The Silver Suitcase

by Terrie Todd

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, organizations, places, events, and incidents are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.

  Text copyright © 2016 by Terrie Todd

  All rights reserved.

  No part of this book may be reproduced, or stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without express written permission of the publisher.

  Scripture references are from the King James Version, public domain, except for those that occur during parts of the story that take place in the 21st century, where the New International Version is used.

  Scripture taken from the Holy Bible, New International Version. Copyright © 1973, 1978, 1984 International Bible Society. Used by permission of Zondervan Bible Publishers.

  Grateful acknowledgment is made to reprint the following hymns:

  Berg, Lina Sanell, 1832–1903, “More Secure Is No One Ever”

  Crosby, Fanny J., 1820–1915, and Lowry, Robert, 1826–1899, “All the Way My Savior Leads Me”

  Tullar, Grant C., and Breck, Mrs. Frank A., “Face to Face,” 1927

  von Schlegel, Katharina, “Be Still My Soul,” 1697, translation by Jane L. Borthwick, 1813–1897, and Jean Sibelius, 1865–1957

  Published by Waterfall Press, Grand Haven, MI

  www.brilliancepublishing.com

  Amazon, the Amazon logo, and Waterfall Press are trademarks of Amazon.com, Inc., or its affiliates.

  ISBN-13: 9781503950498

  ISBN-10: 1503950492

  Cover design by Laura Klynstra

  Dedicated with love to my mother, Norma (Oswald) Klassen. In the classroom of life, she teaches me still.

  CONTENTS

  START READING

  PROLOGUE

  PART 1

  CHAPTER 1

  CHAPTER 2

  CHAPTER 3

  CHAPTER 4

  CHAPTER 5

  CHAPTER 6

  CHAPTER 7

  CHAPTER 8

  CHAPTER 9

  CHAPTER 10

  PART 2

  CHAPTER 11

  CHAPTER 12

  CHAPTER 13

  CHAPTER 14

  CHAPTER 15

  CHAPTER 16

  CHAPTER 17

  PART 3

  CHAPTER 18

  CHAPTER 19

  CHAPTER 20

  CHAPTER 21

  CHAPTER 22

  CHAPTER 23

  CHAPTER 24

  CHAPTER 25

  CHAPTER 26

  CHAPTER 27

  CHAPTER 28

  CHAPTER 29

  CHAPTER 30

  CHAPTER 31

  CHAPTER 32

  CHAPTER 33

  CHAPTER 34

  CHAPTER 35

  CHAPTER 36

  CHAPTER 37

  CHAPTER 38

  CHAPTER 39

  CHAPTER 40

  CHAPTER 41

  CHAPTER 42

  CHAPTER 43

  CHAPTER 44

  CHAPTER 45

  CHAPTER 46

  CHAPTER 47

  CHAPTER 48

  CHAPTER 49

  CHAPTER 50

  CHAPTER 51

  CHAPTER 52

  CHAPTER 53

  CHAPTER 54

  CHAPTER 55

  CHAPTER 56

  CHAPTER 57

  CHAPTER 58

  CHAPTER 59

  EPILOGUE

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  And the Lord answered me, and said, “Write the vision, and make it plain upon tables, that he may run that readeth it. For the vision is yet for an appointed time, but at the end it shall speak, and not lie: though it tarry, wait for it; because it will surely come, it will not tarry.”

  Habakkuk 2:2–3

  PROLOGUE

  Manitoba, Canada

  1981

  Benita Gladstone’s best friend would soon turn sixty years old. Which might not be remarkable if Benita weren’t ten.

  She crossed the elementary school playground and looked at the bright blue of the Winnipeg sky. In three more weeks, grade five would be history. Once the school year was over, she could again spend long days at Gram’s house, which she still thought of as home all these years after her mother had insisted it was time to move out. With her ponytail swinging, Benita kicked a stone and kept kicking it down the sidewalk all the way to her grandmother’s.

