The Stranger From Berlin

by Melissa Amateis

  He’d gone halfway down the path when the door opened and Jenni rushed outside. ‘Max, wait!’

  She’d taken one step on the stairs when alarm hammered in his chest. ‘Jenni, be careful!’ he called. ‘The ice, it’s—’

  Too late. Jenni slipped, tumbled down the two remaining stairs and landed with a cry on the snow-covered lawn.

  He rushed over and knelt beside her, trying to see by the meagre porch light. ‘Are you hurt?’

  ‘Oh, gosh, I don’t think so,’ she said, rubbing her arms. ‘That was so clumsy of me—’

  Panic suddenly flashed across her face. She cradled her stomach and went very still.

  ‘What is it? What’s wrong?’

  Raw fear showed on her face. ‘Max, call Dr Harvey. Now!’

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  With his shaggy white hair and curling mustache, Dr Harvey reminded Jenni of Dr Meade in Gone with the Wind, only without the Southern accent and gruff bedside manner. She tried to focus on that while he examined her instead of the fear that threatened to overwhelm her. She’d felt the moisture in her underpants after she fell, and when she’d hurried into the bathroom to check, her worst fears had been confirmed: blood.

  Bless Max. He’d taken charge, settling her into bed first, then asking the operator for Dr Harvey. She heard him explain to Marty that his mother had taken a fall, and that Dr Harvey would examine her to make sure she was all right. Marty had held her hand while they waited for the doctor, and when he showed up, Max had suggested Marty show him his comic book collection, and they’d left doctor and patient alone.

  Now, Dr Harvey pulled the blanket back up over her legs. ‘As far as I can tell, the baby is fine. You didn’t shed a significant amount of blood and you’re having no cramping or unusual pain, so I have no reason to believe that a miscarriage is imminent.’

  Celia’s shoulders sagged. Thank you, God.

  ‘However,’ Dr Harvey continued, ‘I’m putting you on bed rest for a week just to be on the safe side.’

  A week flat on her back! Normally she wouldn’t be able to stand being immobile for that long, but after the scare she’d just had, she didn’t care.

  The doctor glared down his narrow nose at her. ‘Why didn’t you tell me you were expecting, Jenni?’

  ‘I think you know the answer to that,’ she said, clutching the quilt to her chest. ‘Danny wasn’t home these past two years so, of course, it can’t be his.’

  ‘I would have kept your secret. You know that.’

  ‘I hope you’ll continue to keep it for a while longer.’

  His eyebrows rose. ‘Well, you won’t be able to keep it a secret forever.’

  ‘That’s exactly what I intend to do. I have a job in New York and I’m leaving within the month. No one there will know the truth and no one in Meadow Hills will either.’

  Dr Harvey folded his arms. ‘You’re not going anywhere.’

  His firm tone sent a spike of terror through her. ‘What? Why not?’

  ‘Because your blood pressure is high and I need to keep monitoring you. Travelling and moving to New York would put unnecessary stress on the baby. I forbid it.’

  This could not be happening. It simply could not.

  ‘I want you to come in tomorrow for a complete blood work-up and urinalysis. I’ll make sure that everything is kept confidential.’

  The relief she’d felt at knowing the baby was safe was unravelling faster than a dropped ball of yarn. Staying in Meadow Hills was not the plan!

  Dr Harvey must have noticed her torment because he took her hand and patted it. ‘It will be all right, you know.’

  ‘No, it won’t be all right,’ she whispered, hating the blatant desperation in her voice. ‘Isn’t there something you can do to keep the baby safe while I travel?’

  ‘Young lady, I am not a miracle man. No one but the good Lord above has the power to do what you ask.’ He leaned towards her, looking serious. ‘If you want to have a healthy child, you will do as I’ve said and stay put. Do not jeopardize this child’s life because of fear.’

  Stunned, Jenni groped for something to say, to find some magical solution that would change his mind and make the dream of New York City possible. But there was nothing.

  A scream built deep in her throat, but she held it back, her hand instinctively clutching at her belly.

  She must stay calm. For the baby.

