“Do you mind if I borrow this a few days?” I ask.
“What do you want with old Hatschi Bratschi?”
“It’s for my research.”
“Of course.” She reaches out to touch the cover as if it might transport her as well before looking back up at me. “How is our Dr. Nemeth?”
He’s not exactly ours, but I decide not to debate the topic. Ihaven’t told either Charlotte or Brie that he’s a widower. It doesn’t change anything between Dr. Nemeth and me, but they might drop hints about our relationship when it’s strictly a professional one. “He and his team are starting to dive today in Lake Hallstatt.”
“Have they discovered any treasure?”
“Not the treasure they’ve been hoping to find, but they recovered a Nazi dagger from Lake Grundlsee.” He sent me a picture of it along with pictures of several smaller items they discovered in the depths of the lake. All of it would be turned over to the Austrian government.
“And Annika?” she asks.
“He confirmed that she lived there during the war, but he doesn’t know where she went after. The gates to the estate are locked, and he said no one that he’s asked remembers her.”
“It’s very difficult to talk about what happened then. Thememories...” Charlotte’s hands shake as she reaches for the porcelain mug that holds her tea, taking a sip before she continues. “You have to relive the pain to tell the stories.”
“I can’t imagine,” I say. “I still wish someone had told Nadine who brought you to the orphanage.”
“By the time she needed that information, everyone was gone.”
I lower my tea. She’s answered my questions over the years when I was searching for her family, but she rarely talked about her memories of France. “What do you mean, they were gone?”
Her green eyes are clear when she looks at me. Her mind might want to run, but she presses forward. “The Nazis came to our orphanage; did I ever tell you that?”
“No—”
“Near the end of the war. The Gestapo decided to clear it out before the Allied soldiers arrived.” She looks at the book cover again, a new sadness stitching her words together. “Nadine had been volunteering to help with the children. I was sick that week, before the Nazis came, so she... she’d taken me to her home.”
“Were the children Jewish?”
“Most of them.” She glances out the window, and I turn with her to see a red-winged blackbird on the branch. “But it shouldn’t matter.”
“No, it shouldn’t.”
“The Nazis killed all the children and caregivers except Nadine and me. As if it were a crime to be young or help a child.” When her voice breaks, I reach for her hand, clasping it. “I was seven by the time the Nazis left France. Nadine and I returned to the abandoned orphanage, and almost everything had been taken or destroyed, including my baptismal certificate. But we found my book. What was worthless to the Nazis was priceless to me.”
My phone buzzes, and I scan a text from Brie.
Thirty children are here, asking about Story Girl. Any idea where she went?
To France, I want to tell her, more than seventy years ago.
We’re coming, I reply.
Charlotte picks up the mugs, the interruption from my phone bringing her back, but it takes me longer to process the threads of this story. What a burden Charlotte has borne her entire life, surviving the invasion of the Nazis while almost everyone close to her was killed.
Did everyone in her biological family die during the war as well? If most of the children in the orphanage were Jewish, Luzia and her daughter might’ve been too.
How did Luzia Weiss transport her baby from Vienna to France?
So many missing pages between the covers of their story, if there is a story connecting Charlotte and the Luzia who danced at the Opera Ball.
When we reach the store, I introduce the kids who don’t know Charlotte to the matron of our story hour, and she surprises them by selecting a modern book, the one about cows that type. They listen, mesmerized by her ability to click and clack and moo without a red cape.
I step back into a row of books, watching her work her magic for both the children and the dozens of parents standing behind them. And I scan the small crowd for Ella Nemeth, disappointed that her grandparents weren’t able to bring her back today.
