The Curator's Daughter

by Melanie Dobson

  Her eyes narrowed. “How did Himmler know that you proposed?”

  “The man knows everything.”

  “It’s not too late to stop this,” she said.

  Kolman’s eyes saddened. “Why would we want to stop it? We’re made for each other, Hanna.”

  “Later, perhaps. After the war.”

  He took her hand, held it to his heart. “Let’s have a glimmer of happiness in the midst of it.”

  The monster began to recede in her mind. The crazy dream. In actuality, perhaps her fears were the monster. The longing for a man like Charlie Ward.

  Himmler motioned them forward, and she took a step toward the flames.

  She wanted to be as strong as Saint Katharine, who’d refused her marriage proposal, even under the threat of death, but Katharine’s story wasn’t the same as hers. While she’d had the terrible nightmare about a monster, Hanna had never had a vision of marrying God. And Kolman wasn’t royalty like the man Katharine had been commanded to marry.

  But Himmler acted like an emperor, relegating her to a marriage with this man he considered to be a son, and if she refused, they’d kill her, like the emperor had done with Katharine. No one confined to this inner circle was allowed to step outside the lines.

  But if she stayed in the inner circle—with Kolman as her husband—the Gestapo would never threaten her again. Perhaps, in time, she would learn to love this man beside her. If she couldn’t refuse this marriage, she would have to navigate being his wife.

  Kolman’s eyes were focused on Himmler, his superior officer who stood between two bowls of fire. The man had a toothbrush mustache like Hitler’s, a grim mouth and glasses that pinched his nose. And in Hanna’s opinion, he took too much of an interest in the personal lives of his SS officers.

  But no one—at least, no one in their right mind—went up against Himmler.

  The two remaining brides waited in the hall, and the only other woman in the room was Hedwig Potthast, Himmler’s devoted secretary, who stood near the edge in case he required her attention.

  If he was such a proponent of matrimony, why didn’t Himmler bring his wife to the SS weddings? Or had she been forced into marrying him as well? Most of Germany knew the man spent his leisure time with his secretary instead of his wife anyway, discounting the whole entity of marriage.

  Himmler nodded at Hanna, but the respect that he’d shown her long ago, when he’d first offered her a position in the Ahnenerbe, was gone. Now she was just a woman in a plain dress, one of thousands commissioned to carry their quest forward by conceiving the next generation.

  “Our strength is in your blood,” Himmler proclaimed in the dull tone of a rhetoric overused. “Your marriage will bring hope for the future of Germany. Your children will stand strong for the Aryan world.”

  I don’t want children.

  The words rang in her head, but she didn’t dare speak them.

  “You will do your duty to preserve our German race.”

  She heard a voice, swearing to preserve it, and wondered, for a moment, who sounded like her.

  “Your duty is to the Schutzstaffel,” Himmler commanded Kolman. “If you remain faithful, your brothers will protect you with their lives, and you, Hanna Strauss, have been accepted into the Schutzstaffel as an officer’s wife. You and your husband are duty bound to protect the cause of Germany.”

  He’d already taken away her role as an archaeologist, but with these words, he stripped her identity as a German woman who’d thrived on her own. Given her a future that she didn’t want as a wife in his SS.

  Was that what the Nazis had done to the Jewish people? With their regulations, their duties bound, cut out their very core?

  Himmler listed out each of Kolman’s duties to the Reich, a long list of obligations, and Hanna had no doubt her husband would perform every one, his utter allegiance devoted to this kingdom.

  “Heil Hitler,” Himmler said to complete the ceremony.

  “Heil Hitler,” both she and Kolman concurred with their lips.

  But in her heart, she heiled the strength rising inside her.

  Men like Hitler and Himmler only ruled because of the secrets they kept, dark ones like beating up innocent men and divining through the ancient runes. She had no admiration for those kinds of secrets.