  Dr Harvey put his instruments back in his black bag and took his hat and coat from the chair beside the bed. ‘You are under my care now, Jenni, and I promise to keep you as safe as I know how. But that means you have to do as I instruct and don’t go off on some fool-headed mission as is your wont.’

  Dr Harvey had treated her all her life and knew her impetuous nature too well. But this time, she couldn’t be impetuous. She had another life to think about besides her own.

  She sighed. ‘I won’t do anything rash.’

  ‘Good.’ He jerked his thumb towards the door. ‘Do you want me to send the professor home?’

  She’d almost forgotten Max. She owed him an explanation. Oh, but she didn’t want to tell him. What would he think of her? Would she lose his friendship, too?

  What did it matter anyway? Soon enough, the secret would be out. If Max was going to look at her differently, it would be better to know now than later.

  ‘No,’ she said, fluffing the pillows behind her, ‘I’d like to see him before he leaves.’

  ‘Are you sure you can trust him?’

  ‘Dr Harvey, are you saying you believe all that nonsense going around town? I didn’t figure you for paranoia.’

  He smoothed his white hair and looked sheepish. ‘Checkmate, my dear.’ He sighed. ‘All right, he can visit, but not for very long. You need your rest.’

  After he left, she heard muffled voices outside the door. A wave of nerves hit her. Why should it matter what Max thought of her and her predicament? He kept secrets too. She had seen it in his eyes.

  Earlier, while talking at the kitchen table, he’d nearly told her something about his past. She’d felt his grief and sadness pulsating through the room like radio waves, and she’d willed him to say something, anything, that would offer her some sort of insight into who he was.

  But he’d chosen to stay silent. Unfortunately, fate had snatched away her choice to do the same.

  A knock sounded and Max craned his neck inside. ‘May I come in?’

  ‘Of course.’ She nodded towards the chair beside her bed. ‘Have a seat.’

  He lowered himself into the chair, studying her as if to assess the damage. ‘The doctor said you are not to get out of bed for a week, other than to the doctor’s office tomorrow. You must have fallen harder than we thought. Will you still be able to go to New York?’

  How tragic that a plan she’d thought had gone off without a hitch had now been thwarted by a simple slip of the foot.

  ‘Actually, Max,’ she said, her fingers clutching the quilt as her courage ebbed and flowed, ‘I won’t be going to New York after all.’

  Was that relief she saw on his face? But then it disappeared.

  ‘I am sorry,’ he said. ‘I know you were looking forward to it.’

  ‘Well… not quite.’

  He looked at her in surprise. ‘Pardon?’

  Oh, just say it, for heaven’s sake!

  ‘Max, I’m pregnant.’

  His jaw dropped slightly before he yanked it shut. ‘Oh. Then this must be very difficult for you, with your husband… gone.’ He avoided her gaze, looking down at his hands, at the cheap painting hanging on the wall, anywhere but at her. ‘I am so sorry that—’

  ‘He’s not the father.’

  Jenni’s every muscle tensed as she waited for his reaction. She almost wanted him to hurl cruel words at her – tramp, floozy, whore – because it would be easier to know he behaved like all the rest and wasn’t worth her time.

  His expression betrayed nothing. ‘And the doctor said the baby is not hurt?’

 
‘No.’

  ‘You must be very relieved then.’

  His tone was so kind, so gentle, that it hit her with the force of a punch. Where was his censure, his condemnation? She deserved it, didn’t she? Not this sympathy, not this understanding.

  ‘Relieved?’ A bitter laugh escaped her. ‘I slept with another man while my husband was off fighting a war. In fact, Danny died just a few days after I slept with Rafe and I didn’t know it until a month later. I betrayed my husband! Sometimes I hate myself so much—’

  To her horror, a spasm of grief more forceful than any labour pain wracked her. She let out a sob, covering her face with her hands. It had all come down to this. Every judgmental eye in Meadow Hills would view her shame, and they’d never let her forget it.

  But somehow gaining the forgiveness and acceptance of the town seemed a far more likely occurrence than forgiving herself.

  Jenni continued to sob, and she didn’t care if that made her weak. She felt like an icicle that had withstood the winds and the snow and the cold but, now that the sun was finally coming out, had fallen to the ground and shattered.

