Hidden Among the Stars

by Melanie Dobson

  My eyes refocus on the book, but I’m relieved to see Dr. Nemeth, hoping that he also has my book and some news. Then my relief turns to slight embarrassment that I’m wearing my striped socks and cape. I shouldn’t care what he thinks—he and I are both teachers in our own way, but his teaching is probably done in a classroom with students who don’t blurt out about their new underwear.

  After adjusting my cape, I finish the story about Bear and then peruse the three books that remain unread on the table beside me. “We only have time for one more.”

  The kids begin shouting out the names of their favorite books.

  Smiling, I glance at the girl with Dr. Nemeth—his daughter, I assume—as she maneuvers through the children to find herself a seat. Then I pick up Stephanie’s Ponytail, another Robert Munsch classic. When I read the title, the girl smiles back at me.

  I tell the story of Stephanie, a girl who wants to be different from all her classmates, wearing her ponytail different ways because each time she changes the style, everyone in the school copies her. Catastrophic for an independent girl like her.

  “Time for hot chocolate,” Brie calls after I finish this story. Kids roll away like tumbleweeds, and I’m left in a quiet desert, the observer of a wild storm on the other side of the room.

  Dr. Nemeth takes his daughter’s hand and moves toward me. While she has dressed up for story time, he’s wearing jeans, a lime T-shirt, and rather worn flip-flops.

  I slip the pile of books beside me back into the crate. “It’s nice to see you again.”

  “You too,” he says. “I read about the story time online. I just didn’t realize you’d be doing the reading.”

  “Every Saturday morning.” I bat my cape back over my right shoulder. “Story Girl, the kids call me.”

  The girl in the sailor dress inches up on her toes beside me. “I like it.”

  “Thanks.”

  She flings her ponytail back and forth. “And I liked the story about Stephanie.”

  “I hope you don’t shave off your ponytail.”

  She laughs. “Never.”

  “This is my daughter,” Dr. Nemeth says. “Ellabean.”

  She rolls her eyes. “It’s Ella, Dad.”

  He shrugs before smiling back at me. “I always mess it up.”

  “It’s a beautiful name.”

  She fidgets with the bow on her dress. “My mom picked it.”

  “She did a fine job.”

  Dr. Nemeth nudges Ella’s shoulder. “Why don’t you have some hot chocolate?”

  Instead of turning toward the pack of kids, Ella eyes the castle, and I admire the way she chooses adventure over chocolate. A bold move.

  “It’s fine with me if she’d like to explore inside. There’s even a slide.”

  He scrutinizes the castle as if it might be in jeopardy of falling. “I’m not sure . . .”

  “My brother-in-law built it,” I say. “He’s a carpenter.”

  One of his eyebrows slides up. “A good one?”

  “Journeyman,” I assure him.

  Ella looks at her father with wide blue eyes that match her dress, begging him with her gaze. “No one’s in it right now, Dad.”

  “Oh, go ahead,” he says, shooing her away.

  I laugh as she disappears through the front gate. “She’s a lovely girl.”

  “Precocious.”

  “Precocious gets a bad rap.”

  He swings a worn courier bag from behind his back and opens it. “I have your book.”

  “Thank you,” I say, anxious to hear what he has to report.

  “Were you able to find out where it came from?”

  I shake my head. “I’m still waiting to hear back from the bookseller.”

  He lifts the book out of his bag, clinging to it even as he scans the hectic room. “Could we talk in a quieter space?”

  “Of course,” I say. “Do you mind waiting about fifteen minutes? Most of the families will head to the farmers’ market soon.”

  “I’ll catch up on my reading,” he quips before adding Bambi to the stack of books in my arms. Then he lifts Hatschi Bratschis Luftballon from the German section of used books, and I glance down at the man on the familiar cover. Hatschi Bratschi looks a bit like Genie in the Aladdin movie except he is clothed in a long robe, riding in a hot air balloon. In his hands is a telescope fixed on some exotic location below the basket, searching for children.

