When We Meet Again

by Kristin Harmel

  “I was so scared that you’d hate me. I thought you’d leave me.”

  He exhaled. “I never would have left you, Em.”

  “I know that now.” And I realized as I said the words that I meant them. Nick wouldn’t have left. He wasn’t that type of guy. I had made a choice and it had changed the entire way our lives would have turned out. “I thought I was doing what was best for her and for you,” I said finally. “I know that sounds stupid to say now. But having a baby at eighteen would have changed your life, Nick. And maybe we wouldn’t have been good parents to her. I know I was a complete disaster. I wasn’t equipped to handle a baby. I . . . I wasn’t sure if you were either, and I didn’t want to put that weight on your shoulders. I didn’t want us to be like my parents. I had watched them grow to hate each other, and I couldn’t stand thinking of that happening to me and you.”

  “And you didn’t believe that men stayed,” he added softly.

  My eyes filled with tears as I thought of how my father had hurt me so deeply by vanishing and how I’d grown up hearing Grandma Margaret’s stories of being abandoned too. “I didn’t believe men stayed,” I repeated, my voice hollow.

  Nick sighed. “Maybe she never belonged with us. Maybe you were right to give her up for adoption. But I deserved a say in that decision.”

  “I know. Of course I know. What I did to you, Nick . . . It is and probably always will be the greatest regret of my life.”

  He didn’t say anything, but the strangled noise he made sounded like a muffled sob. It made me feel even worse than I already did. “Everything was so hazy when the nurse gave her to me,” I continued after a moment. “I’d had all those pain medications during delivery, and I was out of it. But, Nick, when I looked at her, at our daughter, it was like you were right there with me. I could see you in her. I don’t think I’d ever loved anyone as much as I did in that moment. I loved Catherine so powerfully that it hurt, but I loved you too. Seeing you in her eyes—” I paused, my voice trailing off. I took a deep breath. “The thing is, Nick, I loved you more in that moment than I ever could have fathomed.”

  “Emily,” Nick said, his voice heavy. I waited, but he didn’t say anything else.

  “I loved you,” I whispered into the silence. “No matter how angry you are at me, please believe that.”

  He didn’t say anything for a moment, and I felt like a fool.

  “How can I believe that, Emily?” he asked finally, his voice breaking. “How can you love someone and just walk away the way you did?”

  I was crying now, tears rolling down my cheeks. “Because I was ashamed. And I thought that by carrying all the weight on my shoulders, I was saving you some pain.”

  I missed him terribly. Seeing him in Atlanta had awoken something dormant in me. But I had to remind myself that for him, I was in the past, not the present. He had a whole life that didn’t include me.

  “You didn’t save me any pain,” he said. “I had to deal with losing you, Emily. You have no idea what that was like.”

  “Yes, I do. I had to deal with losing you too.”

  “But that was your choice. Not mine.” He cleared his throat, and when he spoke again, his tone was stiffer, more formal. “Anyhow, I’m sorry. I didn’t call to get angry with you.”

  “Why did you call?”

  “I don’t know.” Nick sighed. “I don’t know. But . . . but I have to go. I’m sorry, but I have to go.”

  I nodded, although I knew he couldn’t see me, but I was crying too hard to say anything in reply. After a moment, the line went dead. He was gone, and as I put down the phone, I felt suddenly exhausted.

  * * *

  Three hours later, I was staring at the ceiling, trying not to think about Nick and Catherine and all the mistakes I’d made when my phone dinged with a text message. It was from the same 404 number Nick had called from before. I forgive you, it said.

  Thank you, I wrote back, but he didn’t reply again. Perhaps there was nothing else to say at all. We had completed our arc. I had told him everything, and he had granted the forgiveness I knew I didn’t deserve.

  I put the phone down and closed my eyes. It was time to move on.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

  * * *

  1950–1963

  The Statue of Liberty appeared on the distant horizon, and Maus pulled Peter up to the top deck of the ship so that they could both see her beautiful face as they sailed into New York Harbor. “We have finally arrived, my friend!” Maus exclaimed, hugging Peter.

