Hidden Among the Stars

by Melanie Dobson

  Now Hermann visited three days a week, though time for swimming was past for him as well. He was a year older than Max and spent his summers working here and at his family’s farm. She’d asked Sarah once what she thought of marrying Hermann, but her friend said her parents would never allow her to marry a Gentile boy.

  Annika snatched the chapel key off the hook by the front door, and Hermann followed her silently out of the cottage, to the family chapel set against the mountain. She’d visited the chapel almost every day this past week to deliver lunch or help her father and Hermann work on the platform they were building near the altar, but she didn’t linger as she used to in the library or Frau Dornbach’s dressing room.

  While the plaster walls were supposed to house God in this chapel, she didn’t think one could box Him up, though Sarah told her that God once lived in a gold-plated box. In the Bible, people carried God around with them as they wandered through the wilderness. God traveling in a case of gold, Annika could imagine that, but not trapped between walls of gray plaster with a dusty tapestry and dirt-smeared windows, two wooden pews and a stone floor.

  Mama taught her all about Jesus before she died. She used to speak of God’s presence like it was a song, stealing across the lake and the trees, over the Alps and up into the sky.

  Did a song ever die, or did it keep traveling?

  Surely it kept traveling, she thought, all the way up into the heavens, threading through stars and knotting itself around the fullness of the moon.

  She’d volunteered last year to clean the chapel, but Vati insisted that the Dornbachs wanted to leave it in its dismal state. If they demanded a clean house, but not a clean chapel, it made her wonder what Herr and Frau Dornbach thought about God.

  “Do you know why they’re adding the platform?” she asked.

  “Didn’t your father tell you?”

  She shook her head. “He never talks to me about such things.”

  “It’s for the casket of Christoph Eyssl.” The salt manager from centuries ago who’d built this castle.

  “Why do they want his casket here?”

  “His testament states that pallbearers should bring his body back to his home every fifty years. The Dornbachs are a decade late, but Frau Dornbach has agreed to accommodate this.”

  Annika shivered at the thought of the man’s casket displayed here. “I wonder why they are just now agreeing.”

  “Because they, like everyone, are trying to maintain a sense of normalcy.”

  And, she suspected, they wanted to maintain good standing with the local parish.

  Perhaps, when the platform was complete, the Dornbachs would add a new tapestry in here, something vibrant and cheery, a garden scene or one with the lake. If Vati would let her borrow the key, she’d collect wild daffodils and primroses during the spring months to brighten the chapel and cover the musty scent.

  God must live in flowers as He did in a bird’s song.

  The engine of a car startled her, and she rushed to the window. The fog was still so thick that she couldn’t see past the trees that separated this chapel from their cottage, but seconds later a black-and-burgundy automobile broke through the fog, rumbling toward the chapel.

  Had the Dornbachs finally returned? Her mind rushed to take an inventory of the house. She’d restacked all of Frau Dornbach’s shoe boxes beside the armoire and cleaned the rooms. But what would Frau Dornbach do when she realized her necklace was missing?

  Annika slipped away from the glass as the car parked beside the castle’s front steps. She didn’t recognize the vehicle, but that wasn’t unusual. The Dornbachs purchased a new car at least once a year.

  “I must get my father,” she said. The family usually sent a telegram before a visit, but the last two times they’d arrived unexpectedly, almost as if they were trying to catch her father in a lethargic state. Not that it was difficult to do these days. It was well after ten now, and Vati was still in bed.

  She raced out into the fog and through the trees, flinging open the cottage door.

  “Vati!” she shouted, running down the short corridor into his room. He was still asleep, one arm hanging off the side of the bed, fully dressed, except he’d somehow managed to remove his shoes.

  Instead of opening his eyes, he made a growling sound. “Go away.”

  “Get up, Vati.” She shook the covers. “Someone is here.”

  He swore as he lifted his head, his skin a grayish color. “The Dornbachs?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “They should warn a man before coming.” His legs wobbled when they hit the rug, two columns trying to balance his massive frame.

