Hidden Among the Stars

by Melanie Dobson

  I’ve dreamed about Annika Knopf this past month, wondered about her story. Though I pray Annika is innocent of any crime, perhaps she is ashamed to tell us what happened when she was younger, if she stole items from her Jewish neighbors. But even if she won’t talk about the treasure, I hope she’ll tell us how her path intersects with Luzia’s journey.

  Sigmund answers the door and welcomes us into the house that is now his son’s summer home. As we walk through the grand hall, tiled with marble the color of cream, he assures us that his own home in Salzburg is quite modest, as if he’s ashamed of the grandeur here.

  “Would you like some lemonade?” he asks Ella.

  “Yes, please.”

  “There’s a playground out back, where two of my great-grandchildren are currently swinging.” He turns to Josh. “May she play with them?”

  Josh hesitates, and I understand. He won’t always be able to cushion her, but for now, he must.

  “Is there a place we could sit outside and talk?” I ask.

  “Of course.” Sigmund waves us farther into the house. “We have a veranda, and my mother would love nothing more than to enjoy the lake from there while you talk.”

  Josh tells Ella that she can join the other children.

  We follow Sigmund through the foyer, around a white-painted staircase that winds up to the second floor, and past two closed doors. The third one is open, Annika waiting for us inside.

  Her chair is backed up against the dark paneling that rounds the library. Sigmund cradles his mother’s arm as she stands to greet us and then escorts her outside through French doors.

  I clutch my handbag, folded under my arm, as we follow them. Inside my purse is Bambi with Annika’s list, the photograph of Max and Luzia, and the photocopy from Charlotte’s magic balloon book.

  Sigmund helps his mother sit on one of the cushioned patio chairs clustered around a glass table, though it seems to me that she doesn’t need much help at all.

  “How long did you live here?” I ask Annika as we join her at the table.

  “My husband and I cared for this place for more than twenty years. Hermann injured his arm before the war began, which was an unexpected blessing in that he couldn’t fight in the Wehrmacht, but the Nazis wouldn’t let him—wouldn’t let us—remain on his family’s farm. Because my father had been the caretaker on this estate, they assigned us the role of caring for this property while it was a camp.”

  She says the words as if she’s rehearsed them many times, as if they’ve been embroidered into her core for years, frayed and worn.

  “Why were you looking for me?” she asks.

  I glance at Josh before pulling Bambi out of my handbag and scooting it across the table. “It started with this.”

  I’d expected some sort of emotional reaction. Tears. Laughter. A gasp of surprise or even shock. I may never know if Annika found the items recorded inside these pages—or what, if anything, she did with them—but I’d expected something to commemorate the reunion of a long-lost book with its owner.

  Instead, she just stares at it, and I’m disappointed, I admit. Even without the potential of finding treasure, I’d hoped it would be a homecoming, of sorts, this gift from her mother long ago, traveling around the world before it returned here.

  Annika’s mind seems sharp, but perhaps she’s forgotten this season of her life. Or blocked it out.

  I open the book and show her the first listing. Annika rubs her hand across the corner of the paper as if it’s some sort of talisman to help her remember. “She knew . . .”

  Sigmund leans over the book, scanning the line with her.

  “What did she know?” Josh asks.

  Annika looks up at him before turning to me. “How did you find this book?”

  “It seemed to find me,” I tell her. “The children of a man named Max Dornbach sold it in an estate sale, and my sister purchased it for me.”

  Recognition glints in her eyes, followed by a flood of fear. I want to reassure her, not cause any more pain. I show her the inscription at the beginning of the book and then skip ahead to the newspaper clipping of Max.

  “I think the book was trying to find its way home,” I say.

  “Max is gone?”

  I nod. “He died three years ago.”

  Annika traces the edge of the torn clipping. “I never knew if he survived the war.”

  And so I tell her what I know about his home in Idaho, about his clinic for animals and the daughter who adored him as much as Sigmund clearly adores his mom. As I tell her these things, a tear slips down her cheek.

  “My uncle met you, after the war,” Josh says, trying not to cross over the established no-treasure-talk line. “He and his men were searching for items that the Nazis dumped in the lake. We thought you might have been writing down some of these items in your book.”

  “Neither Hermann nor I wanted the Allied soldiers to search the estate,” Annika says, her fingers still on the edge of the book. “The Nazis did dump things in our lake, but I don’t know where they hid any treasure. People have searched for generations and have found nothing hidden on the estate except bones in a pet cemetery.”

  Josh sits back in his chair, his gaze focused on his daughter leaning back in her swing as if her toes might really touch the sky. “What were you recording?”

  “I never wrote in this book.”

  I glance over at Josh, wishing I could decipher his eyes. Is Annika lying to us, or did someone else use her book to record stolen items?

  From my handbag, I take out the full newspaper clip of Max and Luzia dancing and slide it across the table. She stares down at the couple from so long ago, wiping away her tears. “So you know of Luzia Weiss through the newspaper piece?”

  I shake my head. “I’ve known about Luzia for most of my life.”

  “But how?”

  I retrieve the photocopy of Luzia’s name inside the Hatschi Bratschi story. “From another children’s book.”

