way to rescue Luzi and her family before Hitler followed through with his threat to solve what he believed to be a problem. If the Weiss family didn’t leave Austria soon, it wouldn’t be long, he feared, before it would be too late to help them at all.
CHAPTER 15
Wednesday, Thursday, Friday. The days pass achingly slowly without a word from Dr. Nemeth about finding Annika and no email from Sophie with the newspaper photograph and caption. I’ve checked my inbox about a hundred times, and not even the bookseller from Idaho has returned my email.
I climb up on my story-time stool this morning like a red cardinal on a perch ring. Michael is back this week, though he’s refrained so far from blurting out about his underwear, much to the dismay, I imagine, of most of my audience. Several of the kids keep looking his way, but I suspect his mom had a proper talking-to with him before they stepped into the store.
Devon and his dad have joined us, and while I smile at Devon, I try to avoid Mr. Baker’s gaze. Cracking the cover of a Karma Wilson book, I begin to read her story about a bear who feelsscared, but even as I read, a conversation with Devon’s father loops through my mind, preventative measures that sharpen as I carve through the words.
I’ll tell him that I have another date tonight if he asks me to dinner—technically true since I’m headed over to Brie’s house. And if he asks me if I’m in a relationship, I’ll tell him yes—technically true once again even if it’s not the kind of relationship he’s probably referring to.
I turn another page.
“‘Bear trembles in the wind,’” I read. When I pause, the kids shiver with me. “‘How he longs for a friend.’”
The children shout out the next line in unison. “‘And the bear feels scared!’”
I nod. “Exactly.”
