Mitch stood in the rubble, unmoving beside Gisela. A strangled cry escaped his lips, his face as pale as last night’s moon.
She followed his gaze downward. She gagged. Turning to the side, she fell to her knees and lost her small breakfast.
It was a hand. A human hand, fingers mangled and bloodied, blue and swollen.
He held her shoulders as she retched again, her hair clinging to her cheek.
At last empty inside, she sat back, trembling. She steeled herself for the answer before whispering the question. “Who?”
“It looks like an older woman’s hand. The knuckles are too gnarled to belong to a younger person.”
Mutti had arthritis in her hands, the result of decades of hard work. Her fingers bent and twisted in odd directions. She had been in the basement finishing the laundry . . .
Gisela shivered, unable to control the tremors. Her heart seemed to stop beating and she had to remind herself to breathe. “God, not Mutti. Not her, Lord.”
Mitch kissed her forehead and wrapped his arm around her, helping her to her feet. For a few moments, they stood together and her shudders calmed under his gentle touch.
Kurt arrived next to her and pulled her away from Mitch. She was bereft and reached out for Mitch, the man she knew without a doubt she loved, but the German soldier led her to the stoop. “I will keep digging. You don’t need to see any more.”
She agreed. Never would she forget the picture of those protruding fingers. Already horrific images bombarded her brain. The reality would be far worse.
As the men worked, she chewed on her broken fingernail. Others in the neighborhood came to dig, to try to find missing loved ones in the remains of their homes. She hid her face in the crook of her elbow. The nightmares of this day blended with those of a night not so long ago.
For a long while, she sat and tried not to think. The chill seeped through her bones, deep into her body.
The bricks and debris shifted as someone approached. He lowered himself beside her and rubbed her aching back. No comparison to the aching of her heart.
She didn’t bother to lift her head, recognizing Mitch’s touch. “I don’t want to know what you have to tell me.” If he didn’t speak the words, it couldn’t be true.
He smoothed her hair. “The hand belonged to the old man. His body shielded his wife’s. We found the woman and three of her children. We don’t know where the others are.”
She shivered as if she had been in an icehouse for hours. “And Mutti?”
“No.” Mitch’s deep voice reverberated in the air.
She raised her head and stared into his compassionate brown eyes. “Not Mutti?”
“No. No sign of her. She wasn’t home when the bombs fell.”
“Then where is she?”
Mitch squeezed her. “You tell us. Think about it.”
“I don’t know.” She forced herself to concentrate, to no avail. Her thoughts whirred too fast for her to catch them. “Are you telling me she is still alive?”
He nodded. “She isn’t here. That much is for certain.”
Across the street, wails rose up from the devastation. Another life snuffed out. And another. And another.
“I have no idea where to look. Her friends—but I’m not sure I remember where they live. Especially with so many landmarks gone, it looks like a different place. Did she go to the store? Which one? No one can give us those answers.”
Mitch ran his hand through his scraggly dark hair and whispered, “You stay here. I’ll see if Frau Mueller has some paint. We can leave a message for your mum so she knows where to find us. I imagine this will be the first place she will search for you.”
Mitch and Kurt moved the bodies from the rubbish heap to the sidewalk and covered them with coats. Then Mitch left to get the paint. Gisela dared to move about, sifting through the rubble, not for her mother’s body, but for anything salvageable.
Not much remained. She uncovered Annelies’s doll and located a few pairs of socks. She gasped when her fingers touched the beautiful gold watch Vater had given her for her thirteenth birthday. The one that matched Margot’s. With tears in her eyes, she slipped it on her wrist. Kurt handed her a pot and a pan along with a few spoons, a fork, and a knife.
He hovered over her as she sifted through their few worldly possessions. “I’m sorry about your mutti.”
“Danke.”
“I will do whatever it takes to find her. I will bring her home to you.”
“If only you could.”
“My uniform will help.”
Gisela shook her head. “Your uniform means little now. The Russians will be here any day.”
She turned her attention to her work. The corner of a book peeked out from underneath a smashed piece of furniture. The wood had splintered but hadn’t caught fire. She tugged and it came free.
Her Bible.
Scars marred the brown leather cover, but the pages remained intact. She lowered herself to the step and flipped to Isaiah 43. The faded daisy lay in its hiding place in that passage. She touched the fragile paper. Oh, Opa, I wish I knew what happened to you. But maybe it is best you don’t know about Mutti.
Mitch broke her reverie when he plunked down beside her, a tin of paint and a brush in his hand.
