The Curator's Daughter

by Melanie Dobson

  “God forgive you,” she said. As God had forgiven her.

  She fell when he pushed her out of this cage, but only for a moment.

  Then she flew.

  Frau Weber, she saw first, among the colors of the sky. Vater, then her mother at his side. And a glorious King who welcomed anyone who asked into His Kingdom.

  All was at peace—restored—in this beautiful new world.

  54

  EMBER

  Coolness washed over Ember’s face as Brooke led her out of the rented car, the sweetness of autumn clematis accompanying her steps this evening. She listened for the rustle of waves near the pavement, but the only sound she heard was whispering. And the clanking of keys.

  “Wait here.” Brooke sat Ember in a dark room, a bandanna wrapped around her eyes. “You don’t want to peek until it’s ready.”

  “Until what’s ready?”

  If Brooke heard her, she ignored the question. Her friend had been acting strange since they’d arrived on the island yesterday to celebrate the successful defense of Ember’s dissertation. A girls’ weekend, they’d planned. A redeemed homecoming of sorts.

  A weekend where she finally told this dear friend of hers the whole story.

  But a blindfold? It was a good surprise, Brooke had assured her, but Ember felt as if she were back in high school, a pawn in another game that couldn’t possibly end well.

  She stuffed her hands in her jacket, trying to play along, but she’d reached her capacity for the unexpected in the past three months. Her stitches were gone, her shoulder healed, and she was more than willing to forgo anything that began with Surprise!

  Thankfully, there’d been no surprises when she presented her dissertation. The committee had been fascinated with the stories about Nuremberg, both from centuries ago and then the documented accounts of three women who’d worked together to record Jewish biographies during the Holocaust. Two of these women had helped to hide people, and the third one ultimately discovered the film footage that convicted men like Albert Speer, Alfred Rosenberg, and Hermann Göring during the military tribunals. It had been the first time that film was used as evidence in a trial.

  Ember’s dissertation had been focused on the past, but her gaze was on the future now. On the importance, the simplicity, of looking someone of a different nationality, a different background, in the eye. Talking with instead of at them, hearing their story. Replacing an identity of hatred with one steeped in God’s love.

  The concept looked good on paper, at least. It was harder to implement in real life. Harder to love without getting wounded in the process.

  When men like Lukas refused this love, when they rallied people around a perceived enemy of their race, murdered and destroyed, she prayed that justice would continue to prevail. That others would rally together to stop the slow dripping of prejudice before it drowned them all.

  She and Dakota had celebrated the completion of her doctoral degree, the beginning of a new journey, with dinner at the Four Seasons in Georgetown. After a three-month break, she was scheduled to begin teaching in January.

  Thank God, the board had not only denied Lukas’s request for parole, but they’d banned him from applying again, so life in jail, it seemed, really would be life. Titus was currently in prison as well, awaiting trial for aggravated assault with a deadly weapon. Mrs. Kiehl was sad but relieved to have him in a place where he couldn’t threaten anyone else.

  Dakota had returned this afternoon to coach a game at the high school. He’d invited her along, but that was one invitation she declined. They’d meet in the morning to have brunch with Mrs. Kiehl and her fifty-seven-year-old niece Lidia, who was visiting from Poland. One of Mrs. Kiehl’s brothers, Piotr, had survived the war, hiding for most of it in a friend’s potato cellar. He had three children, and while he’d died in the 1970s, the Nowak family welcomed Mrs. Kiehl back into their fold.

  Charlie had found her back in 1945; Mrs. Kiehl remembered it soon after she realized that Charlie hadn’t stolen her away from her biological family. Then the tangle of her traumatic memories began to unravel.

  Her family in Poland, she remembered them next. Two brothers and parents who’d loved her. The German soldiers who ripped her from her mother’s arms. Then her mind had flashed to the attic where Charlie found her in Nuremberg, curled up behind one of the dollhouses, as if no one could snatch her out of her make-believe world.