  Stories were the lifeblood of the Nazis. Propaganda, they called it. Promoting their own interests to the public by extolling the fruit of the Aryan, degrading the Jews. But they also knew how dangerous a story could be.

  Himmler and the others wanted to write their own history, but she would write the truth.

  She’d already buried Paul and Luisa’s story in the labyrinth. What if Frau Weber could help her collect more stories? Even as she cataloged artifacts for the museum, she could help preserve the heritage of her neighbors. Be a secret keeper, like the Cathars. A guardian of the stories that no one was supposed to hear.

  Together they could create a Memorbuch for those who were being persecuted today.

  16

  EMBER

  “The road’s flooded,” Dakota said sheepishly, as if Ember might turn him away. When she stepped to the side, he rushed through the front door, a backpack hanging from one shoulder.

  “What about your grandmother?” she asked, both hands resting on the couch.

  “Gram’s ridden out many storms on her own, but Kayla is still spending the night in case Gram needs anything. Her husband manages the farm, so they live nearby.”

  Did that mean Dakota was sleeping in the cottage? In all of her craziest, wild dreams, she’d never imagined herself seeing this man again, much less trapped overnight with him.

  “My emergency supplies.” He unzipped the backpack and pulled out a battery-powered radio. “I carry this around in my car.”

  “Did your radio say anything about a tornado?”

  “Nothing’s been sighted. The weatherman said the winds should settle by midnight, but no one knows when the roads will be passable.” He patted the arm of the couch. “You mind if I sleep here?”

  “Of course not.” This was his home, and she wasn’t afraid of him, only what he might do to her heart.

  “I also have . . .” He dug around in his backpack until he retrieved a bulky mug and two packets of Ghirardelli hot chocolate. “These.”

  “If only we had something to heat the water . . .”

  “They call this an Ember.” He flipped over the mug. “It’s battery operated.”

  She waited for some sort of quip about her name, slow to warm up or something, but he didn’t pursue it. “You’re quite prepared.”

  He grinned, the stubble on his cheeks glistening like sand in the wash of her light. “Learned my lesson the third time the lights went off.”

  “It took three times?”

  “All those knocks in high school dimmed some of my thinking.”

  “Your poor passengers!”

  He laughed. “The flight deck computers make up for it.”

  She’d wanted to knock his head off in those years, but she didn’t mention that. “I’ll make the chocolate.”

  Another bang outside and her heart leapt, but not quite as high this time. “The wind sounds like it’s about to shred this house.”

  He patted the white wall as if it were a faithful friend. “She’s been standing for a hundred and seventy years, through ten hurricanes and countless storms. To my knowledge, we’ve never even lost a shingle.”

  She lifted the Ember mug. “Then here’s to one more night of holding it together.” For her and the house.

  But she didn’t need to use the heated mug. Her hands trembling, she filled two ceramic mugs with hot water from the kitchen tap.

  She’d spent more than a decade angry at this man for humiliating her. And yet something had changed.

  The flashlight secured under her arm, she dumped chocolate packets into the water, but she didn’t walk back into the living room.

  The homecoming game their senior year had sealed h
er fate with Dakota, but in the hours before, she’d suspected nothing. He had been her Mr. Darcy, a boy who’d shown her around the farm when she’d first moved back, who was friendly enough at home but ignored her at school. By their senior year, she thought he’d begun to care for her. At eighteen she imagined herself as Lizzy Bennet, but really she was more like Lydia. Silly and naive and completely broken when it came to men.

  Dakota had brought a wrist corsage with two roses he’d picked up before homecoming. Purple and white. Their school colors, so different and yet beautiful together. She’d thought she was about to step into a fairy tale.

  And it was a tale, one as tall as the mountains in Idaho.

  Hours later she was the laughingstock of the high school. Nice, she’d learned, was sometimes a prelude to nasty.

  “Ember?”

  She turned quickly, blinding him with the flashlight before she put it down. Then she held out one of the mugs. “Your lukewarm chocolate.”

