Talk about breaking the mood…
I prop myself up on an elbow. “You’d better explain that.”
Julie arranges her pillow so she can sit up against the headboard. “I’m sorry to pop this on you like this. I’ve wanted to tell you, but…” She bites her top lip and looks off into space. “I needed to know I can trust you—”
“We’ve been sleeping together for how long? And you just now figure that out?”
She sighs. “I know. It sounds silly to me now, too. I do trust you. I mean, well, look at us. And we’ll have Oma’s portrait in a couple days. I have to tell you now. I’m sorry.”
I kiss the point of her shoulder. Forgiven. “So how do you own Dorotea?”
Julie does some more of that staring-into-space thing while she strokes my forearm. “It’s about Oma’s and Opa’s wills.” She looks at me, a little sheepish. “You want to hear this?”
Part of me wants to go back to cuddling. The rest is awake and trying to work all this out. That part wins. “Yeah. Tell me.”
She settles in and folds her hands on her stomach. “Okay. Oma and Opa got their wills redone a week before Anschluss. I guess they saw what was coming and wanted to be ready. They sent copies to Viktor’s Swiss lawyer—that’s how I got them.”
I pull the white duvet from around our knees up to Julie’s armpits, which is all kinds of wrong. “If I’m going to have to hear about wills and codicils and all that, I need to concentrate.”
She lifts an eyebrow my way. “Am I that distracting?”
“You bet.”
“Good answer.” She kisses the tip of my nose, then folds her hands on top of the duvet. “So. Opa’s will left everything to Oma in case he died first. If she died first, then he split their belongings between the kids. Uncle Leo would get the real property, any cash—”
“Did they have any real property?”
“Not yet. I guess he was thinking ahead. Anyway, Uncle Leo would get any cash or investments, and the art. Mom would get the china, the silver, the linens and the furniture.”
“She got screwed.”
“Well…” She bobs her head side-to-side a couple times. “Kind of. I’ve thought about it. First, they had really nice china and really nice silver. They were wedding presents. Also, I think he thought that by the time any of this would happen, she’d be married off and living in her husband’s house and she’d already have her own china and silver. She could sell Oma’s and Opa’s and get a mint for it. But it would’ve been nice to give her some cash, too.”
“No joke.” This is now officially the weirdest conversation I’ve ever had in bed. That’s saying something, considering the off-the-wall shit Janine came up with. “What was Dorotea’s will like?”
She holds out her right hand to me and wiggles her fingers. When I take it, she pulls my hand down on her stomach and covers it with both of hers. Too bad the duvet’s in the way. “Um… well, it starts out like Opa’s. If she died first, he’d get it all, and if he died first, she split their stuff between the kids. But she was a little more even-handed. Uncle Leo still got the real property, but he only got half the cash and investments. He got the furniture to make up for it, which kind of makes sense, because then he’d have a fully-furnished house for his wife when he got married. Mom got the rest of the money, the china, the silver, the linens… and the art.”
Aha. “So Herschel died first?”
“Yes.”
“Can you prove it in court?”
“I think so.” She turns my hand loose and twists so she can face me. “How far have you gotten in my book?”
“Herschel and his brothers just got thrown in Dachau.”
She nods. “June 1938. The Nazis sent them to Mauthausen in August. They were some of the first prisoners to get there, so they’d have been helping build the camp. Enough records survived that I found out Opa worked in the accounting office. That may be why he lived so long.” She shakes her head. Her eyes are getting squinty. “The Nazis were idiots. They wrote everything down. Everything. Opa died on September 19th, 1939. I know the name of the guard who shot him. He was Gerhard Wandler, from Styria in Austria. It’s crazy that I know that.” She swallows and looks away.
“I’m sorry.” Because what else can you say? I wrap an arm around her waist and pull her against me. She touches her forehead against mine and sighs. “Did you look him up? Wandler?”
“No.” Julie sniffs and sits up. “I don’t want to find out he went home and had a family and died in bed with his grandkids holding his hands. I couldn’t take that.”
Can’t blame her. I give her a few moments to get herself together again. I hate to have to ask this next question. “What about Dorotea?”
Julie sighs again, wraps her arms around her shins, then rests her chin on her knees. “She went to Lichtenberg first, then they transferred her to Ravensbrück when it opened. It was all women and some kids then. Not much documentation survived the war—the SS burned most of it. The Polish Underground saved some, and some of the earliest stuff ended up in the Reich archives. That’s where Stefan found some infirmary records for the camp’s first year.” She stares at the desk. “Do you still have that postcard of Oma?”