  “Because you’re in school now, honey,” Grace Gladstone had explained at the time. “You don’t need Grandma Cornelia to babysit you while I’m at work anymore.”

  “But if I had a daddy, you wouldn’t have to work. Becky’s mom stays home with her.”

  “Your daddy left us, sweetheart. Men cannot be counted on. Besides, you can still go to Gram’s every day after school, until I’m off work.”

  “Then why can’t we stay at Gram’s all the time?” Benita wanted to know.

  “It’s better for grown-ups like me to not live with their parents, that’s all. You and I need to be our own little family, and we can do that best if we live in our own home. You’ll understand one day.”

  But Benita still did not understand, though four years had passed. When she reached Gram’s front gate, instead of pushing it open and walking through, she tossed her backpack into the yard and climbed over. She then scooped up the backpack again and ran around to the backyard, where she knew she’d find her best friend in the garden.

  “Hi, Gram!” Benita swung the garden gate open. Benita had watched Uncle Jim and Gram build the chicken-wire fence, designed to keep rabbits and squirrels out of the carrots, lettuce, and nasturtiums. Even deer could sometimes be seen in the city, nibbling on beet leaves or spinach.

  Gram stood from where she’d been kneeling in her row of radishes and stretched. Her gray-blue eyes still sparkled as she looked at her granddaughter. “You’ll never guess what,” Gram said as Benita launched herself into her arms with abandon.

  “Yes, I will. I’m the smartest granddaughter you ever had.”

  “Well, yes, you are. But that’s not what I intended to say.” Gram laughed.

  “The prettiest?”

  “You’re that, too. But that’s not it, either.”

  “What then?” Benita danced around the yard, stopping to pick a daisy and stick it behind her ear. She picked another and ran back to Gram.

  “I have a surprise for you.” Gram submitted to the flower being tucked behind her ear. “My brother came by today with some fresh cream straight from the farm. You know what that means.”

  “Ice cream!” Benita yelled. “I scream, you scream, we all scream for ice cream. What kind?”

  “After Uncle Jim left, I went to the store and bought some fresh strawberries. Guess where they were grown.” Gram gathered the tools and headed for the house while Benita started guessing.

  “BC? Nova Scotia? Oh, I know, I know! Ontario! It’s not too early for strawberries in Ontario, right?”

  Gram washed her hands in the kitchen sink and pulled the container of strawberries out of the fridge. She held it out so Benita could read the label for herself.

  “California?”

  “I’ll get the ice-cream maker while you find California on the map.”

  Benita pulled a large road atlas from a shelf above Gram’s desk and opened it on the old wooden kitchen table. Using the index in the back like Gram had showed her, she quickly located California on the list and turned to the right page.

  “Got it?” Gram asked, cutting strawberries into a bowl.

  “Yup.”


  “Yes.”

  “Yes. It’s right here.” Benita tapped a finger on the map. “Can I start turning the crank now?”

  “Not so fast. First we pour the cream and sugar into this part, and where does the ice go?”

  “In the bucket part.” Benita watched as Gram dumped the ice cubes in.

  As the two poured ingredients into the machine, Benita responded to Gram’s off-the-cuff geography quiz.

  “Is California in Canada?”

  “No, silly,” Benita said. “The United States.”

  “West or East Coast?”

  Benita thought for a second. “West.”

  “And what else grows there?”

  “Mmm. Grapes?”

  “Yes. And oranges, and tomatoes, and broccoli, and lots of other good things.” Gram smiled at her granddaughter as they began cranking the handle on the old ice-cream maker.

  “Broccoli is not a good thing.” Benita waggled her head. This was not even up for discussion.

  “What did you do in school today?”

  “Oh, the usual stuff. Can we play crazy eights while we eat our ice cream?”

  “Probably. One round. But then it’s homework time.”