  This time Annika’s eyes grow wide. Instead of touching the photocopy, her body lists to the left. I reach for her shoulder, ready to catch her in case she tumbles again, but she doesn’t faint this time.

  Slowly she reaches out and takes this paper, clutching it to her chest. The way she curls over it reminds me of Charlotte.

  “Where did you find this?” she demands.

  “I’m not certain,” I say slowly, “but I think the book was with Luzia’s daughter.”

  “Her daughter?”

  “During the war, someone took my friend—Charlotte—to an orphanage near Lyon, France. Her paperwork was lost, but this remained.”

  “Marta,” she whispers.

  I glance over at Sigmund, but he is focused on his mother. “Would you like to rest?” he asks.

  “No,” she insists. “I must find out.”

  I lean toward her. “How did you know Charlotte’s mother?”

  She reaches across the table and takes my hand. I see more tears building in her eyes before they spill over and flood her cheeks.

  “Luzia wasn’t your friend’s mother.” We all wait quietly for her to continue. “I believe Charlotte was Marta—Luzia’s sister. Our mother—she died during the war.”

  “Your mother?”

  She looks back at the lake as she releases my hand. “I wasn’t born with the name Annika Knopf.”

  Sigmund’s face doesn’t change. Whatever she has to say, it seems he already knows.

  His mother lowers the paper to her lap. “Once upon a time, many years ago, my name was Luzia Weiss.”

  Now Josh reaches for my hand. If she is Luzia, then—

  “What happened to Annika?” I ask.

  CHAPTER 42

  NORTHERN GERMANY

  MAY 1939

  Her face pressed against a pollen-cloaked window as the milk-run train snaked through farmlands and forest, pressing north and then west toward the setting sun. She’d longed to travel far away by train, but not now—now she just wanted to return
home.

  The lake, the cold mountain water, it was waiting to wash the dirt and pollen from her sweltering skin. To swim with Sarah and Max and Hermann like they’d done when they were children.

  And her mother—oh, how she’d loved singing and laughing with the woman who’d given her birth and then filled her heart with joy, the two of them carefree like the birds in the trees. Like they could fly all the way up to hide among the stars.

  This train didn’t stop for milk—it was much too late in the day for that—but it stopped for more women, young and old, packing them into the crowded cars. They clung to each other, these women, holding hands, their tears blending together on shoulders and cheeks. Nameless, each one of them, in the minds of their captors, yet deeply loved by the ladies surrounding them.

  The seat beside Annika was still open—the other women chose to huddle on the floor or cram together with their loved ones on plastic seats meant to hold two.

  Alone in a crowd—it was a terrible, miserable place to be. She longed for someone to help ease the loneliness in her heart too.

  But almost everyone she loved was back in the wilderness of lakes, hidden away so they wouldn’t be pressed into a train, transported into the unknown. And Max—was he searching for the treasure, thinking she had taken it like the necklace?

  Hermann, she prayed, would tell him the truth.

  “Schweigen!” the guard up front commanded, and the car quieted.

  If only he would tell them where this train was going, but he only spoke—barked, really—when the aching sounds of grief overpowered the shuddering noise from this metal box around them.

  The car would remain quiet until they stopped at another forlorn station for passengers who didn’t want to board. Then the crying would resume.

  Annika had done nothing wrong, and neither had any of these women around her. Their only real crime was the breath that passed in and out of their lungs. This breath, the one thing the Nazis had yet to take from them.

  “There is Another who is over us all, over us and over Him.”

  That’s what Bambi had said: that Someone was greater than the Man with the gun who hunted him and his friends. He never said who, but Annika knew.

  Jesus—the Son of the God she’d met in her mother’s Bible, the man who conquered death—He was stronger than the guard at the front of this car, than the agents who had interrogated her back in Salzburg, than whatever awaited her when this train stopped for the last time.

  He had died for her and the hatred she’d harbored for her father, for her envy of the Dornbach family, for taking the necklace out of Frau Dornbach’s shoe box, for bringing Hitler’s wrath on their beautiful castle.

  Darkness fell over the car like a shroud, steel wheels rumbling beneath her feet, and when she closed her eyes, she could almost hear the sound of Max’s shovel pressing into the ground, helping Luzi’s family and others to hide the things they valued, not knowing that their things were worth more now than their lives.

  Where was Luzi?

  Annika had been gone for days, a week maybe. Max would find Luzi, she prayed, in that hiding place. They would care for their baby together, and one day, he would care for the animals that he loved as well.

  “But as for me I know that my Redeemer liveth, And at last he will stand up upon the earth: And after my skin, even this body, is destroyed, Then without my flesh shall I see God. . . .”

  Her eyes closed, Annika could see Max burying one of his charges, could hear the solemn words from his lips. And this time, no laughter escaped from hers.

  God—her Redeemer—He lived. And one day she would see Him. Perhaps one day soon.

  A promise threaded those words, a hope that He would conquer evil. That she would be with Him. She was lonely, but this time when she thought about death, she wasn’t as afraid.

  The Nazis might try to take away this whisper of hope, like they wanted to steal the jewels, but she could cling to it deep inside her, in a paneled place where they could never find it—the hidden spaces of her heart.