  More memories followed. Of her last night in the lodge. Hanna walking out to the meadow before dinner, and then Mrs. Kiehl—Lilly—had seen a man outside. A man who’d escorted her mother away.

  Kolman Strauss, they all assumed. Where he had taken her, they might never know unless Lukas decided to tell the Kiehl family, but it seemed that Hanna’s marriage to him had been her demise.

  Days later, Lilly had boarded a ship with Charlie for the United States. She was his biological daughter—that’s what Charlie had told the immigration officer. He had plenty of clout by that time as one of the chief investigators of the Nuremberg trials and the valid excuse that Lilly’s paperwork had been destroyed in the bombing. After Charlie told the officer that he’d attended college in Germany, that he’d reunited with his former girlfriend in Nuremberg, the man had no reason to doubt his story.

  A long letter home to Arlene had softened the blow before they arrived, and this new mother—her third one—told her that she’d never have to leave this home. And she never had.

  Light trickled under the edges of Ember’s bandanna.

  “Brooke?” she called out. “This is silly.”

  She trusted this woman with her life, but if Brooke made her wait one minute longer, the blindfold was coming off.

  “It’s time.” Brooke’s hand was under Ember’s elbow, helping her stand.

  “I have to know what—”

  “Good,” Brooke interrupted, urging her forward. Cool air gusted over them as they stepped back outside.

  Were they in the Tabernacle? A surprise concert maybe. A reunion of some of their high school friends. A celebration for Lidia’s arrival.

  But why would Ember need a blindfold for a concert or reunion?

  Pavement no longer pressed against the soles of her ankle boots, the ground soft now with the padding of grass. Metal clanged around her, then a cacophony of voices. Sounds that transported her right back to high school.

  Surely Brooke hadn’t brought her back to the football field.

  “You can take it off,” her friend said.

  But Ember no longer wanted to comply. It was the thinnest protection between her and the outside world. A shell that she didn’t want to shed.

  When she didn’t move, Brooke unknotted the blindfold. It slipped over her eyes, her mouth, dropping to the ground.

  Pockets of light sparked in the darkness like stars in a distant galaxy. It was impossible to focus, clouds masking the skylights.

  A loud whoosh startled her, a wave of light breaking overhead, and she felt as if she’d been plunged into the ocean. Complete submersion in this spotlight.

  And it was much too cold to swim.

  Stadium bleachers were to her left, the benches packed with people waving flags of purple and white. Like the spectators on homecoming night.

  Her lungs begged for air as she tried to calm the racing in her heart.

  Football players lined the field, cheerleaders with pom-poms glistening at their sides.

  Did Brooke want her to confront this fear? Somehow break through the panic that was engulfing her? Step into her nightmare and remember that night in order to overcome?

  This was a lousy way to do it. She and Dakota were in a good place, the past between them finally healed.

  Turning, she prepared to run away from this game, back to the ferry before it left for the night. But then a speaker crackled on the field. A voice bellowing across the stadium.

  “A warm welcome tonight to Dr. Ember Ellis.”

  The man’s words were followed by applause, and she glanced up
at the box above the stands, to the place where Glen Hammond had called Alecia’s name to accompany the homecoming king.

  The crowd was cheering as if she’d just made the winning touchdown. But why were they clapping for her?

  A quick scan across the crowd, and she saw a familiar face in the bleachers. Her brother was seated in the front row, along with Tracy and their two kids, a smiling Maggie waving at her.

  Then she saw another face between them.

  Hope.

  The young woman who’d stolen her heart had stolen those of her cousins as well. Both Maggie and Saul were cuddled up close, her arms around their shoulders, and Noah, he was there with them. He and his father.

  Below them all, looking like royalty on their sideline chairs, were Lilly and her niece Lidia, clinging to each other’s hand.

  A white Bentley convertible rolled onto the field, and Ember covered her eyes to block the bright lights, squinting to see who was inside. The driver was Beatty, Dakota’s friend, wearing a cap like a Boston cabbie. He hopped out to open the back door.