  “Aww.” Benita knew there was no point in complaining too loudly. Besides, she’d much rather finish her homework while Gram was around to help. If she left it until after her mother picked her up, she would have to do it on her own while her mother took care of household chores or worked on her own studies. Mom called them “correspondence courses,” but Benita wasn’t sure what that meant, only that it kept her mother preoccupied.

  “What did you do in math class?” Gram asked.

  “Finding . . . the lowest . . . common . . . denominator.” Benita talked in rhythm with the cranking of the handle.

  “Really? You mean to tell me it’s 1981 and they still haven’t found that thing?” Gram smiled. “I remember looking for it when I was a kid.”

  Benita started giggling until her cranking weakened into pathetic slow motion.

  “I think you’re trying to weasel out of work.” Gram grinned. “Here, let me have a go at that handle.” With Gram’s strong arms at work, the ice cream thickened in no time, and the two sat down to enjoy two bowls filled with the icy pink treat.

  “Mum ish gonna shay you ruined my abbethithe again.” Benita talked around a big mouthful.

  “I put a bowl in the freezer for her, too. I think she’ll be okay with it. Now, tell me what you learned in English class.”

  “I don’t remember.” Benita shrugged. “Something about adverbs and adjectives.”

  “What about history?”

  “Oh, Gram, I almost forgot!” Benita ran to the back door, where her schoolbag still lay. She dragged it to the table and pulled a notebook from it. “School’s out in three more weeks and Miss Stokes gave us a project. We can either do it on the Great Depression or World War II.”

  “Oh?” Gram raised her eyebrows. “What precisely do you mean by ‘we’?”

  “You can help me, Gram. You were there!”

  “I was, was I?” Gram smiled.

  “Of course you were.”

  “I wasn’t exactly there, at World War II. I was safely back here, in Canada.”

  “Well, okay, but you lived through it, right? You can talk and I’ll write it all down.” Benita opened her notebook to the first clean page and sat with her pen poised, waiting.

  “Hmm, I don’t think it’s going to be quite that easy.” Gram cleared the ice-cream dishes from the table and began to rinse them in the sink. “Why don’t you go find a couple of encyclopedias and bring them to the table?”

  Benita moved to the living room, where Gram’s books covered one entire wall. The encyclopedias were on the bottom shelf.

  “Which ones should I bring?” she called out.

  “Well, think about it. What are you looking up?” Gram stood in the doorway, drying her hands on a dish towel.

  “World War II. So . . . W?”

  “Sure, we can start with that.”

  Benita hefted the book to her chest and lugged it over to the kitchen table, dropping it with a thud and a grunt.

  “My, so dramatic!” Gram grinned. “Can you find it?”

  Benita flipped pages, getting distracted every few moments by photos of walruses and watermelons and wigs. When Benita finally reached the section about World War II, Gram laid the dish towel aside and joined her at the table. The girl began to read aloud, pausing occasionally when she stumbled over an unfamiliar word.

  “‘Though conflict had been brewing in Europe for many months prior, World War II officially began at 5:20 a.m. (Polish time) on Friday, September 1, 1939, when the Germans bombed Puck (pronounced “Pootsk”), Poland . . .’”

  With a giggle, Benita practiced the funny-sounding name. “Pootsk. Pootsk! ‘. . . a fishing village and air base. In the war’s first five days, over fifteen hundred noncombatants died. On September 3, the United Kingdom and France declared war on Germany.

  “‘Canada, a country of large land mass but only eleven million people, began the war with an underequipped militia of only five thousand men. Nevertheless, men from across the country began volunteering to serve king and country.’”

  Benita paused in her reading and looked up. Gram was gazing out the window, a faraway look in her eye.

  “Gram?”

  Gram’s gaze slowly turned toward her granddaughter’s face, but she remained silent.

  “How old were you in 1939?” Benita knew full well her grandmother would make her figure it out for herself.

  “You do the math. I was born in 1922.”

  Benita pulled a small calculator out of her bag and started punching in numbers.

  “Now where on earth did you get that? Surely they don’t let you use calculators in school at your age.”