  “I’ll heat the coffee,” she said, stepping back into the hallway.

  He shook his head, trying to steady himself on the bedpost. “Go tell them I was up late working on their chapel.”

  Stopping in the bathroom, Annika rinsed off her face and ran a brush through her brown hair, frizzy from the damp air. There was no time to change clothes, but her work skirt and blouse were an improvement on the worn winter coat she’d been wearing the last time she saw Max.

  She braided her hair as she strode across the living room and then out through the strip of trees, into the courtyard that separated their cottage from the manor home. No one was inside the car when she returned to the courtyard, but she heard male voices in the chapel. Someone was talking to Hermann.

  Had Herr Dornbach come alone?

  A man stepped out of the chapel, and a moment passed before she realized it was Max, his light-brown hair hidden under his hat. His eyes met hers, and even as she straightened her shoulders, her heart pounded so hard it made her chest quiver.

  “Hello, Annika.”

  “Hello.” She glanced at the empty car again. “Where are your parents?”

  “They stayed in Vienna.”

  Max was still six months shy of being old enough to obtain his driver’s license, but then again, perhaps no one cared about such things these days.

  “Vati’s been detained,” she said. She could lie to Herr and Frau Dornbach, saying that he’d been working late, but she could never lie to Max no matter what her father asked of her.

  “I’m not here to see your father.” He opened the back door of the vehicle. “I wanted to see you.”

  Annika caught her breath, her heart feeling as if it might puncture a hole straight through her chest. She could see herself again in a beautiful gown, dancing with Max across a polished floor. “Really?”

  He nodded before turning toward the backseat of his car, retrieving a small cage with a gray cat enclosed inside. “I’d like you to meet Frederica,” he said, his smile sheepish. “I was hoping you could take care of her.”

  The beating of her heart plummeted as she reached for the cage, his words dissolving the foolish vision of him smiling at her as he’d done with Luzia. She would do just about anything for him, and she was fairly certain he knew this. “Of course.”

  “She’s not the sort of cat that likes to stay inside.” He lowered the cage to the grass. “In a way, she reminds me of you, Kätzchen.”

  “I’m not a kitten, Max.”

  Frederica clawed at the door of the cage. When Max opened it, the cat scampered toward the barn.

  “She won’t stay away for long,” he said, watching the cat race through the door.

  Annika turned back to him. “You drove all that way to bring me a cat?”

  “I have other reasons as well.”

  She smiled again, brushing her hands over her skirt. Perhaps he had missed her as much as she’d missed him.

  His gaze wandered to the trees that hid the caretaker’s cottage. “Where’s your father?”

  “He’s—” she started, searching for her next words, but the stomping of boots on leaves interrupted them. Vati no longer looked down at Max, at least not physically, but he was twice Max’s girth, and the sneer on his face reminded Annika of a steely samlet from the lake with its many teeth.

  Max hel
d Vati’s gaze, not wavering, like he’d stepped into his father’s shoes as lord of this estate.

  “I wasn’t expecting you.” Her father’s words seemed to drag along with his feet. He eyed the cage at Max’s feet but didn’t say anything. He was used to Max bringing a variety of pets with him.

  “I’ve only come for the night.” Max unlocked the trunk of the car. “I have to return to school in the morning.”

  “Does your father know that you’ve taken the car?” Vati asked.

  “He’s much too distracted to realize either the car or his son is gone.”

  Vati’s eyes narrowed. “It seems now is the time to be focused.”

  “Vienna has changed overnight, Herr Knopf. We’re all still trying to find our footing.”

  “We’ve found our footing quite well here.”

  Something crossed Max’s face that Annika didn’t understand. Sadness or perhaps anger. “I suppose you have.”

  Vati took a step back. “Tell your father that the platform in the chapel is close to completion.”

  Annika didn’t contradict her father, but she doubted Herr Dornbach would think the platform was almost finished.