  As Dr. Nemeth flips through the colorful pages, I stow my books in the office and help out several parents, stealthily avoiding Mr. Baker, who seems to be following me around the shop. When I return to Dr. Nemeth, he holds out the magic balloon book. “This is a terrible story for kids.”

  My arms bristle, as if he’s offending me personally. I almost start lecturing him on the three kinds of children’s books, along with the importance of developing a child’s critical thinking skills as they enter a story world very different from their own. But no parent likes advice from someone who doesn’t actually have children. “It’s not ter—”

  “And violent,” he continues.

  “Only if you’re an evil wizard or a witch.”

  “The witch burns up in a fire!”

  “This was published to an audience used to reading the works of the Brothers Grimm.”

  “It’s certainly grim.”

  “The greater the struggle, the more triumphant the ending.” He looks at me curiously, and I squirm under his gaze before continuing. “Besides, Fritz has the adventure of a lifetime before he rescues the other kids.”

  “Still, it makes you wonder what kind of person writes a book like this, railing against people from another culture.”

  I glance around the room, at the shelves of books filled with stories about antagonists who threaten the hero or heroine. “A man who’s trying to confront his own fears.”

  Dr. Nemeth’s gaze wanders back to the castle. I think about the bear in the book we just read, afraid of the wind, and I wonder—what is this man afraid of?

  Ella peeks out between the white columns on the second-story window, in the room that Brie painted lavender, silver, and pink for the many princesses who visit our store. The other room has a mural with a suit of armor and a black horse for the knights.

  “Franz Ginzkey was from Vienna,” I say. “He published this about a decade before World War I.”

  “I wonder what he was doing during World War II.”

  “Unfortunately, he ended up joining the Nazi Party. Many people did, I guess, for survival.”

  Dr. Nemeth glances down at the wizard and his balloon on the cover. “I suppose it’s impossible to assign motive almost a century after the fact.”

  I pull my stack closer to me. “Unless someone left their story behind for us to read.”

  “But even on paper,” he says, “people can clean up their motives. Often you have to hear from a loved one to learn what someone was truly like.”

  “What if the loved one decides to communicate their own version of the truth?”

  Mr. Baker steps up beside me, eying Dr. Nemeth as if he might go to battle himself. A married man with a lovely daughter is hardly competition, but Mr. Baker doesn’t know that the man in front of me is married.

  I ignore Devon’s dad, talking directly to Dr. Nemeth. “Actually, I believe now is a good time to talk. Perhaps Ella can play while we step outside?”

  As the other children begin to fill the castle, Ella slides down and races toward her father, taking his hand. “I like it here,” she tells me.

  “I’m glad.”

  She looks at the refreshment table. “Do you think there’s any hot chocolate left?”

  “If not, I know where my sister keeps her stash.”

  “You have plans again tonight?” Mr. Baker asks, seconds after Dr. Nemeth and Ella step toward the table.

  “I do.” I glance toward the professor and his daughter as if they’re spending the rest of the day with me. And I wonder if Mrs. Nemeth is shopping nearby or i
f she’s waiting for them at home.

  “I have plans as well. A date.” Mr. Baker studies my face, gauging my reaction.

  “I’m glad for you.”

  He’s disappointed at my enthusiasm, but I really am happy.

  I motion Dr. Nemeth toward the door, and he follows me outside to a wrought-iron table under the awning where people typically congregate to enjoy their ice cream. He’s balancing a cup of coffee and another of hot chocolate in one hand, the balloon book under his arm, and in the other hand, a mug of tea that he sets before me. “Your sister said you’d need this.”

  “Thank you.” I unlatch my cape and drape it over the back of my seat. One of my kids comes bounding out of the store with his parents and bumps my fist before continuing on toward the square. “Are you ready for your trip?”

  “Everything’s done except the packing,” he says.

  “Were you able to translate the handwriting in Annika’s book?”

  He nods. “One of my TAs helped me verify the items to make sure I translated them correctly. I’ve never seen anything quite like it.”

