No Place I'd Rather Be

by Cathy Lamb

  “Hang on. Let me call down to their teachers.”

  I waited, my stomach starting to hurt.

  “Olivia? Their teachers said they walked the girls outside to the front of the school with the rest of the class to the buses. Do you think they went home with a friend?”

  I tried to think around my taut nerves. Had the girls said they were going home with friends today? “No. Not unless they decided to go without asking, which isn’t like them.”

  “Let me check outside. Maybe the little rascals are playing on the equipment.”

  I started to feel sick.

  I waited and waited.

  “Olivia, they’re not out there. I went out with Jefferson and Leroy. Sheryl’s looking in the music room and the gym.”

  “Let me call a few friends.”

  “Okay. Call me back. We’ll keep looking here.”

  I called three of their friends. The friends were not with the girls. I called my mother and grandma at the clinic, on the impossibility that they had picked the girls up. I knew they would never do that without telling me, but I was grasping at straws. I called my sister, who was at work, driving an ambulance, and I called Kyle.

  “I have not seen the girls.” Kyle asked for more information, and I told him. He took a shaky breath. “I’m uncomfortable with this situation. I will call Mother.”

  I called Jace. He heard my worry. I raced up to the school with him. Together with Sheryl, Mattie, and several teachers, we went through the school.

  No girls.

  My mother and grandma and sister texted me, asking if I’d found the girls.

  “I’m sure we’ll find them.” Jace hugged me.

  I received a call from one of Lucy’s friend’s mother and put her on speakerphone. “Harper just told me that she saw Lucy and Stephi get in a car with a woman with blond hair.”

  The school tipped and spun, the floor fell out. Jace wrapped his arms around me. “Shit,” Jace muttered. “Oh, shit.”

  “Oh no. Oh no. Oh no, no, no.” I cried. “Oh, my God, no.”

  “It’s okay, Olivia. We’ll call the police.” Jace took the phone and spoke to the mother. “Ask Harper what color the car was . . . it was blue? Does she remember anything else about it? The back had been hit? Okay, thank you.”

  He dialed the police and told Chief Kalama about Devlin, while Sheryl and Mattie propped me up.

  * * *

  Chief Adam Kalama and his police force were immediately looking for the girls, for a blue car with damage to the back, a blond woman driving. Soon it wasn’t only the Kalulell police but state and county. An Amber Alert went out. The police tried to contact Devlin, and when they couldn’t reach her, they put out an APB and tried to trace her. My sister went up in a helicopter with a copilot to look for the car.

  The police questioned us, as they should. We went to the station, and we took lie detector tests and passed. W knew it was a formality.

  Police officers questioned the staff at the school and our staff on the ranch. The ranch, every building, all barns, and our homes, the old home and the new, were searched. We handed over our phones and computers. An hour went by, a second hour, a third. Police and FBI filled the house, men and women in and out. I took a photo I had of the girls, gave it to Dinah, Justin, and Earl, and they made thousands of copies. They started distributing them in town. Our guests helped, too, which was very touching, and when our friends found out, including Michael, Ryan, and Jordan, and their wives, they raced to the house and we handed them flyers, too.

  Two of our guests, social media experts, immediately set up a Facebook page to get the word out. Grandma and my mother came over immediately, and my mother jumped in with the FBI and police as if she was employed with them.

  Jace and I rushed to his truck. As we left, I looked up at the hill. Underneath that craggy oak tree were the three white crosses. I could not lose more children, I couldn’t. I couldn’t, I couldn’t. I made a strangled sound, shut the door, and we started driving country roads in the dark.

  Soon the girls were on the news, along with Devlin’s photo, and on the next news cycle, and the one after that.

  “How in the world could two little girls disappear?” I wailed, holding Jace, his arms tight around me when we finally arrived home at three in the morning. My mother put her arms around both of us and said, “We will find them. We will.” Her arms trembled. My grandma said, tears in her eyes, but her chin up, “Courage. Hold yourself together, my love. You must be strong.”