  “And tell him that it’s most urgent I speak with him soon. I’ve found something of his . . .”

  She waited for him to tell Max about the necklace, but he disappeared toward the rear of the castle. Max lifted a satchel off the backseat.

  “Do you want me to help with your suitcase?” she asked.

  “No, Kätzchen.” He looped the satchel’s strap over his shoulder before he slammed the trunk closed.

  Annika sighed, wishing she owned a sequined dress like Luzia’s after all, so brilliant that Max couldn’t take his eyes off her. Perhaps then he’d realize she had grown into a woman or at least a cat. Not a kitten that needed rescuing.

  She may not be able to impress him with her clothing, but perhaps she could regain some of his admiration with her cooking. She’d saved enough schillings to buy the supplies for Tafelspitz—a meal traditionally made with boiled beef. Max had stopped eating meat long ago, but she could make it from whatever vegetables she could obtain from the grocer.

  “Are you hungry?” she asked as Max lifted the cage from the ground and stepped toward the castle.

  “I suppose I am.”

  “I’ll make you Tafelspitz for dinner.”

  He eyed her curiously, as if surprised that she could cook.

  “With parsnips and potatoes and—”

  “Thank you,” he said, stopping her before she rattled off every ingredient in the meal.

  “I’ll use whatever fresh vegetables the grocer has in stock.”

  He reached into his coat pocket and retrieved several silver coins.

  She shook her head. “I have the money, Max.”

  “Schillings?”

  “Of course.”

  “You can no longer use your schillings in Austria,” he said sadly, holding out the coins again.

  “But what will we use?”

  “The grocer will need Reichsmarks.”

  He dumped several coins into her open palm, and she stared down at the black-webbed swastikas looking back up at her. Perhaps the storm of this Third Reich was rolling into their lakes after all.

  “Everything’s changing,” she whispered.

  He turned back toward her before he climbed the steps to the front door. “Hitler’s changed much more than our money.”

  “I don’t like it, Max.”

  She’d hoped he would reassure her, say that she was being silly in her concerns, but he shook his head instead. “I don’t either.”

  “What are we to do?” she asked.

  “Fight, in our own way.”

  But there was nothing she could do to fight the mighty Hitler. She was only a young woman. A kitten, in Max’s eyes.

  Hours later, after she’d prepared the meal, she delivered the Tafelspitz to the castle. The front door was unlocked, and she found Max in the library, a book and what looked like a letter in his lap.

  She set the tray on the circular table. “What are you reading?”

  “Bambi.”

  She sat on the chair opposite him. “My mother gave me that book before she died.”

  He slipped the paper into the book and closed the cover, his eyes turning toward the dark window as if he could see the cottage behind the trees. “These days it feels as if we are all being hunted.”

  Perhaps he saw his own dreams of escaping in those pages about the deer.

  “If you could run, Max, where would you go?”

  “To my aunt’s home in Paris,” he said. “Or someplace else where the Nazis aren’t allowed to hunt people like they are prey.”

  “It makes me sad to think of people hurting someone who’s weaker instead of protecting those who have already been wounded.”

  Max placed one hand on the book. “People hurt others because they are afraid.”

  Fear, Annika thought, was a curious thing. Motivating some to hurt and others to heal.

  She almost told him about the necklace, but it seemed that Vati had forgotten about it now. Max had enough to worry about without her adding to his heavy load.

  When he reopened his book, the words that had once slipped easily between them turned into an awkward silence, bricking up a wall that separated them instead. They could talk here for hours tonight without his parents or her father to disturb them, and yet it seemed as if he were more interested in the silence found inside these walls than conversation.

  As Annika returned to the cottage, loneliness engulfed her once again. A bird sang out in the darkness, and she wished she could fly away with the songbirds until Hitler was gone. And Max had returned to her.

