Luzi stole out of the library to her parents’ bedroom.
“Mutti,” she called out, twisting the doorknob, but it was locked. The sedatives seemed to deafen her mother’s ears to both the thunder and Marta’s cries. But Frau Dichter would most certainly hear upstairs, and Frau Dichter was an Aryan woman who didn’t care much for children. She’d already complained to the superintendent about the crying, and the super had warned Mutti that she must keep her child quiet if they wanted to remain in this building.
Luzi slipped past the locked door to the nursery. Marta had pulled herself up in her crib, her cries growing louder when she saw her sister. Luzi picked her up, gently rubbed her back, and Marta melted into her like soft butter on toast. Her sister may only have lived ten months, but she was scared, just like the rest of them.
No matter how much Luzi wanted to flee to America to attend Juilliard, she could never leave her parents or her baby sister behind. Together they would run, far away from here.
She paced up and down the corridor, Marta fading back to sleep on her shoulder.
Mutti couldn’t give up now. None of them could. If nothingelse, they needed to come together to save Marta. No child, especially a Jewish one, should grow up under the hopelessness of this regime.
Annika knelt by the narrow garden bed with her trowel and began replanting flowers in the blanket of soil that covered her mother’s grave—alpine roses, lilies, and tiny clusters of yellow stars known as edelweiss, each star bursting with white-petaled rays.
She’d carefully transported the flowers from the mountain to this hillside cemetery of wooden crosses, iron lanterns, and colorful pocket gardens. Her mother had loved the flowers that bloomed wild in these Alps and the lakes that flowed wild between the forests and peaks. She’d loved the birds and meadows and the sky that changed by the hour, proving, she’d once said, that God prized artistry.
After the last tender roots were planted, Annika kissed her stained palm and held it against her mother’s name, etched deeply into the wood.
Kathrin Knopf
1902–1934
Made Beautiful in His Time
A shadow stole over the garden, and she turned to look out at the view, at the sun painting pale orange and pink across the canvas of blue, the final spray of light before dusk. On the far side of the lake was Schloss Schwansee, a faint watermark stamped onto a masterpiece.
In her collage of memories, Annika remembered tramping up this hill beside her mother as a girl, delivering flowers to a friend’s grave or lighting a candle in one of the lanterns. This was the closest place, her mother had once said, to stepping into paradise on earth.
She couldn’t bear to think of her beautiful mother trapped under the soil. Mama, she prayed, was in an eternal paradise now, safe and healthy with the Father she loved, her heart following the treasure burnished in her life.
Annika’s father had paid the rent for Kathrin’s body to rest in this soil for another six years. Instead of saving the money to renew this lease, her father drank away most of their income, but somehow Annika would earn enough to keep her mother’s body here, along with the two books she’d snuck into the wooden casket when her father wasn’t looking, as if her mother would have to remember her because she had the stories they’d shared.
Her stomach turned each time she thought of the caretaker digging up her mother’s bones to transplant them to the Beinhaus for everyone to see. She would do almost anything to keep her mother in this soil, planted like the flowers she loved, even ask Herr Dornbach for the money.
If Herr Dornbach ever came back to the estate.
Last week she heard Vati tell Hermann that the Dornbachs wouldn’t own Schloss Schwansee much longer. It was the strangest thing to say. Frau Dornbach’s family had owned it for generations. Max not returning to the castle—she couldn’t bear to think about it. Her father was wrong, but still she would ask Hermann about the conversation. He would tell her the truth.
The shadows lengthened until they crept into the back edges of the gardens, and she gathered her trowel and pail that carriedthe lake water needed for the flowers. Then she climbed down the steps to the shore and paddled her wooden boat toward home.
A sliver of moon, curved in an elegant script, lit the span of indigo sky. Night had already settled over the estate; her father was probably preparing to drive to the beer hall in Obertraun if he hadn’t left already.
Max’s cat was waiting near the boathouse to escort Annika to the barn. After Annika milked the goat, she would reward Frederica with a small bowl of her own, and then the cat would snuggle beside her in bed as she read from her mother’s Bible.
Annika secured the boat and hurried toward the barn before the goats started bleating. But when she turned toward the cottage, her heart began to race at the sight of a sedan parked nearby.
Had Max and his family finally returned? Perhaps they were looking for her.
With Frederica at her heels, she hurried across the lane, toward the solitary cottage light that beckoned her, but before she reached the door, the car engine started and the driver backed into the courtyard, rushing past her.
In the dim light, she saw her father’s face in the backseat. He must have seen her standing beside the trees, but the car didn’t stop.
The sound of the car engine faded, but Annika still didn’t move.
Who had taken her father away?
CHAPTER 17
The clock ticks past five in the morning, but sleep continues to play its wicked game of hide-and-seek. Light from the streetlamp carves a channel through my bedroom, trailing across my comforter, settling on the books stacked on my nightstand, but I refuse to surrender my day to sleep deprivation yet.
