Springtime of the Spirit (10 page)

Sometime later she readied herself for bed, but sleep eluded her. She listened for noise from the rooms below, hearing nothing. After lying awake on her pillow for a while, she gave up any notion of rest and went to the window overlooking the street. She’d avoided thoughts of her parents all day, despite Christophe’s presence. If it was true they were leaving—and really, why should she doubt it—it might also be true that this would be her last opportunity to see them, to speak to them. Perhaps forever.

Part of her wanted to return with Christophe, to cave in to his judgmental recommendation and at least say good-bye. But how could she? Everything she stood for today went against what they were, what they wanted her to be.

Could she just cast such a difference aside? And if she couldn’t, why would her parents want to see her anyway? Wasn’t her duty to be true to her beliefs as a woman, and wasn’t that a greater duty than to honor the abandoned obligations she might have felt toward her parents? Even the Bible, she recalled, talked about putting aside childish things. Or something like that.

She was making her own way in life, had cut all ties for a reason. Once cut, those ties couldn’t be mended.

Movement from the street below caught her eye. Someone had slipped out the door just below her window and stepped into the street to look at the house. His face was clear in the moonlight, staring up at the windows.

Christophe.

She was tempted to duck away but doubted he could see her from her darkened room anyway.

He was clearly studying the upper floors. Huey and Bertita had already been abed when she’d come upstairs, not even a peek from Bertita tonight.

Christophe disappeared, moving closer to the building and out of sight. Then he was back, and to her astonishment, a pebble hit her windowpane.

She leaned closer and knew he saw her because he held back what must have been another pebble in his palm.

She waved him away.

He shook his head, motioning for her to join him.

Annaliese stared at him. She could ignore him but guessed he might continue throwing stones at her window until she complied. She could open her window and demand he leave her alone, but the sound of voices might rouse Bertita. And yet to meet him . . .

Why couldn’t he give up? accept that she wanted nothing to do with him or his mission to bring her home?

She waved for him to wait, then grabbed her jacket, slipped into her shoes, scrambled down the stairs, but stopped at the foot of the porch. “Go away, Christophe.”

Instead, he joined her at the bottom of the stairs, so close the vapor from his warm breath touched her forehead. Even though she stood one step above, he was still taller. She pivoted away, intent on going back to her room.

“You can’t avoid me forever, you know,” he said. “Especially if I decide to become part of this organization.”

On the second step she turned on him, nearly nose to nose when he leaned forward as if to follow. “And why would you want to join us, exactly? Do you believe any of what you said to Jurgen this afternoon? Do you believe any of what he believes, what the rest of us believe?”

“I wouldn’t have said I did if I didn’t.”

“Then why did you act as if you hardly knew what we stood for? When you hate all the same things we hate?”

“Hate people like your father?”

“Yes!”

“Why should I hate him? It wasn’t his decision to go to war, and in the beginning, he was hailed as a patriot, same as every soldier out there.”

“What a liar you are, Christophe. Or do you just enjoy manipulating others around here, the way you’re trying to manipulate me into going home?”

“You should go home for you own good, Annaliese. And for your parents.”

How much more self-righteous could he be? Spouting the importance of family when he’d encouraged her sister to destroy their father’s business. He might have had a change of heart from the hatred he’d expressed in those letters, but he was no stranger to broken family bonds. She knew how utterly he’d failed with honoring one of his own. “Why do you suppose your sister left home? Why was she so eager to leave, to make sure she was gone before you had the chance to come home?”

He was confused—she saw that instantly, even before his brows drew together.

Annaliese forged ahead. “She went off before you came home because she didn’t want to face you. You with your high standards—she thinks perfection is attainable to you. Too bad she never felt she could live up to your expectation.”

Anger joined the confusion on his face. “What are you talking about?”

How sweet it would be to plunge the knife of regret into his gut and give it a twist or two. To hear the truth about a sibling and have that truth let him down. “She was stealing, Christophe. From my father’s factory, from empty homes, from strangers or neighbors. And selling what she could on the black market.”

