“No, thank you.”
He takes my carry-on bag instead.
Ella chatters about our flight and the Sprite that I let her drink and all the books we read. When she races forward to collect her suitcase from the belt, Josh turns to me again, the intensity in his brown eyes tempered into a welcoming gaze.
“I’m glad you’re here, Callie.”
“Me too.”
“Thank you for bringing her.”
“She’s a joy,” I say, and he grins at my words.
As a taxi drives us to Salzburg Hauptbahnhof, I feel as if I’ve entered another world with the cathedrals and abbey and the faint strains of music that have lingered here for hundreds of years. My own fairy-tale kingdom.
While we wait for the next train to Hallstatt, my cell phone rings.
“It’s an Idaho number,” I tell Josh, taking a sip of my second latte.
“You’d better take it.”
I walk toward a quieter space, away from the crowds, before I answer Liberty’s call.
“I’ve spoken with my brother,” she says. “Neither of us knew about this list.”
An announcement blasts overhead in German, but Liberty doesn’t acknowledge it.
“Did your father ever speak to him about Annika Knopf or the Stadlers?” I ask.
“In the years before my father’s death, he spoke often to both of us about his memories in Austria, but my brother doesn’t remember him mentioning anyone named Annika.”
“What sort of things did your father tell you?”
“He liked to talk about the dances in Vienna and the animals he would rescue from the streets. And the castle, of course. He loved that place as a boy. I asked him several times about the conflict in Austria, but he only wanted to talk about his escape over the mountains and his work for the Allies until the end of the war.”
I glance over at Josh and Ella, and they are huddled together, engaged in conversation. The familiar pang of jealousy rips through my heart. Once again, I’m alone.
I turn away. “Was your father named Max?”
She pauses. “How did you find his name?”
“There was a photograph in the book.”
“Can you text it to me?” she asks.
Seconds later, I send it off. Her voice shakes when she speaks again. “He was a handsome young man, wasn’t he?”
“Very.”
“Do you know the name of the woman with him?”
“Luzia,” I say slowly, hoping that she knows this name. “Luzia Weiss.”
“I wish I knew who she was.”
And the thought occurs to me—if Charlotte is Max and Luzia’s daughter, Liberty would be her half sister.
“I’m trying to find out,” I tell her. “Did Max return to Austria after the war?”