  “Me either, and I’ve found all sorts of things in books.”

  He pulls out a computer tablet from his bag and opens a document with the translated list. It looks the same as what Charlotte and I have worked together to translate—necklaces, jewels, candlesticks, small pieces of artwork. And the initials at the end of each line.

  “It’s like a catalog,” he says.

  “Or a wish list.”

  “It seems too specific to be wishful thinking.” The chair creaks when he shifts his legs. “My assistant thinks this Annika was a very creative child who developed some sort of code with her friends. Perhaps they passed around their books with the notes to read.”

  “But you don’t think that.”

  He shakes his head.

  “What about the teenager in the photograph?”

  His eyebrows rise. “Her brother?”

  I laugh. “I’m pretty sure it was a crush. Maybe she was writing something to him. . . .”

  “Perhaps,” he replies in a somewhat-polite way of disagreeing with me.

  “You said that Nazis were hiding things in this district.”

  He nods. “Sometimes they forced locals to help them.”

  “I can’t imagine . . .” I run my fingers down the edge of my cape. “You said Annika told your uncle a story.”

  Dr. Nemeth glances away, looking at the display window of the stationery store across the street before turning back to me. “My uncle Leo was sent to Austria’s lake country as a military photographer in 1945. His job was to document some of the valuable items and artwork that the Nazis dumped when they were fleeing from the Allies.” He takes a sip of his coffee. “They stayed at one of Hitler’s former youth camps, on the banks of Lake Hallstatt.”

  I lean forward. “Schloss Schwansee?”

  “Exactly.” He takes a small photo album out of his bag and sets it on the balloon book. “Uncle Leo took a number of photographs for Uncle Sam in the 1940s. Before his death, he gave his personal photographs to me.”

  I open the cover and begin scanning through the black-and-white photos. Most are pictures of uniformed soldiers smiling—over their recent victory, I suspect. Several are of the mountains; one appears to be the entrance to a mine.

  And then there’s a woman holding the hand of a young child, an old manor house behind them with a medieval-looking turret and wall mottled with black. The woman is standing in the shadows as if she’s unaware that Leo is taking her picture. Her hair is short, cut above her shoulders, her eyes covered with sunglasses, and she’s wearing a skirt and short-sleeved blouse, a handkerchief around the collar.

  I point to the charred side of the house. “Was there a fire?”

  “It was probably bombed during the war.”

  I look back up at Dr. Nemeth. “Is this—?”

  He slips the photograph out of the sleeve, and when he turns it over, I catch my breath. One word is scrawled in ink across the back.

  Annika.

  Goosebumps ripple across my arms.

  “Her father had been the caretaker of the castle, and after his death, her husband took over the care of the estate.”

  “What was her husband’s name?”

  “I don’t know,” he says. “If Uncle Leo found out, he never told me.”

  Dr. Nemeth slides the photo back under its protective covering. “Annika said two Nazi officials came to Schloss Schwansee near the end of the war. They dumped boxes of valuable items into the lake.”

  My heart beats faster. “She kept a record of what they were trying to hide.”

  “Perhaps.”

  “Did your uncle’s company find anything in Lake Hallstatt?”

  “They discovered a number of items hidden in a local mine, but his division never found anything in the water. Their diving equipment wasn’t nearly as sophisticated as it is today.”

  More kids pour from the store, but my focus remains on the professor. “And you’ve been wondering about it ever since.”

  He nods. “I wrote my dissertation about ownerless treasure in Austria.”

  “Ownerless?”

  “It’s what the Nazis called everything they stole from the Jewish people.” He takes another sip of coffee. “I’ve wanted to search for what they dumped in this lake since I was about Ella’s age, but Annika, I think, is the key to finding it.”

  “Why haven’t you searched for the treasure before?” I ask.

  “I was supposed to go, about ten years ago. My journey since then has been a bit . . . complicated.” He glances down at the photograph. “Have you ever been to Austria?”

  I shake my head. “I’ve never been out of the United States.”

  “But you know German?”

