Sinking to the floor, she read Himmler’s words again. There was no congratulations in them. No invitation. This was a summons to her own wedding on Monday, with a man she didn’t want to marry.
And then she knew. That’s why Director Kohlhaussen had congratulated her. Himmler had told her supervisor about the wedding before he’d bothered to tell Hanna. Grete probably knew about the ceremony too.
No one defied Himmler without consequence. He’d think nothing of taking down a woman who no longer aided his research, imprisoning her like Luisa or worse.
There was no way out of this marriage, not if Himmler had personally ordained it. She could try to hide, but if they found her . . .
She bundled her legs against her chest.
It would be impossible to refuse Kolman now.
PART TWO
Whatever is available to us in good blood of our type, we will take for ourselves, that is, we will steal their children and bring them up with us, if necessary. . . .
We have carried out this most difficult task [of Jewish extermination] out of love for our own people. And we have suffered no harm to our inner self, our soul, our character in so doing.
HEINRICH HIMMLER
SS GROUP LEADER MEETING IN POLAND
OCTOBER 1943
14
EMBER
Rain pelted the windshield as Dakota drove up to the former grove called the Campground. Storybook cottages, with all their trimmings, had been built on tent platforms here in the nineteenth century, each one displaying brightly colored paint and a whimsical name over its front door.
Dakota parked along the perimeter since the lanes traversing the old camp were only wide enough to accommodate a carriage. Then he yanked an umbrella out from under the seat. “We’ll have to run for it.”
The umbrella, she feared, might take them on a ride like Mary Poppins, straight out to the Atlantic. “I think we should leave the umbrella behind.”
He looked skeptical. “You’ll get drenched.”
“I’ll be drenched either way.”
Dakota tossed the umbrella into the back seat and zipped up his jacket. “I’ll grab your suitcase. We’re the seventh house on the right, the blue one trimmed with white.”
She glanced out at the theater of rain, the house colors blending into gray. A flag on a nearby cottage flapped as if it might sweep the entire house into the air.
“It’s number fifteen,” he said. “Just follow me.”
He rounded the car to grab her bag while she tugged on the hood of her coat, checking the zipper again, hoping the marketing claim about water resistance was closer to waterproof.
“You ready?” he called from the back.
“No.”
“I’m afraid it’s only going to get worse.”
She hopped out of the truck and the two of them raced through the cold, the storm soaking through her dress and coat, pelting her cheeks and hands, drenching her sandaled feet.
The Kiehls’ cottage overlooked a grassy plaza and the open-air Tabernacle that still held church services and events. Dakota stepped up on the veranda, fiddling with his keys, the rope from a hammock flogging his arm. One of the rocking chairs had tipped over by the picture window, and the second hung over the wooden banister, about to take wing.
When Dakota opened the door, she hurried into a tiny living space, cascading water onto the rug. He set the suitcase beside her. “I have to bring in the porch furniture.”
“I’ll help you.”
He started to refuse, but she scooted around him, ready to work like she’d done with Alex before the tornado.
As she unlatched the hammock, Dakota lifted a rocking chair and pointed it toward the side of the house. “We’ll put this stuff in the shed.”
They battled the wind together, securing the furniture and retrieving his chain saw so he could clear the fallen tree from the road.
Back inside the house, Dakota took her jacket and rushed through the small living room, hanging both of their coats on pegs at the far end of the room. Beside their dripping jackets was a bathroom, and she stepped inside, changing into shorts and a ribbed T-shirt. After hanging her wet dress with the coats, she collapsed onto the couch, exhausted from her day of travel. Dakota sat beside her. “This morning the weatherman said light rain.”
“Chalk one up for the Atlantic.” She studied the gingerbread trim along the built-in shelves, the white wicker chair and couch crammed into this cozy room that housed both a living room and kitchen. No electronics muddied the Victorian decor. “It’s like a dollhouse.”
“You’ve never been in one of these?”
“I used to walk through the grove at night and look in the windows.” At the families sitting around tables, parents eating or playing games with their children. A fairy tale in her mind.
“My ancestors erected a tent here each summer for the Methodist camp meetings until everyone decided to build cottages. I don’t think anyone imagined that these summer homes would last more than a hundred years.”
“It’s wonderful that you’ve kept it in your family.”
“Gram spends her winters here, attending events at the church and ordering lobster rolls, delivered straight to her door. Sometimes she even comes for a day or two in the summer to enjoy a concert in the Tabernacle.”
He turned toward the picture window, watching the rain blow across the porch. The clock said it was almost five, but the steel-gray clouds, along with her long day of travel, made it feel as if it were later.
“It seems like a lovely place to winter. And safe for her.”
Turning back, he stretched out his legs on the rug. “I wish she valued safety a little more.”
Ember ran her fingers over the frame of a photograph on the coffee table. It was Wartburg Castle, where Martin Luther and his ink drove the devil away. “Where do you and your wife live in the winter?”
