Everything in Allina’s life unraveled after Karin and Fritz’s wedding.
Albert left for Berlin the week following the ceremony, and while he wrote every day, his letters never erased the hollow ache in her chest. He’d always been the steady ballast that offset her stormy temper, but Allina missed Albert for a hundred different reasons—his teasing humor, the feel of his hands at her waist as they danced, even his pigheaded need to protect her. He returned to Badensburg in July for her eighteenth birthday, and Allina accepted his marriage proposal, to everyone’s delight. But Albert’s letters since had been odd. Incomplete. Instead of giving Allina the details she craved about Berlin, they were filled with memories from their childhood, or his plans for their life together after they married next summer.
As the weeks passed, Allina saw less of her old school friends. Karin was the only exception—she invited Allina to lunch once a week—but Allina felt a growing chasm there, too. Karin was a married woman now, done with childhood. It was like she’d crossed a bridge Allina could glimpse but not yet travel.
Their luncheons never extended to dinner, by unspoken agreement. Allina didn’t trust her temper around Fritz and always left before he got home in the evenings. When Karin spoke of him it was only in the context of what she’d prepare for dinner or the work he’d done around the house. They never mentioned Chancellor Hitler or the couple’s plans to move to Munich.
All these shifts left Allina in fidgety limbo. She did her best to stay busy and helped her uncle run the bookshop every day. When business was slow, they buried themselves in Goethe, Dostoevsky, and Dickens, debating the nature of good and evil within the safe confines of a book’s pages. Sadly, one of Uncle Dieter’s favorite novels, Kesten’s Running Riot, was no longer part of their conversations. Uncle refused to discuss politics with her anymore, and Kesten had fled Germany years ago after the book burnings that took his works, and those of Einstein, Freud, and other Jewish authors, off bookshelves across the country.
In the evenings, Allina continued to write, although many of her stories seemed pointless and childish. She forced herself to persist, and to bide her time. In a year she’d be married, living with Albert in Berlin.
At the end of July, Uncle developed a persistent cough that wracked his body at all hours. Allina lost count of the number of times she came awake in the middle of the night to his hacking, and his voice became hoarse after the first week. Auntie blamed it on a summer cold at first, then allergies. They tried every home remedy—mustard plasters, castor-oil packs, even eucalyptus-oil inhalations to help his breathing—but nothing worked for long.
When his pants grew baggy, Auntie suggested a visit to Dr. Weiss. Uncle laughed at her fussing and kept on working. He’d said he needed to lose a little weight and, besides, it was tourist season. They couldn’t afford to close for even a day during the most profitable part of the year. Allina insisted she could run the bookstore alone, but Uncle wouldn’t consent. No doctors. Everything was fine.
One night near the end of August, he coughed up blood.
“You’ve worked yourself into a case of pneumonia,” Auntie scolded. “We’ll go see the doctor in the morning.”
The diagnosis came back a week later.
“Cancer?”
Allina gaped at her aunt and uncle across the dinner table, aware of the slow ticking of the grandfather clock as the hateful word hung in the air.
Auntie and Uncle nodded in unison. They’d told her the truth using blunt language but, despite their bloodshot eyes, seemed calm.
Uncle shifted his chair closer and reached for Allina’s hand. His was strong and warm, reassuring as always.
“I don’t want you worrying about me, child,” he said. “Everything will be fine.”
“Don’t lie to her, Dieter. Not about this.” Aunt Claudia’s voice was sharp, but Allina couldn’t tell if it was from anger or fear. Terrified, she turned away. Her gaze roamed the dining room in search of an anchor—something, anything to keep panic at bay—and finally settled on the antique oak hutch, filled with cherished treasures: delicate Schwarzenhammer summer rose china, special enough to be saved for holidays and guests; the heavy silver candlesticks and cut crystal vases Uncle had inherited from his parents; and an antique tea service placed just so on the hand-stitched doilies her grandmother had made, a woman who’d died years before Allina was born and whom she knew only through the stories Auntie told. Allina examined these items with a desperate, focused attention until Uncle squeezed her hand again.
His blue eyes watered and he smiled at her with trembling lips. “Doctor Weiss sent my X-ray to a specialist in Cologne. There’s nothing to be done. What time I have left, I’ll spend here, at home with the two women I love most in the world.”
Allina jumped up with a cry and hugged him tight, pressing her face into his shirt and inhaling her uncle’s cool, spicy scent. Peppermint and tobacco.
What were they going to do?
“We’re going to cook for him,” Auntie said later that evening, as she ticked off Uncle Dieter’s favorite foods on her fingers. “Apple strudel. Meatballs and spaetzle. Wiener schnitzel.” Handing Allina a knife, she gestured toward the table. “Start peeling potatoes.”
“You think food will cure him?” Allina shook her head in disbelief, but she carried a sack of potatoes to the table anyway.
“The food will show your uncle how much we love him.” Her aunt opened a cupboard, pulled out a stockpot, and slammed it on the stove. “Love can work miracles.”
“How much time does he have?” When her aunt didn’t answer, Allina’s stomach sank. “What did Doctor Weiss say?”
Auntie walked to the sink to fill the pot with water. “Doctors are all well and good, but they have no understanding of God’s time. Promise me you’ll try to live with hope. We must fill this house with hope and our love for him.”
“How long?” Allina demanded.
Auntie bit her lip and kept her eyes on the filling pot. “Two months. Perhaps less.”
In the days that followed, they settled quickly into a new routine. Allina ran the bookstore in the mornings and closed the shop at three o’clock so she could spend her afternoons and evenings tackling an endless list of chores. When Uncle grew restless, she read to him—from Homer’s The Odyssey and Goethe’s Faust—and they laughed and debated in the same way they’d done her entire life, with one exception: This time, Allina took the lead. It was a tender role reversal of some of her happiest memories, and Allina was grateful each time she could make him laugh, because color would come back into his cheeks. And if a hot, helpless panic sometimes seeped into her chest, she pushed back her tears until he drifted off to sleep.