  Kyle stared at his computer, the loud buzz around him of the police and FBI not distracting him. His Questions Notebook was open in front of him. There were many new notes in there.

  “I’m searching for them, Aunt Olivia, birthday February 27. I feel confident that when I collate all of the information that I’m hearing here, as the police and FBI communicate, I will be able to solve the puzzle of their abduction.” His hands jiggled. He tapped his palms. He twitched. “I am uncomfortable. I believe it is fear that I am feeling. Mother has ordered me to remain calm, to not, in her words, ‘lose my freakin’ marbles,’ and I am striving to attain that goal, but when I think of Stephi and Lucy my agitation begins once again.”

  My sister landed the helicopter after hours of searching and drove out to the house. “Olivia, I have made a decision. I’m going to kill Devlin for you.” She patted my arm. “Kyle’s older than the girls and the girls need you more, so I’ll go to jail. I’ll take the hit. My sharpshooting skills are excellent.”

  She was completely serious. I knew it. That made me cry.

  The rest of the night brought more hopeless, mind-numbing fear.

  * * *

  Morning came, cloudy, rainy, bleak. Then afternoon. Then night again. We searched for them continuously. I made a plea for the girls through the media. We had made more flyers to take out of state, including flyers with Devlin’s photo on them from the police.

  I was having trouble breathing again, my chest tight, swallowing almost impossible. I felt as if I was choking on fear. Devlin would disappear with them for as long as she could.

  Why couldn’t the police find them? Where were they? Where are you, Stephi? Where are you, Lucy? Where? Jace held me when we cried in our bedroom that night at four in the morning. Jace was white, strained. Not eating, not sleeping.

  Day three came and went, and I felt myself shutting down. More police and FBI came through the house, the girls were on the news all the time, the flyers were all over five states, and social media was saturated.

  Day four came, and no sign of them. Together Jace and I were in hell. But this time, in bed, where neither Jace nor I could sleep, I turned to him and said, “Jace. I love you. I will not leave you again. No matter what.”

  I hadn’t realized how worried he’d been. His expression was one of ragged relief as he pulled me close and kissed me. “Thank you, baby. I love you, too. We’ll find them. We will.”

  Where are you, Stephi? Where are you, Lucy? I love you, I love you, I love you.

  July 1945

  London, England

  Gisela Gobenko, grandmother of Olivia Martindale

  When the war in Europe finally ended, London pulverized but victorious, tens of millions of people dead all over the world, the atrocities only beginning to be known, Oliver Martindale, Gisela Gobenko’s Montana Man, came back for her. He arrived at the hospital and found her, bending over a patient. She took one look at him, her handsome American air force pilot, and he swept her up in his arms and kissed her.

  Oliver Martindale took her to dinner, though in war-torn London they had to step over rubble and rock to get there. He said, “The doctor has come to take his nurse to dinner.” Gisela had two dresses. She wore the brown one first.

  They went to another dinner, the next night, at a café with only minor damage, almost all of the buildings around them having been cratered by the Nazis. She wore the blue dress with the blue flowered hat and a white ribbon. Gisela knew she was in love with her Mont
ana Man.

  In one month, in the aftermath of a nation torn to pieces, they were engaged. Married the month after that. Gisela wore a white lace wedding gown she found at a secondhand shop. Naomi and Keila took it in for her, and they both served as bridesmaids. Mrs. Lowenstein brought her bridal bouquet. Dr. Hirschfield and his wife came, as did other doctors and nurses at the hospital.

  Gisela was haunted, though. She had to find out what happened to her family back in Munich. She had already tried, contacting everyone she could, but her continual, frantic efforts had been in vain. Europe was in chaos. Millions of people were on the move, including emaciated and traumatized concentration camp survivors, guilty Nazis and SS trying to escape and hide from their crimes, and Jews headed to Palestine, giving up on life in Europe after their near annihilation.