  “Of course they do.” Benita didn’t even look up. “You were seventeen years old.”

  “Yes, I was, but I’d certainly feel better knowing you could figure that out on your own.”

  “I can.” Benita shrugged. “Just not as fast.” She turned back to her encyclopedia.

  “Oh, here’s what I need. ‘A few brief facts. Canada was the first Commonwealth country to send troops to Britain in 1939.’”

  “That’s true,” Gram said. “I remember.”

  “‘From 1939 to 1945, hundreds of thousands of Canadians enlisted: more than 40 percent of the male population between the ages of eighteen and forty-five. Virtually all of them were volunteers.’”

  “Yes, that’s true, too,” Gram agreed.

  “Did you know some guys who signed up?”

  “Oh, plenty. There were hardly any boys left at home. I thought it awful, but some of my girlfriends grabbed the chance to take jobs and learn new skills they wouldn’t have had the opportunity to learn otherwise.”

  Benita turned back to her list of facts: “‘The first Canadian infantryman to die in World War II was Private John Gray. He was captured and executed by the Japanese on December 13, 1941, in Hong Kong.’”

  She looked at Gram expectantly, but Gram was staring out the window again. She drew in a deep breath and mumbled something Benita couldn’t make out.

  “What’s that, Gram?”

  “It isn’t true,” Gram said softly. “John Gray was not the first to die.”

  “What do you mean? It says so right here.”

  “The first Canadian soldier to be killed in World War II never saw a battle. He died in a train accident on December 10, 1939, on his way to Halifax to ship out to England.” Gram spoke as if reciting a fact she’d memorized long ago.

  “How do you know, Gram?” Benita couldn’t believe that her dear grandmother dared to contradict one of her sacred encyclopedias.

  “I just know.”

/>   PART 1

  Cornelia

  For I know the thoughts that I think toward you, saith the Lord, thoughts of peace, and not of evil, to give you an expected end.

  Jeremiah 29:11

  CHAPTER 1

  Roseburg, Manitoba

  January 1939

  Seventeen-year-old Cornelia Simpson lifted a mirror off the attic wall and brushed away chips of paint that stuck to her fingers from the wooden frame. Concealed behind the mirror hung a pocket-size picture of Jesus—a prize she’d won for perfect Sunday school attendance years before. Cornelia scrutinized it. With her tongue poking out between her lips, she pushed a thumbtack straight into Jesus’s left eye.

  “Liar, liar, pants on fire,” she whispered. “One day, I’ll tell the world the truth about you.”

  Cornelia replaced the mirror with care, making sure it hid the picture. At her feet lay an untidy bundle of papers tied together with string. She penned Diary, 1938 on the top sheet and waited for the ink to dry. Then she carried it to the far corner of the attic and placed the treasure into the bottom of an old silver suitcase, deep under a quilt, where prying eyes would not discover the darkest secrets she had recorded. As she began to close the lid, she suddenly reconsidered.

  Carefully lifting out the colorful quilt and spreading it on the attic floor, Cornelia looked from piece to piece. The squares represented an array of color, each one holding a memory of her mother. She recognized bits of the flannel nightgown she’d worn as a preschooler, the dress she’d worn her first day of school, her mother’s favorite apron, her brother’s shirt. Or was it Daddy’s?

  This pink square, she knew, came from a dress she’d worn the summer she turned twelve, the summer her mother passed away. The dress had been a favorite of Cornelia’s, though her mother had fashioned it from one of her own.

  In one corner, there survived a patch from a little gray coat her parents had presented to her the Christmas she was ten: yet another item of clothing that had been lovingly made by her mother. Although Cornelia had hated the color, she’d never let on to her parents that she longed for a red coat like her friend Agnes’s.

  Cornelia ran her hand over the quilt’s softness and closed her eyes, as though touching it might bring her mother closer. Five years. Cornelia had lived a lifetime since her mother’s death—growing from girlhood to womanhood.