  Dakota stepped onto the field, dressed in jeans and a purple-and-white football jacket, number 15 stitched onto the sleeve.

  She shivered in the autumn air, old fears threatening her again. What was she supposed to do now?

  Dakota stood in the middle of the field, hands hidden in his pockets. Instead of the proud homecoming king from long ago, he looked like a terrified pauper. As if this moment could break him, like it had broken her.

  “To escort Dr. Ellis on the field tonight is Coach Kiehl.” The speaker popped twice as Dakota lifted his head. “If she’ll have him.”

  With those words, the rustle behind her quieted. And warmth flooded over her skin.

  Dakota wasn’t humiliating her. This time around, he was giving her the opportunity to humiliate him. She could turn away, leave him standing in front of an entire stadium of spectators. Friends. Family. His football team.

  No one on Martha’s Vineyard would ever forget if she left him now.

  He was walking toward her, one of his hands outstretched, and everything else began to fade away.

  “Will you come with me?” he asked, motioning toward the center line.

  “You don’t need me on the field.”

  “I want to replace the old memories with something new.”

  She shook her head. “This is crazy.”

  “Please, Em.”

  She slowly took his hand.

  It was a dream, this walking across the field beside Dakota Kiehl. A dream that she’d never forget.

  When they reached the middle, two students joined them. One with a plush golden crown. The other carrying a pillow with a tiara, the rim lined with costume jewels.

  The crowd cheered when Dakota and Ember were coronated king and queen. She didn’t need this, the attention from the crowds, but something deep inside her seared back together as they clapped. The lie that she wasn’t good enough, that she was a fool to care for this man, began to disappear.

  Love poured through her as she glanced back at her family in the stadium. At Noah’s golden spoon waving in the air to remember this day always with her.

  Only a God of redemption could bring this all together. Replacing animosity with hope. Hatred with healing.

  But Dakota wasn’t finished yet. From his pocket, he took out an antique-looking watch, the hands ticking to record each second that passed by. She no longer heard the cheering from the crowd, only the gentle voice of the man in front of her.

  “It’s like the one in the labyrinth,” she said as he slipped the watch into her palm, the chain dangling from her hand, their initials carved on the back.

  “I want to start again, Ember, beginning right now. I want to treasure every minute, every second with you.”

  She closed her fingers over the watch as if she could make this moment stand still. Then she tapped her legs one last time before reaching for Dakota’s hand.

  No one could ever take this memory from her.

  It was one that she’d cling to like a rock for the rest of her life.

  DISCOVER MORE GREAT FICTION FROM MELANIE DOBSON

  Turn the page for a preview of Memories of Glass

  “A tale you won’t be able to put down—and won’t want to.”

  —ROSEANNA M. WHITE, bestselling author of the Codebreakers series

  Catching the Wind

  “An unforgettable story. . . . This is a must-read.”

  —PUBLISHERS WEEKLY, starred review

  Hidden Among the Stars

  “Exquisitely penned . . . Hidden Among the Stars is Dobson at her best.”

  —CATHY GOHLKE, Christy Award–winning author

  Brilliant color flickered across her canvas of wall. Sunflower yellow and luster of orange. Violet folded into crimson. A shimmer like the North Sea with its greens and blues.

  Most of the walls in her bungalow were filled with treasures of artwork and photographs and books, but this pale-cream plaster was reserved solely for the light, a grand display cast through the prisms of antique bottles that once held perfume or bitters or medicine from long ago.

  The colors reminded her of the tulip fields back home, their magnificent hues blossoming in sunlight, filling the depths of her soul with the brilliance of the artist’s brush. Spring sunshine was rare in Oregon, but when it came, she slipped quietly into this room to watch the dance of light.

  Sixty-eight bottles glowed light from shelves around her den, their glass stained emerald or amber or Holland’s Delft blue. Or transparent with tiny cuts detailing the crystal.