  Germans were fleeing west to safety from the Russians who were taking revenge for Germany’s brutal attack on the Soviet Union, for the tens of millions of their people killed by the Nazis, for their military men frozen to death on the battlefield, tortured and slain, and for their civilians who were starved to death during the relentless siege of Leningrad. Some of the Russians, infuriated, vengeful, were robbing, beating, shooting, and pillaging in Germany. They were raping women and girls.

  Still others in Europe were on the move, hoping to immigrate to the United States, Canada, and South America to start life over.

  It was difficult to travel, it was difficult to find passage, but Montana Man arranged it. They went to Munich, sometimes with other American troops on U.S. transportation. It took long days, longer nights, as the international community had moved in by force and Germany was being divided and partitioned off, as punishment and consequence for starting World War II.

  Munich had been bombed during the war more than seventy times by the Allies in air raids. It had been one of Hitler’s bases of operations. The city had been pummeled into submission.

  When Oliver and Gisela arrived in Munich, she often could not figure out where she was, where to go, as familiar landmarks and buildings were gone, eerie skeletal frames or concrete and metal rubble the only things remaining.

  People were wandering, hungry, scared. Gisela tried to feel sorry for her fellow Germans, but she simply couldn’t. How many of these people had embraced Hitler and his ideas, his murderous rule? How many had turned away when another Jewish family was dragged off in the middle of the night? How many had looted Jewish homes or thrown rocks and firebombs through their businesses? How many had burned synagogues down to nothing? Which ones had worked in concentration camps? As Nazis, as members of the SS? Who had helped round up the Jews? Who had tortured and shot them?

  When Gisela and Oliver found her family’s three-story brick home, the damage to the east side of the house extensive, another family was living in it. She tried to open the red door with her key, but the lock wouldn’t budge. A woman she didn’t recognize with a sharp face and a bony body answered the door. Gisela said, “What are you doing in my home?”

  The woman, alarmed, guilty, tried to shut the door, but Oliver wouldn’t let her, holding the door open with one hand. “Now, ma’am. We’re here to talk to you. We need to know who you are and why you’re living in my wife’s family home.”

  Gisela translated what Oliver said. The bony woman tried to slam the door, but her husband, a much more compassionate man, invited them in. The Nazis had looted the house, and then it had stood empty before this family moved in three years ago. There was nothing of value left. The husband told Gisela, “I’m so sorry.”

  They had known, as millions of other Germans had known, that the reason he was able to buy this elegant home in a fashionable part of Munich for much less than market price was because the Nazis had taken all the homes owned by Jewish families and thrown them on the market as they had thrown the Jews into the concentration camps.

  In fact, he and his wife had known that this home had been owned by the daughter of the owners of Ida’s Bakery and Boris’s Leather Goods, Esther Gobenko. They had known, too, that she was Esther of Esther and Alexander’s Department Store. They also knew that the couple had had two daughters and a son, as the girls’ rooms still had their pink bedspreads when they moved in, and the son’s was blue. And now, here was one of the daughters, in a dark blue dress and blue hat with a white ribbon with an American military man.

  Gisela hardly recognized her home. It had been cheerful, filled with love and laughter. There was none of that now. It was dull, lifeless.

  She could fight for her home. Demand it be returned, but already she hated being in Munich again. Hated it, hated the memories of people’s harshness, their evilness toward her family. She hated what the Germans had done, eagerly joining the SS, the Nazis, cheering Hitler on for the Jews’ destruction and his plan for world domination.

  She could almost hear the Nazis’ boots clomping on the cobblestones, the Heil Hitler salutes, the screams of her neighbors as they were hauled off in the night. She remembered the long, red Nazi flags and her father coming home, beaten to a pulp. She remembered when two of her uncles had disappeared, never to be heard from again. She remembered Kristallnacht, when their family’s businesses had been firebombed and looted, synagogues destroyed, Jews attacked and jailed, then sent to camps.

  “May I check one place for our belongings?” Gisela asked, heartbroken beyond belief. She had hoped for a miracle. Hoped that her family was here, that they had found their way back home, that they had survived the war.

