Hidden Among the Stars

by Melanie Dobson

  Initially I look away from the old church, trying to avoid the memory of the man I trusted completely, the man I thought loved me for exactly who I was. He didn’t love me, at least not for a lifetime. I helped him pass the time. Kathleen stole his heart.

  I stop in front of the chapel, every stone in its walls excavated from a nearby quarry and laid by the masons who relocated from England in the 1800s to build Kenyon College. A revival swept through the college, stirring students and town residents alike, and together they built this place of worship that has lasted for a hundred and fifty years.

  Maybe it’s finally time to leave my memories behind, the ones that seem to keep me chained to the past, and start on a new journey. Build something new.

  My phone flashes, notifying me of an email, and I tap the screen to read a note from the bookseller in Boise.

  Dear Ms. Randall,

  Thank you for your purchase of Bambi: A Life in the Woods. This book was from an estate sale near Sandpoint.

  I’m sorry that I’m not able to provide you with more information. Unless something of a critical nature is found in a book, it’s our policy to keep our client names confidential.

  Sincerely,

  Leah Lowe

  Annika’s notes are more intriguing than critical, I suppose, but if the list recorded some sort of treasure hidden by the Nazis . . . Ms. Lowe might consider that critical.

  A quick search on my phone reveals that Sandpoint is a small town in the mountains of Idaho, on the shore of Lake Pend Oreille—pronounced Pond Ah-Ray according to the website. I hunt for someone with the surname of Knopf in the area, but no results are shown.

  Perhaps it’s just wishful thinking, but I want to believe that whoever sold this book might have known Annika. Or at least known about her.

  The meaning of this list might have been family lore, passed down through her relatives in Idaho. Answers easily resolved if only I can find the right person to ask.

  Ms. Lowe, I hope, is one of those booksellers who can’t resist a good story.

  CHAPTER 18

  VIENNA, AUSTRIA

  AUGUST 1938

  Max spooned the soup into his mouth, but he barely tasted the white asparagus or cream. Hans, a friend from school, had stopped by an hour ago to collect the money needed to purchase an official, albeit forged, marriage certificate for Maximilian Dornbach and Luzia Weiss along with a baptismal certificate into the Catholic Church for Luzia Weiss.

  It had cost Max the sale of his motorbike, but Hans promised he could obtain these papers in the next two weeks. And with the certificates, Max would apply for Aryan visas into Switzerland or France for a honeymoon.

  He hadn’t returned to Luzi’s flat for the past month, but yesterday Dr. Weiss had knocked on the door while Max’s parents were gone. Frau Weiss didn’t know he’d come, but he asked Max to obtain these papers and escort Luzi out of Austria as soon as possible. With Max and Luzi established in the new country, the rest of the family would be able to follow, he said.

  Max gladly complied.

  A canary serenaded their tense family meal from the floor above, the song spilling through the vent from Max’s room. Dr. Weiss had brought the bird with him when he visited, the prized pet of a former patient who’d obtained a visa to Shanghai. His canary, a rare bronze-colored bird he’d named Beethoven, had to stay behind as well as the bag of jewels hidden in a compartment at the base of his cage. The jewels Max would bury when his family returned to Schloss Schwansee in the morning. The owner asked that Beethoven be released into the wild.

  He and his father hadn’t spoken beyond occasional formalities since Max had informed him that he wouldn’t be joining the Wehrmacht. When Hans obtained the certificates, Max would be leaving Austria for good.

  “That bird has to find another home,” his father said, glaring at Max as if he and the bird were collaborating to disrupt his meal.

  “I’m going to release him at the lake tomorrow.” Max took another spoonful of his soup, trying to calm his voice in spite of the racing in his mind.

  His father shook his head. “We can’t go now, not with everything in turmoil.”

  Max glanced between his parents. They were supposed to have left weeks ago for their summer retreat. After delays with the bank, his father had assured them they would finally leave in the morning.

  He turned toward his mother. “Perhaps we can go on our own.”

  “Why do you want to go to Hallstatt?” she asked.

  The last two summers he’d begged to stay here in Vienna after school released, hoping to spend more time with Luzi, but in the past his parents always insisted that he join them at the lake.

  In the past—words that now defined their country’s future.

  “I want to spend some time with Hermann and Annika.” And he needed to speak to Annika. He hoped she would help him again.

  “You must tread carefully on that poor girl’s heart.” His mother stirred her soup, the white cream lapping slowly against the sides of the bowl.

  “There’s nothing wrong with her heart.”

  “She’s our servant, Max.”

  “And a friend.”

  “She considers you to be more than—”

  “It doesn’t matter,” his father interrupted. “None of us are leaving Vienna this summer.”

  Max glanced up at the ceiling. The canary he could release in the Vienna Woods west of the city, but what would he do with the jewels?

  If they wouldn’t leave as a family, he’d have to borrow the Mercedes again and take one last trip to Hallstatt on his own.

  The doorbell chimed, the sound echoing across the dining room. It was a quarter after six—visitors rarely stopped by their house during the dinner hour.