  “Ein bisschen.”

  Ella steps outside, and Dr. Nemeth pulls out a chair for his daughter. She sits like a proper adult except her legs keep swinging under the table, back and forth as if they’re keeping time. She reaches for the balloon book, but her father pulls it away and nods toward the chocolate that’s no longer hot.

  “I think you’d like all the Austrian castles and music and mountain lakes.”

  I sip my tea. “Perhaps one day I’ll go.”

  “You should fly over with our team,” he says. “Maybe you can help search for Annika while we dive.”

  I blink, shocked at first at this suggestion; then I mull over his words. He might as well have suggested I visit the moon. What would it be like to visit a place like Austria, reunite golden watches and other heirlooms with their owners?

  “I don’t know . . .”

  “Why not?”

  A reasonable question, but I don’t have a reasonable answer, at least not one he would understand. I have the money to travel now, thanks to Brie and Charlotte, but the truth is, I’m afraid. Dr. Nemeth probably travels all the time. I can’t very well tell him that I’ve dropped the anchor of my life right here and don’t want to leave.

  “Hate flying?” he asks, breaking the silence that has grown awkward between us.

  “I’ve never actually been on an airplane before.”

  “Really?”

  “Scout’s honor,” I say, holding up three fingers.

  He studies me as if I’m a relic in a museum. “You’ve never left Ohio?”

  “Yes, I’ve left Ohio, but I can drive just fine to almost anyplace I want to go.”

  He nods, quick and businesslike. Not understanding but acknowledging my words. I could tell him that I travel plenty, that the books in the shop and in my flat overhead are my transportation to exotic locations, traveling across time even, but I suspect he won’t understand that either.

  “Grammy and I are going to Austria soon,” Ella says as she lowers her drink. “Dad’s taking me to the ice caves, and Grammy wants to see the music stuff.”

  Dr. Nemeth smiles. “All the places around Salzburg where The Sound of Music was filmed.”

&nbs
p; Ella’s not smiling, though. When tears puddle in the corners of her eyes, her dad reaches for her hand. “You’ll hardly blink, and we’ll be in Austria together.”

  Ella studies him skeptically.

  “Okay,” he concurs. “Several blinks.”

  “A hundred million of them,” she says. “Maybe more.”

  “What if we count the days, not the blinks?”

  She straightens in her chair. “Twenty-one days.”

  “Team Nemeth,” he says, holding out his fist.

  She bumps it. “Team Nemeth.” But after she says this, her smile fades again. “Except Mom—”

  “We have to head out.” Dr. Nemeth glances at his watch, interrupting her.

  The pretty woman pictured in his office flashes through my mind, and I’m curious to know what Ella was going to say about her mother. But she’s sufficiently distracted now as she hops out of her chair. Her dad slides his tablet back into his bag before reaching for the album.

  I nod down at the photograph. “Do you mind if I take a picture of this?”

  “Not at all.”

  After snapping it, I stand up beside him. “Please let me know what you find about Annika.”

  “Of course.”

  He and Ella both shake my hand, and then they’re gone.

  I study the photograph again on my phone. The woman’s face is partially shadowed by the gray shade of a tree, and her arms and legs look pencil thin. I wish I could see her eyes. Hear her story.

  I hope Dr. Nemeth finds this treasure for the people who lost it. Perhaps, if he finds Annika’s family, I can return the Bambi book and its list directly to them.

  I scoop up Hatschi Bratschis Luftballon to return to the store.

  The magic balloon book is about reuniting people, Fritz and the other children miraculously returning to their families after the wicked man takes them away.

  This is a much newer version than the one that Charlotte has on her shelf at home, the one with another name inscribed inside, but instinctively I open the front cover, as if the name is recorded in this magic balloon book as well.

  Luzia Weiss.

  It’s not there, of course. The only place I’ve ever found her name is in the book in Charlotte’s condo. Weiss is a common surname in Germany, but in our years of searching, neither Charlotte nor I have found the birth record for a Luzia.