There, it was done. So quickly, too. She saw all the emotion she expected even as she came to the instantaneous, terrible realization that the knife didn’t feel nearly as pleasurable as she thought it should. His eyes went from curious to astonished, skeptical to accepting. Moist.

She turned from him, ashamed she’d been so eager to hurt him, ashamed she’d succeeded. She went up one step, and he didn’t follow. She stopped.

“I didn’t blame her,” Annaliese added over her shoulder, because as suddenly as the impulse had come upon her, she wanted to withdraw that knife, to erase the evidence she’d ever used it and banish the look in his eye. “She was left with too little; she sold her own goods first and not for luxury. She needed to eat. And she only stole from those who could afford it.”

“But my parents—”

“Were too generous before they died. They helped so many others that they had too little left for themselves. Or Nitsa.”

“But I sent money home, whenever I could.”

Annaliese was fully regretful now; she wished she’d never told him. Nitsa wouldn’t have wanted him to find out this way. “She suffered the same flaw your parents did. She was too generous with what little she had, and whatever was left to us was so expensive. It still is.”

He rubbed his hands over his face but then looked at her again. “She left home because she thought I would judge her for that?”

“Wouldn’t you?”

Christophe looked away so all she could see was his profile, one that seemed suddenly cut from stone. “Once, maybe. Not anymore.”

“What changed?”

He faced her. “The same thing that changed you. And the rest of Germany.”

She wished she could ask him how the war had changed him, how he could have written some of the things he did and speak today as if none of it mattered. She wished she could share her own memories, too, but so much stood in the way. Starting with Giselle.

She didn’t want to look at him, but her eyes went to his anyway. “The last time I saw you, I was a child. I’ve grown up.”

He took the three steps separating them. “No.” He was so close, he nearly spoke into her ear. “It’s more than that. I remember your smile. I remember you smiling at me. But now . . . it’s as if you can’t even bear my company. Why?”

If she told him, it would be like taking another knife to him, and she’d lost her taste for that. He didn’t know he was the cause for what Giselle had done. Why tell him? It wouldn’t change anything. “Perhaps it is the war,” she said. “It’s made me too serious. We’re all that way.”

He shook his head. “I don’t believe you.”

No one had ever called her a liar before, but until now she’d never deserved such an accusation. How could she tell him that since she was a child, he’d been her source of one disappointment after another? that he’d been the first to describe to her what love was about, and she’d wished that it had been her he’d talked about? that when he’d spent time with Giselle, it crushed Annaliese each and every time? And later, when she’d become close to Nitsa, who had spoken of him so fondly, it had resurrected that old infatuation in Annaliese, giving it a place in her maturing heart.

But worst of all, he didn’t seem to have held on to anything he believed that had inspired Giselle. It took away whatever meaning she might have thought her actions had.

Annaliese took another step up, away from him, but he stayed her again, this time with a hand over the one she had placed on the banister.

“Come home with me tomorrow, Annaliese. Just see them.”

“Why do you care so much, one way or the other? Wasn’t my father one of the many who profited from the war, one of the many responsible for keeping you at the front for so long?”

“I don’t want you to see them for their sakes. I want you to do it for yours.”

She looked at him, wondering if her voice would work given the pounding of her heart. “The question remains. Why do you care?”

“It’s the right thing for you to do.”

She should have known. Other things might have changed, but he was still the righteous one.

“No, Christophe. Even if you’re right, I won’t do it.”

Then she fled back to her room.

* * *

Christophe had little choice but to let her go. What else could he do? Follow her to her room? Drag her away with him tomorrow? Even if he wanted to, he doubted Jurgen and his squadron of bodyguards would allow such a thing.

And so Christophe descended the steps again, turning up the collar on his jacket. He should have let himself into Leo’s flat, returning to that warm little room with its snug bed and plenty of covers. But he’d tried sleeping there earlier, and once again sleep had eluded him.