He crossed his legs, leaning back against the cushions. “Unfortunately my marriage ended in 2014, but I lived in Colorado until a few months ago. I decided to move back here when the principal asked me to coach the football team.”
She chose to ignore the sad revelation about his marriage. “Were you coaching in Colorado?”
“Part-time.”
“And the other part?”
“Flying.”
“You’re a pilot?” Her voice was laced with doubt, as if he’d straight up lied to her.
“Shocking, huh.” He grinned. “I didn’t want to stay in one place for long.”
“That I can believe.” She paused. “You’re not a captain, are you?”
He shrugged. “It’s not like a football team.”
“Captain Kiehl,” she muttered. “You couldn’t leave it behind.”
“I started flight school the summer after graduation.”
“Did you really do it for the title?” she asked.
“I did it because I couldn’t keep my feet on the ground,” he said. “I fly out of Boston now so I can help Gram when I’m home.”
Since when did Dakota start caring about someone other than himself?
“And you’re working for the Holocaust museum,” he said.
“I taught for eight years in Virginia and decided to return to school myself for my doctorate. When I began writing my dissertation on anti-Semitism, the museum offered me a research fellowship.”
Something banged into the front window, making both of them jump.
“I better head back with that chain saw,” he said. “Let me give you a quick tour.”
Every inch of the cottage was utilized, from the corner breakfast table between the kitchen and living room to the closet laundry beside the refrigerator. A steep staircase led up to two bedrooms and a modern bathroom with a clawfoot tub.
“You’re welcome to sleep in the master,” he said, pointing to the front room. “Everything’s clean, and you’ll have a nice view of the Tabernacle when the storm clears.”
There was no way that she was sleeping in
Dakota’s bed. “I’ll take the guest room.”
He set her suitcase on a chair and turned on a stained-glass lamp while she studied the watercolor paintings on the clapboard walls, each frame mounted with white rope. The bedspread looked as if it had been splashed with pastels.
She stepped up to a watercolor of an oystercatcher pecking its orange beak in a mirror of bay water. A stone labyrinth hung on a separate canvas beside the oystercatcher, its circle of mossy rocks crowned by autumn leaves. “Who did these?”
“Gram painted them a few years back.”
The colors on the stained glass flickered with the lamp, but the electricity stayed on.
Dakota waved her back toward the door. “I’ll show you where the flashlights are, just in case.”
That’s all she needed, to spend the night alone on this island without electricity. And without a cell phone if she didn’t plug it in soon.
Back downstairs, he moved the couch forward and opened a door underneath the staircase, pulling out two flashlights and an extra blanket. “Unfortunately we don’t have a fireplace. This place is a tinderbox.”
“I’ll be fine.”
He hesitated as if he might suggest that he stay.
“You should get back to your grandmother.”
“I’ll call you in a bit, just to check in.”
“Don’t worry about me.”
“Please, Ember,” he said.
She took a deep breath. It was ridiculous, this war inside herself. He’d done nothing since they left the ferry to remind her of his betrayal in their teen years. “If it will make you feel better.”
“It would,” he said. “Please call me if—”
“I’ll be fine.”
He tied his shoes, zipped up his jacket again, and then she locked the door behind him.
Ember clutched her phone to her side as she sat back on the couch, staring at the channels of water streaking down the window. And she felt alone. As if Dakota had abandoned her to this storm.
He hadn’t, of course. She’d asked him to go. This she knew in her mind, but the thought continued to war with her heart.
She hated this feeling. The heart cry of people leaving her, rejecting her, as if it were personal. As if she had to clutch on to them, beg them to stay.
As if, if she held on tightly enough, Elsie might still be alive.
She tapped her legs, trying to clear the memories. Desensitization, her therapist had called it. Replacing the flashbacks with something else.
But no amount of therapy could completely overcome her trauma.
The wind blew the memories back again as it battered the walls, breaking down her will to forget. That cold night on Eagle Lake had shattered her life. In hours, she had no home, no husband, no daughter. And no other family except Alex.
She tossed her phone onto the coffee table and grabbed a pillow, holding it to her chest.
In the days after the FBI raid, the hours after the TV crews turned off cameras and packed away their microphones, the world had moved on. But not her. Like an autumn leaf fallen from its branch, frozen to the ground, all she remembered was blurred by a thousand other leaves blowing over her. Members of the council being taken away in transport vans. An airplane flight back to this island alone, to the only family member she had left and a corner chair where she’d curled up, wishing she could die in the storm.
The Aryan Council, she’d wanted to leave behind, but not Elsie.
Not her beautiful girl.
A door inched open in her mind, the path into a dark place that wanted to trap her once again.
She began to pace the floor, tapping her fingers together, a desperate prayer slipping from her lips. A familiar one from Philippians.
Help me forget what’s in my past, Lord. Help me to press on.
The truth—that’s what she needed to focus on. Her identity wasn’t shackled to the hatred of her father. She’d been freed from the chains, redeemed by love. She had a new life. A new name. And a deep desire to keep others from stumbling into places that would wound their souls. A desire to exhume the past in order to stop the hatred today.