  “Thank you.” He dug two candles out of the storage closet, both of them powered by batteries, and set them on the coffee table beside her phone before sinking into one of the chairs.

  She stretched her legs out on the couch, the mug folded between her hands. “This wasn’t exactly how I saw today going.”

  He nodded toward her phone. “It might be a day or two before the tower’s working again.”

  “And the ferry?”

  “They should resume service by Friday.”

  Groaning, she let her head fall back against the cushion. Another full day on this island, whether or not she wanted to be here.

  He leaned forward, his fingers wrapped around the mug. “Ember—”

  A storm raged within her, worse than the winds outdoors. He wanted to talk about the past, and she didn’t want to relive it.

  She swung her feet back onto the wool rug. “I’m heading up to bed.”

  “I was a jerk in high school,” he rushed on, undeterred. “Especially to you.”

  She willed her legs to move, but her toes seemed trapped in the yarn.

  “I’m sorry,” he said. “Words don’t suffice, but I wanted you to know.”

  She looked down at the mug, the ceramic warm in her hands. “It doesn’t matter anymore.”

  “But it does. You didn’t deserve what we—what I—did to you.”

  “No one could possibly deserve that . . .”

  He nodded. “You’re right.”

  “I didn’t come here to reconcile, Dakota. I just wanted to see your grandmother.”

  “Fair enough.” He paused. “But I needed to apologize.”

  The window rattled behind her, but she didn’t even glance at it since Dakota didn’t seem to be ruffled by the storm.

  She didn’t want to discuss the past and yet . . .

  Perhaps finally putting words to it would help her understand.

  “Why did you do it?” The question cranked out of her, rusty and cold.

  He rubbed his hands over the stubble on his cheeks as if he could sandpaper his answer, smooth away the rough edges of the truth, but she wanted to know.

  “You invited me to homecoming,” she said as if he’d forgotten. “You pursued me.”

  “I know.”

  Not that he had to be relentless in his pursuit. She’d mushed like putty in his hands. “It had all been a ruse, hadn’t it? Some sort of sick joke for your friends.”

  “I’m not proud of it . . .”

  “That first time you called and asked me out to dinner, Alex said you would hurt me, but I didn’t believe him.” Her words spilled out now like rain. “I knew you were cocky at school, but you were always nice to me on the farm. I thought in some weird way that I could help you find yourself under all that pride. See what I saw in you.”

  “It was rotten, Em. All of it.”

  “Ember, please.” Fire, not ash.

  “I was wrong, Ember. Terribly wrong. You have no reason to forgive me, but I wanted you to know I never should have done it. About ten years later, I realized how cruel I’d been.”

  “It took you ten years?”

  “God finally woke me up.”

  She stared at the man beside her, dumbfounded. “Since when did you start caring about God?”

  “When He rescued me from myself.”

  A relationship with God required humility, and pride had been Dakota’s crutch. But he did seem different now. Kind, even.

  If he hadn’t been so kind to her, right before he’d crushed her, she might believe it true. How could she possibly trust him now?

  Yet he sounded broken, exactly what she had hoped for in the moments after she’d crossed the football field in front of the entire school body, ready to accompany him as he accepted his royal crown. She’d stepped out when the announcer said his name, just like Dakota had instructed, his corsage decorating her wrist.

  She hadn’t been selected queen, but the homecoming king was allowed to choose his escort. Dakota had asked, if he was elected, that she accompany him, and she’d been elated that Dakota Kiehl wanted her!

  In the months they’d dated, they had kept their budding relationship a secret. He hadn’t kissed her or even held her hand, but she’d slopped admiration all over him, telling the man he was beguiling. Even now, her face flushed red with the memory. The humiliation from beginning to end.

  She should have suspected something when he drove her all the way to Aquinnah for their pizza dates. And when he didn’t run the moment she’d tried to channel Shakespeare. Not until much later did she realize that the scenario was a whole lot like several movies from the nineties. If only she’d seen them before homecoming, she just might have realized why Dakota was inviting her.