  “We’re home,” Peter murmured, unable to tear his eyes away from the copper woman towering more than ninety meters above the water, welcoming them to the United States. He thought fleetingly of Otto, of how this had been his dream too. After the war, you and I will be great ambassadors for Germany. Otto’s voice echoed in his head.

  This journey was different from the last one they’d taken across the ocean, for this time, both men had their freedom. When they landed on American soil, they could go anywhere they pleased—north to Boston, west to Los Angeles, south to the Carolinas. But Peter only had one goal in mind. Belle Creek. Was it really possible that in a matter of days, he might reunite with Margaret and finally look upon the face of his own child?

  “You have to prepare yourself for the worst, my friend,” Maus reminded Peter, watching his face closely as they approached the dock. “Margaret may not be here anymore. You have to be ready to live a life in America without her, if it comes to that.”

  “Of course,” Peter said, turning away. He didn’t want Maus to see his expression, for he knew that the truth was written all over his face—he would never stop searching for Margaret as long as there was a chance she was alive.

  Five days later, after taking the bus with Maus to Atlanta, where they met with Harold’s widow to thank her profusely for her efforts on their behalf, Peter departed alone for Belle Creek. He promised to return to Atlanta when he could, but Maus had no interest in moving farther south, and Peter knew that if he found Margaret, he would stay wherever she was.

  It was a Tuesday afternoon when Peter finally arrived back in the town where he’d once been a prisoner, after switching buses to get to Clewiston, hitching a ride to the edge of town, and walking the rest of the way to Margaret’s home on foot. His heart pounded as he made his way up the dirt lane to the house he’d seen a thousand times in his dreams. The walls and roof looked more weathered and faded than he remembered, and the garden out back looked overgrown, as if farming there had ceased. The fear that had been nibbling at Peter’s heart for years swelled huge and ominous. He couldn’t imagine Margaret letting the farm fail like this unless something was terribly wrong.

  And suddenly, without intending to, he was running. He had walked all this way with his suitcase in hand, but he dropped it in the dirt and dashed to Margaret’s door, as if every second counted. There was no answer at first, but after Peter pounded more and more insistently, the panic threatening to overtake him, the door swung open.

  “What?” It was Margaret’s sister, Louise, who looked much older than the last time he’d seen her. Her once youthful face was weathered, and her eyes looked flat and faded, like a photograph that had been exposed to the light for too long. It took her a few seconds to recognize Peter, and he could tell the moment that she realized who he was, because her look of annoyance twisted into a full-fledged scowl. “What do you want?”

  “Louise,” he said. “I’m Margaret’s friend, Peter.”

  “I know exactly who you are,” she spat. “But her friend? Is that what they call a rapist these days?”

  Peter took a step back, his eyes widening. “A rapist? Louise, I never—”

  She cut him off. “She ain’t here, anyways. Margaret’s gone.”

  “Can you tell me where she is?”

  Louise smiled coldly at him. “Sure thing.” She leaned in closer. “She’s dead. So I guess maybe she’s in heaven if you believe in that sort of thing.”

  Peter took a s
tep back. “No,” he whispered. “It is not possible. I would have known.”

  “What, because you were so connected to her? Bullshit.” Louise shook her head. “Besides, you know it’s your fault, right?”

  “What?” Peter felt like he couldn’t breathe. How could Margaret be gone? How could he have not felt it when her soul left the earth?

  “She died in childbirth. It was your baby, wasn’t it? You might as well have killed her with your own two hands.”

  “Oh, God.” Peter could feel himself falling, but he couldn’t stop it. He crumpled on the doorstep of the house that had once been Margaret’s, breathing hard. “And the baby? What happened to the baby?”

  “He died too.”

  “He?” Peter asked. “I have a son?”

  “You did.”

  “Oh, God,” Peter said again. In his mind’s eye, he had seen a little girl or boy out there somewhere, reveling in Margaret’s love, maybe even hearing stories about a faraway father who had promised to come back someday. But none of it had been real. Peter began to sob, his shoulders heaving. He glanced up at Louise, his vision blurry with tears, and was surprised to see something in her eyes that looked like pity, or maybe regret, but then it was gone. “Tell me, did he have a name? My boy?”