  These wounds of an engraver—the master of all craftsmen with his diamond tools—made the prettiest colors of all.

  Only one of the bottles was crimson. She lifted it carefully off the shelf and traced the initials etched on the silver lid, the ridges molded down each side, as she lowered herself back into her upholstered chair.

  All of them she treasured, but this one . . .

  This bottle held a special place in her heart.

  Her fingers no longer worked like they used to. They were stiff and curled and sore. But her mind was as sharp as a burnishing tool. Perhaps even sharper than when she was a girl.

  She held this bottle to her heart, leaning her head back against the pillow.

  No matter what happened, she wouldn’t forget.

  Couldn’t forget.

  A cloud passed over the sun, darkening the room for a moment, and she felt the keen coldness of the shadow. The memories.

  Some memories she clung to, but others she wished she could lock away in one of the vaults under Amsterdam’s banks. Or a tunnel carved into the depths of the old country.

  Closing her eyes, she remembered the darkness, the chill of air deep underground seeping back into her skin. The memory of it—of all she’d lost in Holland, of the terrible mistakes she’d made—had haunted her for more than seventy years.

  Shivering, she pulled the afghan above her chest.

  Seconds ticked past, time lost in the cold, before sunlight crossed over her face again, color glittering in the gaps of darkness. When she opened her eyes, the light returned to illuminate the wall.

  Slowly she stood, balancing against the lip of wainscoting that rounded the room until she placed the bottle back on the shelf. Her legs felt as if they might give way, just for a moment, but she regained her balance long enough to find the sturdy legs of her chair. A front-row seat for her memories.

  “Oma?” her great-granddaughter called from the hallway, on the other side of the door.

  Her children and their children all worried about her, but they needn’t worry. Even in her heart sadness, even when her body tripped over itself, all was well with her soul.

  Her family, they knew about her Savior, but they didn’t know all she had done. No one who remained in this world knew. It was her secret to harbor, for the safety of them all.

  “Come in,” she said softly, her gaze back on the glass.

  Even i
f her mind began to slip like her feet, this room would always remind her of the ones she’d lost.

  And the one she had to leave behind.

  * * *

  AMSTERDAM

  MAY 1942

  “Dinner, Jozefien, that’s all I ask.” Klaas dug his hands into the pockets of his trousers, wagging his head as if she’d wounded him with her refusal. “I’ll take you to Café Royale.”

  Schutterijweg 265.

  Each letter, number, clicked like a typewriter key in her brain, making an imprint before she forgot the address.

  “I can’t,” Josie said, trying to focus on the man standing beside her, the woven handle of the basket seeming to burn her hand. “At least, not tomorrow night.”

  It seemed innocent enough, this basket. A bouquet of purple and orange tulips, two glass jars, and a lining of gingham napkins. But her brother had hidden an envelope in the bottom, under the gingham. And no one, including Klaas, could find out what she was delivering to Maastricht tomorrow.

  Schutterijweg 265.

  Klaas fingered the tulip petals. “Orange is supposed to be banned.”

  “Fortunately no one told the flowers.”

  Klaas leaned against a marble column of the expansive lobby, his blond hair combed neatly back, the knot of his plum-colored tie bunched up above his waistcoat. He wrapped his arms across the breast of his gray-striped coat. “What’s more important than dinner?”

  “I’m helping Keet with her children.”

  His eyebrows arched up, his handsome blue eyes studying her. “She only has two kinderen.”

  “She’s had another since you visited,” Josie said. “And now there’s a fourth on the way.”

  An older couple scooted past them, and the yellow stars stitched to their clothing seemed to glimmer in the chandelier light and ripple across the long marble countertop in the lobby, trying to penetrate the milky glass that separated the bank tellers and managers from their Jewish patrons. The woman clutched the man’s arm with one hand and the other was gripped around the strap of a fashionable shoulder bag. He carried a tan attaché case that, Josie assumed, was filled with money and jewelry and perhaps the title to their house. Everything valuable they owned.