  Their housekeeper served each of them plates filled with Schinkenfleckerln, a ham dish baked with cheese, and then rushed into the next room to answer the door. Max’s parents began to eat, waiting to see if she would announce a guest or return with a message for one of them. And Max did what he always did—picked out the meat and set it to the side before eating the noodles and cheese.

  “You’re wasting perfectly good pork,” his father said.

  Max dumped the meat into his empty bowl and slid it toward him. “You can have it.”

  Before his father replied, their housekeeper stepped back into the room and deposited the letter opener along with a brown envelope inscribed Telegramm in red across the top.

  “It’s probably Emil again,” his father said, referring to Herr Knopf.

  His mother glanced at the telegram. “You should respond to him.”

  “I did respond, but he said that he must speak with me in person.”

  “Perhaps something is wrong with the Schloss,” Max said. “Or Annika.”

  His father shook his head. “The man wants an increase in salary, but he doesn’t deserve another penny.”

  He slit open the envelope, and they waited for him to speak.

  “What is it?” his mother asked.

  His father’s face flushed as he scanned the typed words, a slow burn crawling up to his ears until they flickered like torches. Then he raised his chin, and Max thought for certain his ruse was up—his father had found out about the hidden jewels or the marriage certificate or both.

  But his father’s eyes, narrowed into darts, were aimed straight at his wife.

  She turned toward the housekeeper. “We’ll need coffee with our dessert.”

  “I have a pot brewing right now,” the woman said before retreating into the kitchen.

  His father didn’t seem to notice their housekeeper’s departure. “You—” He wrapped his hand around the telegram before balling it up. “You gave money to Kurt Schuschnigg!”

  Each syllable pounded out of his mouth, a hammer flattening a nail. Then nothing. The clock ticking behind them divided the breadth of silence into sections. One. Two. Three. Max counted the seconds in his head, twenty of them before his mother spoke again.

  Unlike h
is father’s splotched face, hers had blanched white.

  “Why wouldn’t I donate money to Chancellor Schuschnigg?” she asked, the tremble in her voice negating any attempt to dispute the accusation.

  “Ex-chancellor,” his father fumed. “Don’t be coy with me, Klara. They are questioning our loyalty.”

  Max slumped farther into his chair. The darts flew back and forth across their dinner table more frequently these days, especially when they discussed their former chancellor and others who dared to stand up against the regime.

  “We have been nothing but loyal,” his mother said.

  “To Hitler,” his father insisted. “Not the old Austria.”

  “Change is a process,” she said. “And you thought Schuschnigg was a good chancellor.”

  “But I wouldn’t donate money to him, right before the plebiscite. Only Jews donated—”

  “My donation was private information.”

  “Nothing is private anymore.”

  “It was when I donated it.” His mother’s voice sounded hollow, like she’d lost the strength of it. “They’re like parasites.”

  His father stood and shoved his chair back underneath the table. “They’re requiring my presence at the Hotel Metropole, first thing in the morning.”

  The new Gestapo headquarters.

  “I’ll explain—”

  “No.” He drummed the table, as if he were trying to pound out a solution. Then he gave a sharp nod. “You and Max were already planning to leave for Schloss Schwansee. I don’t want to detain you.”

  “Of course,” his mother said, smoothing her hands across the tablecloth. “We always visit Schloss Schwansee in the summer.”

  His father stepped toward the corridor, probably to lock himself in his study for the evening.

  She called out to him. “What will you say to the Gestapo?”

  He turned back, his eyes still hard. “That my wife made a foolish error. She knows nothing of politics.”

  Max leaned back as the housekeeper filled his coffee cup. He’d never heard anyone accuse his mother of being a fool.

  The telephone rang.

  “Don’t answer that,” his father commanded, and they waited until the ringing ceased. Then he glanced back toward the salon. “You will leave for Hallstatt tonight instead.”

  “I’ve done nothing wrong, Wilhelm.”

  “Innocence is secondary in this Reich.”

  The telephone began ringing again.

  His mother stood. “We’ll leave within the hour.”

  “Annika,” Max whispered as he rapped on the glass, praying he wouldn’t wake up Herr Knopf. Not only was her father a drunkard, Max doubted he could keep a secret. And he suspected that the man would do whatever benefited him the most.

  Annika, however, he could trust.

  He tapped again and waited in the darkness instead of turning on his flashlight. If only he could speak with Annika during the daylight hours, but he couldn’t risk Herr Knopf’s wrath or the man’s nosiness. And his mother—she’d thought it fine that he and Annika were friends in their youth, but she clearly didn’t want him to spend time with Annika now that he was almost eighteen.

  Annika was loyal, like a sister to him. And he desperately needed her help.

  Max eyed the walls of the castle across the yard. The light in his mother’s room was still lit. She was probably playing one of her records, trying to fall asleep after their four-hour crawl through the city and then the mountains after dark. They’d been stopped near the edge of Vienna by guards asking for their papers.

  Thankfully, his mother had the foresight to pack both birth certificates and baptismal papers. The uniformed man had given the paperwork a cursory glance, but he studied the canary in their backseat for a long time, fascinated by it. At first, Max had been terrified, but the guard was a kindred soul with his interest in birds. He stayed by the window until Max was able to coax Beethoven to sing.

