Hannie was staring up at her, a peculiar look on her face. “What did you say?” Hannie hissed, her voice calm but alarmed, a sound meant to let the sleeping rest. “Get back in bed. Cover up. And where is Elisabeth? Where is your sister?”
Jean folded over in her chair, a puppet collapsed, strings limp. A withering look from Hannie again. “See what you’ve done?”
The twilling light of early evening drizzled in through dirty windows. From the darkening loft, Gisela kept her ears perked. She could not see Hannie or Jean anymore, could not know from their expressions whether what Hannie said next was sinister or generous, but she could hear them clearly in the small house. It was not simply an idea. It was a proposal.
“Or take Elisabeth to America. These girls have no one to miss them. They’ll be separated eventually. No one would have them both. You asked God to switch them. I say we do it ourselves.”
Gisela gasped, retreated from the opening. The voices lowered to a whisper. Gisela put her ear to the floorboards. Jean’s voice pitched and dropped on words likebetrayalandgriefandchanceandlove. “It’s too late,” Jean said clearly. “We’re leaving tomorrow, and that’s that.”
“I’ll take you home,” Hannie said. “We’ll talk to Thomas. He’ll see it my way.”
Gisela crawled into bed. Where was Elisabeth? Had she been taken already? And where would that leave her? Without Fiadh, without Elisabeth, she would have nothing. She slipped into shallow sleep and soon was out to sea in the punt, rowing and rowing, going nowhere, a motorboat full of Nazi boys and cousin Herbert in hot pursuit. War planes buzzed overhead, dropped bodies in bloodstained yellow dresses into the green sea around her. She woke with a start when Elisabeth slid onto the pallet next to her. It was a nightmare. They were still inIreland. For now. She rolled over onto her back, stared with Elisabeth into the dark beams.
“The priest came for Fiadh,” Elisabeth said. “I saw her through the window. Fiadh is dead. It is so sad. So awful! They’ll send us back to the nuns for sure.”
“Why would they send us away?”
“Fiadh is dead because of us. They won’t want us anymore.”
So, they would be sent back. And then what? They’d gotten lucky the nuns had let them stay together. Maybe their luck had run out. Gisela was done leaving everything up to chance. She remembered Herbert, his dirty fingers, his sickening words. She remembered Mutti’s bloodstained dress. They had nothing left in Germany, and now Ireland was ruined too.
“I’m so tired,” Elisabeth said, burrowing into Gisela. “What a terrible day. But let’s not fret. You must think of Mutti waiting for us. You must keep that hope alive.”
Elisabeth and her silly fantasy about Mutti! How it galled. She was not coming back. Their life was forfeit. The sea boiled in her throat. Gisela turned away.
“What? Are you angry?” Elisabeth asked. “I’m sorry I wasn’t the one to jump in and save you. Is that it?”
It was Elisabeth who always insisted they stay together, even though it meant that they got stuck with Herbert or had to stay longer with the nuns. Gisela turned to face her sister. Though they were close enough to taste each other’s breath, Gisela imagined a lifting away, the yank of a paratrooper when the chute opens. “We can’t swim.”
She remembered a bridge over the Rhine, walking with their father, holding his hand. She had spied a mewling kitten clinging to a drifting branch in the current. Gisela begged him to save it. “Das Kätzchen, Vati!” He said if he were to jump in, he and the cat would both drown.We are in that swollen river now, sister. We must grab hold of what we can.“We can’t swim,” Gisela repeated. “You couldn’t save me. If you’d fallen overboard, I couldn’t have saved you either. We’d both be dead.” Shefelt her knees digging into the seahorse’s ribs, felt Fiadh’s sea-silked hair tangle through her fingers. She touched her own head. It felt the same.
“I should have tried,” Elisabeth said, her voice thick with sleep.
“No,” Gisela said. “Listen to me. You did the right thing. You saved yourself.”
“Yes, well, we are alive. But poor Fiadh ...Wir müssen mutig sein. Be brave,” Elisabeth murmured as she drifted off.
Gisela snuck down the ladder, her ragged stuffed rabbit under her arm. On the tamped grass path to the Beattys’ cottage, she watched her brown shoes move beneath her, carrying her as if she were not in control. Her heart pounded. She went to the side of the cottage where a low light flickered. She could see the bed through the window. Fiadh’s body lay on top of the covers. There was a blueness to her, part sea, part sky, and a greenness too. Hardly a girl at all anymore. Gisela wondered if vines might come up from the floor, entwine her friend until she turned into loamy dirt, into Ireland itself. She bowed her head, tapped her forehead with her fingers.Be brave.She moved to the door and opened it. Jean sat stone-faced at the table, Thomas standing over her, both in traveling clothes. Their eyes were sunken. Hugh and Hannie sat on a bench, hands in their laps. The priest—bent and paunchy, his slapped red cheeks flamed with boil scars—stood next to Thomas.
Gisela did not skip a beat. She went to Jean, bent to her knees, the gritty floor pocking her flesh. She placed her cheek on Jean’s lap, sanded her skin against the rough of her dress. She was not fine like that woman in cornflower blue, but she smelt like Mutti, like fire and worry. She felt Jean’s hand on her head.
Though Hannie’s voice sounded an alarm—“Child! Child!”—Gisela focused only on Jean and on Thomas next to her.
The shoes that carried her, the knees that held her up, her war-torn heart. She would make her own luck now. She would save herself and perhaps Elisabeth at the same time. She croaked in a mix of German and English all that was in her head, spewing every thought and excuse and reason that it should be her they take, not Elisabeth, who was too bossy and too mouthy, who would never tolerate being separated, would never behave. She, Gisela, would do whatever they asked. She would never tell a soul. “Nicht zurück nach Deutschland. Bitte.”
Thomas placed gentle hands on Gisela’s shoulders. “What is she on about?”
“Take me to America,” Gisela said, in plain English. “I will be Fiadh in America.”
Chapter Seven
1960: Mid-Coast Maine
William, his arm around Faye’s waist, whispered into her ear. “You’re trembling.”
Faye scanned the crowd. Near the back of the barn, one of the women from church looked to be talking Jean’s ear off. Faye caught her mother’s eye, but Jean looked away. No sign of Thomas or Conor O’Kane. “I’m a little overwhelmed. Maybe we can sit awhile?”
William took over, his chin rising as he waved to Clayton Clay to start the music. “My bride and I are going to sit and smooch. Dance! Enjoy yourselves!” William raised Faye’s hand in victory. The barn lights flickered on, and guests buzzed into new life as Clayton and Maybellene played “Will Ye Go, Lassie, Go?”