  Vaguely, she was aware of Max beside her, holding her hand. He didn’t say anything, just let her cry, and she was glad he wasn’t trying to make it all better with empty words and meaningless drivel.

  When she heard the door creak open, she abruptly stopped. Marty stood in the doorway, staring at them with a mixture of fear and concern.

  ‘Mom? Are you all right?’

  When she saw his dishevelled hair, the pyjama top buttoned up wrong and his Captain America shield under his arm, it nearly set off a fresh wave of tears.

  ‘Yes, I’m all right. Just a little scared.’

  He climbed into bed and threw his arms around her neck. She breathed in the scent of soap and bubble gum.

  ‘Dr Harvey said you were gonna be okay. Was he telling the truth?’

  ‘Of course he was. He wouldn’t lie to you.’

  ‘Then why are you crying?’

  Over the top of Marty’s head, she met Max’s gaze. She couldn’t tell her son now. She just couldn’t. It wasn’t the right time.

  ‘I’m a little bruised and very tired, but that’s all.’

  She hugged him close, then pressed a kiss on his forehead. ‘Now you better get back to bed. You have school in the morning.’

  Jenni watched him run out of the room, and then she leaned back against the pillows. ‘I don’t know how I’m going to tell him, Max,’ she said dully. ‘I’m afraid of what he’ll do.’

  ‘He will not stop loving you,’ Max murmured. ‘Someday when he is older, he will understand it all. But for now, he will understand as much as he needs to.’

  ‘Maybe.’ She wiped her cheeks. ‘And you? Do you think I’m a horrible person?’

  Max went very still, and her heart thudded hard against her ribs.

  He leaned towards her and pushed a curl from her forehead, his fingertips cool upon her brow.

  ‘You, Jenni Fields,’ he murmured, locking eyes with her, ‘are the least horrible person I know.’

  * * *

  The clock struck eight as Max stepped foot into the cottage. He slipped his shoes off, put on a record of the first movement of Mozart’s Symphony No. 40, and sank into the leather chair. He needed to think.

  He smoked cigarette after cigarette. Katya stared at him from her perch on the couch, but there was no censure in her eyes, probably because for the first time in a long time he didn’t reach for the bottle.

  Tonight had been full of surprises. He’d always instinctively known Jenni harboured a secret, and he’d been right. A pregnancy outside the bounds of matrimony was relatively tame compared to anything he might have unearthed from someone in his circle of friends in Berlin.

  He didn’t think any less of her. Quite the contrary. She planned to keep the baby, despite the father’s wish, and despite knowing how it could potentially destroy her reputation. That took a kind of courage he only wished he had.

  She’d told him about the father, a novelist from New Orleans who had visited Meadow Hills last autumn and taken advantage of a lonely woman. Then when he had to face his responsibilities, he’d chucked Jenni to the kerb. Max hated him even though they’d never met.

  True, he couldn’t contain his relief that Jenni was staying in Meadow Hills, but now the game had changed. It was simply too dangerous for her to be involved in this entire, sordid mess, not when the stress of doing so would threaten her and the baby’s life. Of course, when he’d told her this, the old Jenni had returned and she’d flatly thrown his words back in his face.

  ‘I’m not going to be an invalid. I’m only on bed rest for a week. After that, I can resume normal activities.’

  ‘Normal activities do not include putting yourself at risk,’ he’d said, trying to inject some kind of firmness into his voice.

  ‘Listen, buster, why don’t you let me be the judge of what too much excitement is and what’s not?’

  He’d finally admitted defeat.

  But, oddly, the diary mess wasn’t the main thing that had troubled him. Why had Jenni come after him when he’d left in the first place? What had she intended to say?

  He had to know, so he’d asked.

  And in her frank, candid manner, Jenni simply looked at him and said, ‘I was going to tell you how much I would miss you.’

  And with those words, his fall was complete.

  Admitting, even if only to himself, that he was in love with a woman he’d known for barely a month should have scared him, made him call Bruce and ask if he knew of a good psychiatrist. He was not the type of man to fall in love so quickly. Yet he knew he was saner than he’d ever been.