  The squealing of train brakes, the gasp of steam. As the train slowed, Annika looked out at a lamppost spreading a muddied light over one woman—an elderly lady in a housedress—and an armed agent. The guard opened the door, and the woman boarded.

  The train pressed forward again, and Annika had closed her eyes, trying to sleep, when she felt someone sit in the seat next to hers.

  “You’re not alone,” the woman whispered.

  Annika turned, wide-eyed, and saw the trace of a gentle smile cross the woman’s face. She was older than Annika’s mother, but in the dull light, Annika saw peace in her eyes, like she’d seen in her mother’s before she died.

  Annika reached for the woman’s hand. Her fingers curled into her palm as if she were plagued by arthritis, but she didn’t recoil from Annika’s touch.

  A train ride bound to nowhere, but peace flooded through Annika’s heart as well, sweeping away the last strands of fear.

  Neither she nor this dear woman next to her was alone.

  CHAPTER 43

  “Reader, nothing is sweeter in this sad world than the sound of someone you love calling your name.”

  Words, oh so true, of Kate DiCamillo in her story about goodness and forgiveness, about broken hearts and the fight against evil. The tale of a courageous mouse called Despereaux.

  We pack so much into the confines of a name, the padded walls sheltering character and faith, work and family, history and home. Yet a name can be boundless as well, rich in legacy and fierce with love.

  The moment Charlotte says Luzia’s name, everything shifts. It doesn’t matter that an ocean separates these sisters or that they are staring at screens—Sigmund’s laptop in the castle library and Brie’s cell phone in Ohio. What matters is that they found each other.

  Introductions are short between them, unnecessary really. Light breathes into the darkness of their stories, shadows fading away, and then the thread of truth begins weaving their lives back together, one strand at a time.

  Josh and I slip out onto the patio as they remember together.

  Ella waves, quite content playing with Sigmund’s “greats” again—kicking around a soccer ball near a guest cottage. Josh and I move down to the bank, a sliver of tall grass and rocks between the water and pine trees.

  The journey of these sisters, the story of one life stolen too early while another lived in her place—it’s all too much for me to process at once. Luzia told us about the man in Vienna who hurt her, about Max’s heroic attempts to save her life, and about that morning forever etched in her mind—April 9, 1939. The day the Gestapo took Annika away.

  “Do you think Luzia loved Max?” I ask, the question in my mind spilling out to the man next to me.

  “Perhaps,” Josh says. “One’s first love is hard to lose.”

  I think of the tears in Luzia’s eyes as she told us about Hermann. “Second love is hard to lose too,” I say. “She and Hermann were married for sixty-five years.”

  Josh reaches for my hand, and my fingers seem to melt into his. Even with Scott, I felt on edge at times, like he was expecting something of me and I wasn’t certain what to give, but I feel content here beside Josh. Like I can trust him with the pieces of my heart.

  I told Josh about Scott late last night, while Ella slept, and he empathized deeply with my loss, different from his and yet we both have had to grieve losing someone we loved. And we’ve both had to battle our fears.

  We sit on an old wooden bench near the shore, a branch dangling over us. “I wonder if Charlotte and I would have found Luzia years ago, if she kept her name.”

  “Ernst Schmid would have found her long before you did.”

  I shift my legs. “An impossible time.” Each of them—Luzia and Annika, Hermann and Max—they fought evil the best way they could.

  The pattern of sky is changing as white layers itself upon the blue, and a breeze stirs up the water in front of us, the lake layered with its own sec
rets.

  “Will you keep diving?” I ask.

  “Perhaps.”

  “I’m sorry you didn’t find the treasure.”

  “We found something more important,” he says. “And, I hope, a second chance.”

  “For Luzia and Charlotte?” I ask quietly.

  “Yes.” When he turns to me, the fierceness in his eyes matches the storm building overhead. “And perhaps a second chance for both of us, too.”

  I like the thought of that—no pressure, just the possibilities.

  “What happened to that German wall built firmly around you?” I ask.

  “You’re breaking it down, Callie.”

  Just like he’s been breaking down the wall I built around my heart. “Sometimes, I suppose, we have to give up that distance to welcome others into our lives.”

  He releases my hand and props his arm across the back of the bench. I settle into that space of strength between his arm and chest. A protected place like the depths of this lake before us.

  My gaze, in the rest of contentment, falls across this strand of water to the hillside where the grave stands to honor Annika’s life, though the name on it, Luzia, is the one Annika took as hers long ago, Luzi and Annika’s secrets hidden away.

  “And above all, watch with glittering eyes the whole world around you because the greatest secrets are always hidden in the most unlikely places.”

  These words from the bizarre story about a girl named Matilda who loved books, written by Roald Dahl—a man whose imagination seemed unfettered by any chains.

  And then I think of another strange story—this one about the salt administrator and his casket that used to travel across these waters every fifty years to visit his home, the last time in 1939 before the war began.

  The number does the strangest thing in my mind. It blurs out and then refocuses like the autorefractor at my optometrist’s, crystal clear the second time. According to Luzi, the Gestapo took Annika away in the spring of 1939 as well.