  “Wasn’t alive long enough. And his mother wasn’t around no more to name him.”

  “Where are they buried?” Peter finally managed to ask.

  “They were cremated,” Louise said, her voice clipped. “We scattered their ashes in the wind. There ain’t no headstone for them either, if that’s what you’re asking.”

  “Why?” Peter whispered.

  “Everyone in town knew you were the father,” Louise said coldly. “You know why? My stupid sister was proud of it. Proud. She was an outcast. Don’t you understand? She ruined everything for our family, brought all kinds of shame upon us. When she died, honestly, it was a relief.”

  For the first time since Louise had delivered the terrible news, Peter felt something else other than overwhelming sadness. He felt anger—hot, blazing anger. “How dare you?” he asked.

  Louise blinked at him. “How dare I?”

  “Your sister was an amazing woman. She did nothing wrong.”

  “She fell in love with a damned Nazi!” Louise spat.

  “I’m not a Nazi!” Peter shot back. “I’m German, and I’m a human being, just like you. I’m sorry you don’t see it that way, but that won’t change what I feel. It won’t change the way I loved your sister.”

  “Whole hell of a lot of good it does you now,” Louise muttered. “She’s long gone.”

  “So why do I still feel her here?” Peter asked softly. But the question was to himself, not to Louise, and after a moment, still glaring at him, she shut the door.

  Peter stood there for a long time, unable to move. As soon as he began the long walk back toward town, he’d have to begin digesting the loss. But here, in this moment, with the scent of orange blossoms and sugarcane wafting through the air, he could believe it was 1945 and that he was waiting for Margaret, believing he’d have her in his arms again.

  * * *

  Peter couldn’t go back to Atlanta. Not yet. It would have made the most sense to have rejoined Maus, to have started a new life, to have left Belle Creek behind forever. But if the ashes of Margaret and his son had been scattered on this earth, they were still here, in a way. They were in the wind and in the dirt beneath his feet. Perhaps that was why Peter didn’t feel like they were gone. He would stay for a little while, he decided. He would stay to say good-bye.

  He rented a room by the week in the town’s only boardinghouse, owned and run by a woman named Meli Wilkes, and in the first few days, he set out to discover what had happened to the rest of the people he’d known in Belle Creek. He learned soon enough that Margaret’s parents had died—her father in 1947 and her mother in 1948—which meant that Louise was all alone now. He visited the cemetery and knelt by their headstones, breathing hard.

  “I’m sorry,” he said after a long silence. Around him, the wind sang through the willows. “I’m sorry if I caused you any heartache. And I’m so sorry that you lost Margaret and your grandchild. It fills me with grief and despair, and I can only imagine that as her parents, you would have been heartbroken too. May you rest in peace.”

  He tried to locate Jeremiah, but he learned only that he had left town in 1946, gone in the middle of the night. No one knew what had become of him, and Peter hoped that he had made it up north the way he’d always planned to.

  He hired an investigator to look into Margaret’s death on the small chance that Louise was lying, but he knew it was a fool’s errand. There was no death certificate for Margaret or the child, but the investigator assured him that this was normal for a small town in the South. “Especially when a woman dies while bringing shame to her family,” the man had added pointedly, avoiding Peter’s eyes.

  Peter never considered going home to Germany. After all, he had promised Margaret that he’d return for her. Even if she wasn’t here, he would live a life in her honor. He would live a life in honor of his son too. In his mind, he named the child Victor, for he had been conceived on Victory in Europe Day. The boy should have been a symbol of triumph, of victory, of the end of the war. Instead, he had barely had a chance to live at all. It felt desperately unfair.

  Finding work in Belle Creek proved difficult, as people still reacted badly to Peter’s accent. Many still bore a grudge against the Germans, and those who hadn’t gotten to know the prisoners one-on-one tended to assume that the POWs had been criminals convicted of wrongdoing. Plus, while Peter had intended to stay so that he could be surrounded by memories of Margaret each day, he instead found it very difficult to work the fields where he’d first caught sight of her, where he’d first spoken with her, where he’d first held her in his arms. Being there didn’t bring the memories back; it only made them foggier somehow.