They’d come to him the moment his head hit the soft pillow. Those shadows, those faces. All the brighter, all the more clearly condemning in contrast to his comfort. Only now he knew they would be joined by a new face: his sister’s.

She’d fled Germany, and that was his fault too.

An alcove out of the wind would suffice again tonight, and tomorrow he would decide what he would do next. Go home alone, or stay.

11

“So our new soldier has left already,” Jurgen said to Annaliese when she swung through the kitchen door to join the others for breakfast. Bertita cooked for everyone who shared the multifamily living quarters but always used Leo’s kitchen, which was the largest and the center of most activity.

If Jurgen’s observation was supposed to surprise Annaliese, it didn’t. From her window last night she’d watched Christophe walk down the street, then listened for his return throughout the hours that followed. She dozed fitfully, never far from awareness. Evidence of her poor night’s sleep could be found in the puffy eyes she’d seen in her mirror this morning.

“I heard him leave during the night,” Bertita said. “Do you think he will be back?”

Annaliese only shrugged. She didn’t want to say she hoped not because she knew they considered it a feat indeed to have a former officer in their league. Most of those like him were loyal to the old government and the National Assembly. She accepted coffee from Bertita, along with a roll—dry, which meant butter was scarce again.

“You should have convinced him to stay.” Bertita’s tone was level, cool. “He’s your friend, isn’t he? He’s the kind of man we need. One with a gun, who can train others how to use them.”

“I don’t know that he’d be willing. He seemed less than certain about joining us. In any case, he’s gone.” She was eager to move on to another topic. “I’ll be visiting the textile mill today to speak to women about their vote.”

Leo pushed away from the table, taking his cup to the sink for Bertita to wash. “You’re right about how we could use his help, Bertie, so let’s hope he returns.”

“Leave the dishes until later, will you, Bertita?” Jurgen asked. “I’d like a word with Annaliese before the day gets the best of us.”

The room emptied in record time. Huey pushed open the door that swung between the kitchen and dining room—a door no doubt designed in the days of busy cooks needing easy access between the rooms—and Leo followed. Bertita left through the back door with a wicker laundry basket.

Annaliese sipped her coffee, but it was flavorless. Nothing penetrated her senses when Jurgen glowered at her, as he was doing now.

“Tell me about this friend of yours, this Christophe Brecht.”

She tried a smile but was afraid he realized it was forced. “I think perhaps you know him as well as I do, after yesterday. We were never close friends.”

“How can that be? He seemed intent on bringing you home with him.”

Another sip. “And he left without me.”

Jurgen leaned closer. “I heard him leave last night. And I heard your footsteps down the stairs shortly after.”

She met his gaze. “Then you must have heard my footsteps going back up to my room shortly after that. Alone.”

“I did. But why did you follow him out?”

“He threw a stone on my window ledge. I didn’t want him to wake anyone, so I went to tell him to leave me alone.”

“Why was he so eager to talk to you, and why are you just as eager to avoid him?”

“Because he wants me to see my parents before they leave Germany.”

“And you don’t want to?”

She shook her head.

“Why?”

Now was as good a time as any to tell him what would likely come out eventually, especially if Christophe did return as Jurgen must hope—if his interest in Christophe was any indication. “My father is a capitalist of the worst kind. I don’t care if I ever see him again.”

Jurgen smiled as he reached across the table to pat one of her hands. “Anya, Anya. You speak too passionately. He’s your father.”

She leaned away from him, taking her hand from his. “You of all people shouldn’t want me to go, Jurgen. He profited from the war. He turned his metalworks factory into a munitions plant, and somehow, while the rest of us were starving, he still managed to receive shipments of metal.”

“I don’t doubt you. But he’s still your father.”

“You, too?”

“I want to be sure you know what is best for you,
mein Herz
.”

“I think I’m capable of figuring that out for myself.” She stared into her coffee cup instead of at him.