  Tonight, Ilsa’s cruel lips and calculating eyes would not haunt him. He’d finally put her to rest.

  He harboured no illusions, however, that his feelings would be returned. Jenni saw him as a friend, and this he accepted. It was enough, at this exact moment in time, to know himself capable of loving again.

  The Mozart record finished playing, and Max listened to it spin, the turntable humming with its own melody. He closed his eyes. A part of his heart had come back to life. There was peace in that.

  Comforted by the thought, he dozed off, Katya sleeping on his feet.

  The sharp crack of shattering glass startled him awake so badly that he lurched out of the chair, convinced he was back in Berlin on that awful night. Then the fog cleared from his vision and he looked around, saw that, no, he was in Meadow Hills, safe and sound.

  Though that was debatable…

  The living-room windows were all intact, and he hurried through the rest of the house. He saw nothing wrong until he heard Katya barking at the door to the back porch. Of course. No one would have the guts to throw an object through his front window.

  ‘Katya, stay,’ he ordered.

  Though the dog whined, she did as she was told. Max opened the door and heard a ticking sound. Fear clutched his throat. They hadn’t just launched a bomb at him, had they? He switched on the porch light and saw the shards of glass glinting on the floor. Large, jagged pieces stuck in the window frame.

  He knelt beside the object. It wasn’t a brick, the common projectile used by thugs the world over, but an alarm clock. He picked it up and turned it over to see a message painted on the face.

  Time’s up, Nazi.

  Suddenly, the bells started ringing. Max flung it across the room. Katya barked like mad and charged after it, snarling.

  ‘Katya, nein!’

  He somehow dragged her away, expecting a horrific explosion to go ripping through him at any second. As he crouched in the hallway, shoulders tense, Katya’s barking thudding in his ears, the alarm kept ringing.

  When nothing happened, Max peered into the room. If it was a bomb, surely it would have gone off by now. He got to his feet and slowly approached the clock, then picked it up and shut it off.

  Except for the clock’s steady tick, nothing happened.

&nbs
p; Mein Gott. His muscles liquefied and he sank against the wall, his heart pounding so fast it hurt. Katya now stared at the clock in confusion and sniffed at it, then sat on her haunches and nudged his leg.

  ‘Guess we were lucky, girl.’

  Laughter carried through the broken window. He jumped to his feet and scanned the backyard. Under the white glow of the moon, he saw several boys running out of the bushes, their faces covered with scarves and long caps.

  ‘Better scram before we throw a real bomb at ya, you Nazi bastard!’

  ‘Hitler-lover!’

  ‘Go back to the Fatherland, dirty Kraut!’

  He didn’t yell at them, didn’t threaten to call the police. He couldn’t. The cold wind cut through the jagged glass and wrapped around his throat, silencing him more effectively than any muzzle. He wasn’t hearing the boys’ voices now, but those of his so-called friends hurling invectives at the Jews congregating at the local café or standing in line at the cinema.

  And now, just like he had then, he remained silent.

  * * *

  Jenni clutched the phone so hard her hand hurt. She didn’t want to make this call, but she had no choice. She needed help taking care of Marty, and it couldn’t be Celia. Now she was on bed rest, it would only be Celia and Georgie at the museum now, and her friend wouldn’t have the time. Celia had volunteered Hank’s mother, but Jenni wouldn’t hear of it. Her secret would eventually get out, but until then she wouldn’t share it with one more person than necessary. And there was no way she could ask her in-laws.

  Only necessity could induce her to invite one more person into this hellish nightmare.

  ‘Hello, Mom? I’ve had an accident. Is there any way you can come over?’

  ‘What happened?’ Virginia’s no-nonsense tone didn’t bode well. ‘Did the mayor press assault charges?’

  She winced. Somehow in all of this, she’d forgotten that little incident. ‘No. ‘I – I fell on the ice. Dr Harvey says I’m not to get out of bed. I was wondering if you could stay the night and take Marty to school in the morning.’

  A brief pause, then, ‘I’ll be there as soon as I can.’