  Peter moved several miles east in the fall of 1950, settling near a huge strawberry farm in unincorporated Palm Beach County. The skies and the land reminded him of Belle Creek, but they were different enough that he could live without being paralyzed by memory. He made money working in the strawberry fields and helping out around the barns and stables as more and more equestrians moved to the area. It turned out Peter had a knack with the horses. As he withdrew into himself more and more, he found it soothing to talk to them. It was easier than talking to other people and being reminded of just how alone he was.

  That Christmas, he visited Maus in Atlanta, and though his friend tried to convince him to move to the city, Peter couldn’t do it yet. He wasn’t ready to leave Florida behind. And so Maus—who was beginning to establish a reputation as a talented artist—gave Peter a gift: a set of paints and brushes. “You have a great talent, my friend,” Maus told Peter, clapping him on the back. “Don’t waste your life shoveling horse manure just because you’re sad.”

  Peter took one of the paintbrushes in his hand and twirled it thoughtfully. “I don’t know what I would paint.”

  “Of course you do,” Maus said, rolling his eyes.

  Back in Palm Beach County a few weeks later, Peter picked up a brush, dipped it in some paint, and touched it to paper for the first time in almost a year. By the fading light of evening, he began to create again, and the first work he completed was the most beautiful and lifelike he’d ever done. He used his imagination to evoke what he wished fervently could have been reality: Margaret standing in the midst of a sugarcane field at dawn, holding the hand of a beautiful little boy of five—for that’s how old his son would have been now. They were both staring right at Peter, their eyes full of love.

  Once he finished, it was as if the floodgates had been opened. His brush seemed filled with magic, and whereas in Munich he had struggled with rendering things correctly, now he was able to capture the exact shade of the sky, the exact pitch of the shadows, and the exact shape of Margaret’s lovely eyes. At first, the paintings wer
e just for him. He filled his small apartment with them, painting on every available surface when he ran out of paper. And for a couple of years, the images were like a bandage on his heart. He was greeted each morning with Margaret’s soft smile, and he watched his son grow up, getting taller and lankier every month. It was like they were still with him, and so Peter didn’t bother living a life outside of work. Each day, he would whisper to the horses or pick strawberries in silence, then he would return home and spend the evenings painting.

  In 1954, the strawberry farm closed so that developers could come in and make the land into a housing community. The stable where he’d worked folded six months later, and Peter wasn’t able to find another job. People thought he was strange, a foreigner who operated in near silence. Maus surprised him with a visit that fall, just as the last of Peter’s savings were drying up, and when his old friend stepped into Peter’s apartment, his jaw dropped.

  “You have gotten much better, Peter,” Maus said, looking around at all the paintings. “You must try to sell some of these. You could be rich.”

  “Sell them?” Peter asked. “Never. It’s how I keep Margaret with me.”

  “Maybe it’s time to let her go,” Maus said gently. “Come on. I’m part of an exhibit in New York next month. Why don’t you join me? I can talk to the gallery owner, tell him how good you are. I’m sure he’ll add you.”

  Peter considered this. “All right. I will come to New York. But not with these paintings. I’ll paint something new.”

  “Whatever you wish. You have money for new supplies? And a bus ticket to New York?”

  “I have a little. I will find a way.”

  “Very well. I’ll send you the address of the gallery. And you can stay with me. I have a room near the Empire State Building.”

  In November of 1954, Peter met Maus in New York. Maus had a series of ten still lifes to sell, and they were all spoken for by the end of the exhibit’s first day. Peter had brought only three images—all of them scenes from Belle Creek—but he, too, had sold out by the end of the weeklong show. He knew he wasn’t as talented as Maus, but he could make money from his art. And now he realized that he could take Margaret and his son anywhere. He didn’t need to be near Belle Creek, because they were with him all the time, wherever he went.