  CHAPTER 13

  The front yard of my sister’s home smells like charcoal and grilled meat. Charlotte and I step out of the Prius, onto the sidewalk, and I brace myself for the front door to spring open, my nephews attempting to tackle me with their hugs.

  On the way home from Columbus, Brie texted and asked us to join her family for dinner. Charlotte seemed to forget her own plans for the night, readily agreeing to a meal of barbecued chicken, fried potatoes, and fruit salad.

  I scan the narrow driveway that leads to an attached garage before glancing up toward two stories and attic dormers of the Victorian house. Typically my nephews are either playing in the drive or watching for me from the windows, but I don’t see them peeking down at me this evening.

  Did Brie forget to tell the twins I was coming? Or maybe she wanted to surprise them.

  Charlotte glances at her watch. “Perhaps we should wait a few minutes.”

  “Brie won’t care if we’re early.” After our excursion today, I was glad to be ten minutes ahead of schedule. “And Ethan already has meat on the grill.”

  After flipping the latch on their picket fence, I open it wide for Charlotte and we stroll up the pebbly path that divides the lawn in two, giving my nephews extra time to tumble out. But when we step up onto the porch, the front door is still closed and, oddly enough, locked. I ring the doorbell and wait.

  Charlotte checks her cell phone. “Perhaps Brie is still at the store.”

  “I know where the key is.” Tucked away on the corner of their porch in a tiny pop-up box that Ethan rigged up after Brie locked herself out one afternoon, their boys napping upstairs. Before the locksmith arrived, she’d busted the window on the back door and let herself in.

  “I’ll text her,” Charlotte says as I retrieve the key. “We won’t want to scare her if she’s inside.”

  Seconds later, my sister’s face appears in the narrow window that lines the evergreen door. She waves at us, but it takes her way too long to open the door. An image flashes in my mind of Miss Clavel in Madeline’s Parisian boardinghouse.

  “In the middle of one night Miss Clavel turned on her light and said, ‘Something is not right!’”

  Except there’s no disaster at the end of the Madeline book, only a roomful of l
ittle girls wanting what they don’t have.

  I take a deep breath, pushing Miss Clavel and her girls back to Paris. Dissatisfaction can lead to disaster almost as much as panicking when nothing is wrong.

  Brie cracks open the door. “You’re early.” She looks at Charlotte and then me as if we’ve made a major faux pas.

  “Just a couple minutes.” I point back toward the sidewalk. “Should we wait in the car?”

  “No, that would be silly.”

  “It’s all starting to seem a little silly to me.”

  “Give me a minute.” But Brie doesn’t move, standing in front of us as if she’s guarding the entry into the foyer. She’s a few inches shorter than me so I glance over her shoulder, wondering where Oscar and Owen are. Something moves behind her, but I don’t see either boy.

  Charlotte turns toward me. “Let’s go get a cup of coffee.”

  “You don’t drink coffee.” I tilt my head. “What’s going on?”

  “Nothing.” My sister steps onto the porch, and when she inches the door closed behind her, I know something is definitely not right. A horrific thought pierces my mind, my imagination succumbing to the worst possible scenario.

  Are the boys and even Ethan inside with some sort of intruder? Perhaps Brie can’t say anything or someone will hurt her family.

  I lower my voice. “Is everyone safe?”

  “Yes,” she assures me, “just not quite ready for dinner.”

  “I’ll help you get ready.”

  A minivan pulls into the driveway beside the house, parking in front of the garage. Brie groans when the passenger door opens and a petite woman steps out—Jenna Sainte, a friend from church. Her husband walks around to the back of the van.

  Brie swipes her hand over her head. “Now they’ve spoiled it.”

  “Spoiled what?” I ask, exasperated. Then slowly, like sap trickling down a tapped maple tree, it hits me. Brie’s secrecy and her strangeness when I told her I needed to go to Columbus today. Charlotte’s insistence that we return home for dinner instead of going to the mall.

  I turn back toward my sister, my words processing the slow revelation. “You’ve planned a party.”