  The man was puzzled. He had been through the house. Hardly anything had been left when they moved in, aside from odd furniture pieces and the children’s beds. “Yes, please.”

  Gisela went up to her bedroom. She did not enter any other room. The pain would have killed her.

  With her Montana Man and the husband and wife behind her, Gisela lifted up a floorboard in her bedroom, where Renata and she had hid their treasures. She pulled out the tin box with old-fashioned ladies dancing at a ball, their dresses filled with lace, buttons, and ruffles.

  The husband sucked in his breath, as did his wife. His wife covered her face with her hands and Gisela saw that she was crying. “We’re very sorry,” the man stuttered out, tearful.

  “I’m so sorry, dear,” the woman said.

  Her Montana Man supported her as they left, the tin box clutched in her hands. The treasures inside were priceless to her.

  Gisela and Oliver went to Ida’s Bakery. The pink and white building had been bombed. She went to her grandfather’s shop, Boris’s Leather Goods. The roof and a wall were missing. She went to her parents’ department store, Esther and Alexander’s. It was locked up, in shambles.

  Gone.

  Everything, everyone was gone.

  * * *

  Gisela and Oliver searched the lists coming out of the camps, with help from U.S. and British military friends of Oliver’s.

  Their searches, the phone calls, the visits to the Red Cross, their letters, yielded nothing initially.

  Finally, there were the names she didn’t want to see on lists coming out of the concentration camps.

  Bergen-Belsen. Dachau. Buchenwald.

  Each day Gisela found more names on the list. Each day she collapsed, Oliver holding her tight.

  Esther Gobenko

  Alexander Gobenko

  Isaac Gobenko

  Ida Zaslavsky

  Boris Zaslavsky

  Grigori Zaslavsky

  Solomon Zaslavsky

  Devoran Zaslavsky

  Aviva Zaslavsky

  Miriam Zaslavsky

  Deena Zaslavsky

  Johan Zaslavsky

  Rafael Zaslavsky

  Alim Zaslavsky

  Aizik Gobenko

  Raisel Gobenko

  Gone. All gone. She was alone.

  Gisela thought she would lose her mind. She thought the grief would kill her. If the grief didn’t kill her, perhaps she would kill herself. Why live anymore, why live? But then she felt Oliver’s hand in hers, wa
rm and loving.

  Oliver Martindale was why Gisela Gobenko Martindale did not hang herself from the rafters from one of the many buildings in Munich that had been bombed by Allied forces.

  * * *

  Later, from Montana, with Oliver’s help, by writing letter after letter to various organizations, they found many, but not all, of the names of the rest of Gisela’s family. On her mother’s side, she had four uncles and four aunts and sixteen cousins. She could never find the names of Moishe and Zino, her two uncles who had disappeared, taken in the night by the Nazis before she left on the Kindertransport. But she knew the truth: Their bodies had not been found, their names had not been recorded, they had not lived.

  Gisela’s family never left her heart, not one of them. She knew she would never be, truly, happy. How could she? It was foolish to think so, to hope so. But she started over in Montana with Oliver, who she loved with every breath she took.

  She began a new life and put her past in a cardboard box in the attic, including the dark blue dress she would never wear again, her wedding dress, and her white nurse’s uniform, to remind her of what she had been. Inside the tin box with the dancing ladies were Isaac’s colored pencils, the red and purple butterfly clips she and Renata had given each other as girls, the charm bracelets from their parents, the menorah that had survived two attacks, lost letters written by lost people, and photographs. She tucked the battered and burned cookbook in the box, too, making sure the pink ribbon was tied so the treasures inside would not fall out.

  Gisela told her Montana Man that she needed windows all around in their new log cabin to feel safe, so she could see everywhere. When she was younger and the Nazis barged into their home and took their furniture, their art, their jewelry, she hadn’t seen them coming. She had felt trapped. She didn’t ever want to feel trapped again. She told him she needed a red door, like her mother, Esther, and grandmother, Ida, to symbolize freedom, and she needed red geraniums each summer to celebrate a new life. He gave her everything she asked for.