  “It was a dare, wasn’t it?” She crossed her arms, a shield between them. “From your friends.”

  “Yes.”

  “Why did they pick me?”

  He started to speak, and she stopped him. “Never mind. I was weird and ugly and naive.” The perfect target for bullies.

  “You weren’t any of those things, Ember. Except naive. It only worked because you trusted me.”

  “A life lesson learned.”

  “It was a pathetic attempt to show how cool we were. As if we could prove this by stomping all over the—”

  “Underdog, I get it. You all ruled the sandhill.”

  “And then fell promptly off, right on our faces.”

  She barely heard his words, the rawness of her heart bleeding out. The exhalation and the fallout. The laughter that had rippled across the bleachers.

  She’d stood on the field alone that night, stunned by his betrayal, her mind flashing back three years earlier when she couldn’t even save her own child, memories she’d desperately tried to repress in order to be normal. In order to find love.

  “Glen Hammond waited until I was halfway across the field to name Alecia as your escort.” Over the loudspeaker so everyone could hear.

  “I talked him into it,” he said, and she tried to ignore the sadness in his voice.

  “So half the school was trying to humiliate me?”

  “It was my fault.” He turned on one of the candles, its warm light flickering across the table, but it didn’t help. “I instigated it.”

  “And Alecia helped you.”

  “No,” he said. “I’d already asked her to escort me if I won.”

  Ember groaned. “They all thought I was crazy, Dakota. The poor library mouse, chasing after the almighty Captain Kiehl. And then you called me a—”

  She didn’t say the word, but she knew he remembered. A name that propelled her right back to the council of Aryans who’d misused her. The man who had called her his wife but treated her like a slave. She hadn’t known the difference when she was fifteen, but by eighteen she’d become keenly aware.

  Dakota slouched in his chair, no words left in his defense.

  Still she didn’t stop. “I know it was stupid in hindsight, but I thought you liked me. Instead you took advantage of me f
or a laugh.”

  “I was the stupid one. Not that it helps, but the laugh was ultimately on me. My own pride took me down.”

  She closed her eyes for a moment, listened to the rain on the window. She wouldn’t, couldn’t, empathize with this man who’d demeaned her, rubbed her heart raw. Dakota didn’t know that her life had been crushed in Idaho, that she’d lost the baby girl she loved, but he’d known that she didn’t fit in with the other high schoolers. That everything about her screamed weird.

  “You were gone,” Dakota said, flinching as if the memory was a hard one for him, “before I could apologize.”

  Her eyes flashed. “You were going to apologize?”

  “I’d like to think so.”

  She had been behind in school when she arrived on the island, halfway through her sophomore year, but for the next two years, she studied morning and night and all summer long until she collected enough high school credits to graduate early. And she’d done just that after homecoming, fleeing the island with her brother on the winds of that nor’easter, finishing up the last of her schooling in Pennsylvania.

  Dakota leaned back in his chair, taking a slow sip of his chocolate, watching the candle flicker. “My pride came full circle when my wife left me to marry the man who was supposed to be my best friend.”

  The words dropped like nails between them, hammering out the worst of his life. In spite of everything in the past, what he’d done to her, she still felt a pang of compassion for his loss. “Humiliating?”

  “Terribly,” he said, his voice quiet. “She tore my life apart and didn’t seem to care. For the next two years, I felt like I was staring at a mirror of myself. She wounded me like I’d wounded you and so many others.”

  Her heart quaked with the storm-shaken walls as they talked like old friends instead of enemies. As two people who sought truth from the past.

  How could she criticize those who hated when she’d carried hatred in her heart for so long? She had to release it or she was no different from the supremacists who thronged to the streets. Or the Aryan Council.

  Justified or not, hatred would kill her on the inside.

  She pulled one of the pillows over her chest, strapping it to her. “Do you have kids?”