  Neither the guard nor his colleagues searched their Mercedes, but other vehicles had been pulled to the side, their doors open as the guards pulled out luggage, rifled through glove compartments, pulled up the car mats.

  Even though his father was furious about the donation, Max had been proud of his mother, supporting their Austrian chancellor even after Hitler had ousted him. But she hadn’t wanted to talk about it on their trip. It seemed that Herr Dornbach’s impending visit with the Gestapo had depleted her.

  No matter how angry his father was, the man would stand behind his wife’s innocence in the morning. His reputation and clout in Vienna, and perhaps additional funding if necessary, would clear any suspicion of their family.

  Annika’s window slowly inched up. “Max?”

  Her hair was all tousled, and she looked as if she were still a girl, wide-eyed and innocent, marveling at the world around, embracing her youth even as the new Reich was forcing most of their young people into adulthood.

  The years had passed quickly as they both grew, and yet it seemed to him that Annika had stayed the same, as if she would always be the girl who shadowed him like a kitten when they swam and boated in the lake, hiked through the forests and mountains around them. One day, he hoped, she would marry a kind man who would move her far away from her father.

  “What’s wrong?” she asked.

  “Where is Herr Knopf?”

  She glanced behind her, as if her father might be waiting at the door. “I don’t know.”

  “Is he home?”

  She scampered away from the window and returned seconds later. “He’s not here.”

  Max took a deep breath, relieved. “I need your help.”

  “I’ll be out in a moment.”

  He waited at the edge of the forest, grateful that the clouds enveloped the moon tonight. They were far from the guards in Vienna, yet he still felt edgy, as if Hitler’s henchmen had followed him here.

  What would have happened if they’d found his bag of loose jewels in the bottom of the birdcage?

  This was the first bird he’d brought to the lake, but months ago, he’d begun using the animals he rescued and their cages to help him courier things for Dr. Weiss. On one hand, he felt guilty about using these animals, but then again, he liked to think they were willing partners. In their innocence they were able to help others.

  And he hoped that Annika, in her innocence, would help him too.

  Something moved in the trees, and he tensed until he saw Frederica step out beside him, as if she’d heard his voice. He leaned down and petted her behind the ears like he used to do when he’d find her near his home in Vienna.

  When he looked back up, he saw Annika. “You’re spoiling her.”

  “All I give her is goat milk. She finds plenty to eat around here on her own.” Annika tied back the tendrils that curled like the wild blossoms of a mountain lily around her head. “Did you bring me another animal?”

  “I brought a canary with me, but I’ve already released him into the forest.”

  Annika squinted at the trees as if she might be able to spot the feathers among the branches.

  “He lit off like a flame on a match when I opened the cage door.”

  Annika looked back at him. “How did you get a canary?”

  “A friend gave him to me.”

  “Someone will think he escaped from the salt mine.”

  He hoped anyone curious would think this canary escaped from Salzwelten, the mine above Hallstatt. One of the many canaries singing for the miners in the darkness. If their song ever stopped, the miners fled, the lives of those birds sacrificed to protect their caregivers.

  Annika looped a rogue curl back over her ear. “I didn’t think you were coming home this summer.”

  “We were detained.”

  “I’ve been reading the papers,” she said. “Hitler seems to be changing everything. Even Sarah is gone. . . .”

  He nodded slowly. “The Jewish people who haven’t been able to leave are afraid.”

  “What about you?
” she asked.

  “I—” He paused to consider his words. “I fear for the people I love.”

  She nodded solemnly.

  “I need to tell you a secret, Annika. A secret you must swear never to tell anyone. Not even your father.”

  Especially not her father.

  “What is it?” she asked.

  “Do you swear?”

  “I swear.”

  “Come with me.” He took her hand and led her back into the forest, to the place in the woods where he’d found sanctuary for himself. And where he found it still, in the mountain shadow of Sarstein.

  Decades ago, when the cool of autumn began to settle over these mountains, his father had hunted chamois, red stag, and black grouse with Max’s grandfather, Herr Bettauer. After his father-in-law died, Wilhelm Dornbach expected that he and his son would hunt each autumn as well, but their first hunting expedition ended in a flood of tears. Max would rather shoot himself than kill an animal.

  Dogs were an entirely different matter to his father. Wilhelm treated his prized hounds as if they were children, pampering them inside the house during their lives and then burying them on the plot of land where Herr Bettauer and perhaps generations before him had buried their dogs. Max had never known his father to be sentimental about anything except those dogs.

  Annika eyed the shovel in his hand as they walked through the trees in the faint moonlight, onto the patch of land hemmed in by scrub brush and a sentry of pine trees, the grass and weeds kept short by the Knopfs’ wandering goats. “Have you lost another animal?”

  He shook his head. “This place—it’s a burial ground for something else now.”

  “I don’t understand, Max.”

  “The Nazis keep threatening . . . ,” Max started. “Many Jewish people fear that the Nazis will take or damage their valuable things.”

  “My father thinks the Nazis are heroes.”

  He cringed. “Your father is wrong.”

  “I know,” she said quietly.