“Yeah. You want it?”
“Yes, please.”
I slide out of bed and fish the postcard out of my laptop case.
She holds it in both hands, gazing at it like she can see through it to wherever her grandmother is now. Then she brushes a fingertip over the portrait’s hair. “They’d have cut her hair off by then. Or she would’ve, because of the lice. It was a labor camp. Siemens, AEG, Daimler. A lot of that was later, though. They’d send the young, strong women out to build roads and things. I don’t know what Oma did there. But I know she checked into the camp infirmary on September 18th, 1939 and was there until the 23rd. That’s when her number shows up on the clinic’s daily report under ‘died.’ Having prisoners die was strange enough back then that they still kept track.”
There’s an ache in Julie’s voice that makes me want to bundle her up in my arms and rock her and tell her it’s going to be okay. When I try, though, she grabs my hand and holds on tight while she keeps staring at the postcard. If that’s all the comfort she wants, that’s what I’ll give her, though I wish I could do something more.
You are. You’re stealing back her painting.
Yeah. It’s pretty clear that’s where this is headed. Like it isn’t complicated enough.
I finally ask, “Does Cousin Ron know?”
She hands me the postcard, then flops back against the headboard. “Sort of. I gave him the wills. I showed him the thing from Mauthausen. I showed him the Ravensbrück clinic log from the eighteenth.” She puts on a grim half-smile. “I maybe didn’t show him the log from the twenty-third.”
I sag against the headboard and massage the throb building behind my ear. “Why not?”
She gives me the kind of look I usually get from Carson. “Think about it. How hard would he try to get Oma back if he knew I own her? None. He wouldn’t get anything from it. I need him to think he’s going to get her right up until I tell him, ‘Oh, by the way.’”
“He can sue you for fraud.”
“How will he know? Stefan won’t testify against me. He’s my lawyer.”
“Who pays him?”
“Ron, but Stefan’s my lawyer. I signed the retainer with him. It doesn’t matter where the money comes from.” She slides against me. “And you won’t, will you? After… everything? Us? You don’t want Ron to get her anyway. And, well, you’re the one who’ll have stolen her.”
I open my mouth a couple times, but nothing comes out. I never figured she could be so calculating. I don’t want to follow this down to its logical end, but… “Is that what… what this was all about?” I wave my hand over the bed. “Did you do this to—”
Julie’s eyes get huge. Her mouth falls open. “No! No! How can you think that?” She backs away. “I never expected this. I’m glad it happened, but I never planned you and me…” Her face starts to melt. “Is that what you think of me? That I’d… I’d…”
“No.” I reach out to touch her face, but she pushes my hand away. “I don’t want to think that way about you. I don’t want to wreck this… whatever this is we’ve got. But…”
Then it dawns on me why I’m getting more confused with every word I say. I can’t tell if she’s acting. I thought I could read her, but I can’t, not right now. Why isn’t her face red? Why isn’t she tearing up? I’ve been around people who’ve been faking it for so long that I can’t tell the difference between real outrage and the fake kind anymore.
I put up my hands. “Look, I’m sorry, I—”
She backs out of bed. “I can’t stay here. I need to go. I need to think.”
What am I seeing here? The hurt in her eyes, the trembling chin—she’d have to be a hell of a good actress to pull that off if it’s not real. Then again, she is a good actress. She totally nailed Gillian. But what happened between us felt real up until a couple minutes ago.
A spike of panic blows through me. “No, please, stay, let’s talk—”
“No.” She bats my hand away again. “I’m upset, you’re upset. No.” She rushes to the desk chair and starts throwing on her clothes. “I thought I could trust you to—”
“You can.” I scramble out of bed and catch her arms before she can pull on her sweater. This time, she doesn’t fight me off, which gives me a little hope. “I’m surprised and confused and… please don’t go, not like this. I want—”
“No.” I can barely hear her. She slowly twists away from me, then struggles into the sweater. “I need to spend a night away from you so I can think. Find me after breakfast. I’ll be ready then.” She reaches out to brush my jaw with her fingertips. Then she’s gone.
I stand there watching the door close. I have to try hard to breathe right. I blew it. I totally fucked up. I feel like twenty kinds of shit.
The worst part: the little voice inside me that’s usually right? It’s asking, Did you fuck up? Or is that what she wants you to think?