Remember everyone’s stories, except her own.
She plugged in her phone to text Brooke, but the table lamp flickered. Then all the lights went out.
She waited in the silence, hoping the lamp would flicker back on, but darkness reigned. With the remaining light on her phone, she retrieved the flashlight that Dakota had left on the kitchen table and bundled herself up on the couch, the wind blowing under the door, chilling the room.
What if a tornado swept across the island again, uprooting buildings and boats alike? She had no basement to hide in. No way to even tell if a tornado was coming.
With her dwindling cell phone power, she tried to call her brother, but it didn’t go through. The tower must have gone down with the electricity.
If only she could listen to a radio, hear the local weather. For no other reason than to know that she wasn’t alone.
Ember pressed her nose against the cold picture window, her fingers drumming against her legs. A light glowed across the plaza, another flashlight in another house.
At least she wasn’t completely alone.
Thunder echoed through the room and a chair hurtled across the plaza.
What if the storm picked this old cottage off its platform and splintered it into pieces? Even if she had a radio, if the announcer told her to take cover, she had no place to go. The storage closet, if she holed up there, would collapse with the rest of the house.
The wind swept the memories back again, stealing her breath away.
She never should have come back to the island. Never would have come if she’d known Dakota was here.
She reached for her jacket. Perhaps it wasn’t safe to go out, but it sure didn’t feel safe to stay.
The front door inched open, and she whirled around at the sound of her name.
In that blessed moment, air reclaimed her lungs.
Dakota hadn’t called. He simply returned home.
15
HANNA
Few outside the elite world of Schutzstaffel were invited through the doors of the renovated Wewelsburg Castle, and women were rarely welcomed inside. The only ladies here today were Himmler’s secretary and six brides, including Hanna, waiting for their wedding ceremonies.
Hanna wished that she could run back to Nuremberg and hide.
A Black Sun was emblazoned on the tower floor of this Black Camelot, the mosaic pieces of a wheel glowing in sacred flames. Twelve pillars around the tower represented King Arthur’s Knights of the Round Table.
If only she could escape the darkness that danced with the flames along the wall, but with all the guards, she’d never make it out the front door. This hilltop castle was as secure as the legendary Camelot with the stone walls, moat, and drawbridge to block out any intruder. Or allow their prisoners to run.
It was the flames, the Norse runes engraved on the walls, that frightened her even more than the guards. Rumors filtered through the SS about Himmler’s brew of occult rituals held in this castle. The Reichsführer bowed to religion when necessary, but he certainly didn’t bow to the Christian God. The State was his Higher Power.
Because of this, the Schutzstaffel refused church wedding traditions. Instead a man and woman married the State first on their wedding day, then married the history of the German people. Lastly they married one another.
Hanna shivered. In this one way, as the wife of an officer, she would be welcomed into the SS.
Himmler had sent a car for her at dawn to ensure her attendance. She’d been up most of the night, trying to concoct an alternative plan. She’d even thought about returning to Frau Weber’s with a plea to be allowed to hide alongside Luisa.
But the Gestapo would only have to interview the telephone operator to find Hanna’s one phone call to Frau Weber’s home. She couldn’t put Frau Weber in even greater danger.
So she dressed in a simple blue fr
ock with a sash, an outfit approved by Kolman’s commander when she’d arrived this morning, no veil on her head. The SS didn’t allow its brides to wear such finery on their wedding days.
Then she’d waited for hours in a back room with the other women.
Himmler took special interest in the weddings of his officers, presiding over them himself. In lieu of family and friends, a crowd of steely SS officers, each one alloyed with iron and silver, encircled the altar. All of them reminding her of the monster in her dream.
A monster who had beaten Paul Gruenewald, harassed his wife, and then escaped back out into the night. A monster who’d hurt anyone daring to help the Jewish people.
She’d yet to see Kolman among the silver-and-black coats, but he must be here. Had he told Himmler that she’d agreed to marry him?
She’d been vetted completely before she became an archaeologist, so Himmler knew she was of Aryan stock, but did these men know that she’d once loved an American? A man who’d now be considered an enemy of their State. How different her life would be if Charlie had whisked her away to his island as she’d hoped. It was good, perhaps, that she had no childhood dreams about her wedding because only shadows would accompany her walk across the mosaic tiles this afternoon.
The officers waited in silence, but she heard a voice beside her. One she recognized.
“It’s good to see you, Hanna.”
She turned slowly toward Kolman. His hair was combed neatly back and coated with stiff Brylcreem. He looked handsome enough to make a host of German girls swoon, but her heart didn’t belong to him. It never would.
“I sent you a letter, Kolman.”
His forehead wrinkled with confusion, so different from his pressed uniform. “What letter?”
“The one to clarify that I didn’t want to marry you.”
He tilted his head. “But you accepted my proposal.”
She shook her head. “I didn’t—”
“In the vineyard, I asked, and you agreed.” He looked heartbroken at her response. “I didn’t know the Reichsführer would arrange our wedding so quickly.”
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