She showed him the watch on her wrist. “I can’t believe it survived. My sister and I got identical watches. She is buried with hers. I thought mine had been buried too.”
Mitch smiled. “I’m glad you found it.”
“It’s my last link with my sister.”
He held out the brush to her. Kurt had moved to the back of the garden, searching the bushes for debris that had blown there.
Her hand quivered. “I can’t do it. I’ll make a mess of it and she won’t be able to read where we’ve gone. And what if she doesn’t come back? What if she was in another shelter that was hit?”
Mitch took the brush from her. “We’ll find her.”
“How do you know that?”
He slapped his thigh. “Listen, I haven’t any guarantees. There are no guarantees in this mad world. Nothing is as it should be.”
An insane mix of emotions surged through Gisela, things she couldn’t explain. “I want you to make everything right again, to wake me from this nightmare, to take me away from here.”
“I can’t. These bodies over here—they aren’t a dream or a vision. They are reality. That’s reality now. This is what Hitler has done for you.” The words were harsh, but his tone soft.
“But I’m an American. I should be safe in our bungalow in California.”
“You should leave Berlin for the west. We all should.”
Screaming, shouting, crying came from up and down the block. The sounds reverberated in her head.
They echoed the sounds from another day.
Gisela and Heide and Lotta shared a bedroom upstairs. They were trapped, not knowing what to do. She wanted to shout for help but didn’t want to draw attention to them. Heide and Lotta suggested hiding in the wardrobe or under the bed. But surely the Soviets would look in those places first thing.
“Gislea? Are you ill?”
Mitch. She wasn’t there anymore.
“You were in a far-off place.”
“In my head, I can still hear the Russians’ heavy boots thunking as they made their way upstairs at my aunt’s house in Goldap. I held my breath, afraid to make even so small of a noise as exhaling. I knew by the squeaks of the risers which step they were on. Any second they would burst through the door.”
Her body trembled as if an earthquake rocked it. She couldn’t stop. She drew a ragged breath.
Even as she spoke to Mitch, she felt herself drawn back there.
Without formulating a plan, she propped open the window and climbed to the porch roof. Her cousins closed the window behind her. What were they doing? Why didn’t they climb out too? Without any other choice, she swung her legs over the edge and dropped to the ground.
She ran as fast as her legs could carry her, to the garden, where she hid under the hedge. It was cold, so very, very cold. The ground was damp and the chill seeped through her clothes. She stayed under there all night. No matter what, she couldn’t shut out her cousins’ screams.
The Russians found them.
When gunshots filled the night, their screams stopped.
Mitch gave her hand a squeeze, bringing her back to the present.
She rubbed her temples. “I ran away once. At the cost of two lives. No more running. Not for me. You go if you want. But leave me here.”
Mitch wanted to shake Gisela. He hadn’t left yet, knowing he could never talk her into coming west when the girls weren’t well. And then he had fallen ill himself.
And now . . . Why didn’t he leave? Just go. She was home. She would be fine here.
But that wasn’t the truth. And he couldn’t stand it if anything happened to this beautiful, headstrong, stubborn woman.
She fiddled with the gold watch on her wrist. “You see, if I had prodded Heide and Lotta out that window, we might have all survived. But I didn’t. I thought only of myself.”
If she hadn’t, she wouldn’t be here right now. “With the time it would have taken for all of you to get out the window, the troops might have caught them anyway. You don’t know what would have happened. They chose not to come.”
Just as his chums had chosen to follow him, all because of his bragging. Couldn’t they have found a map or followed someone else? But they trusted him. That was the worst. He broke that trust.
“I will never forget that night. Those sounds.”
And he would never forget the sight of those German panzers. “How did you escape?”
“I ran. When morning came, I ran and ran, until a stitch in my side forced me to slow down. A few hours later, I caught up with a group of retreating German soldiers. They took me to Heiligenbeil. Don’t you see? I survived. They didn’t. Just like with Margot.”
“You have to know it’s not your fault.”
“If I could go back and change things . . .”
“No what-might-have-beens. If God says not to worry about tomorrow, I would think the same applies to yesterday. There’s enough trouble in the here and now to worry about how differently things could have turned out. You’re talking to an expert on the matter. I’m world famous on what-might-have-beens.” He came to her, and though she attempted to push him away, he didn’t allow her.
Despite her protests, he held her close. Close enough to stroke the curls at the base of her neck. She buried her head in his shoulder. “Oh, Mitch, what a muddle I have made of my life.”
“We all make messes.”
“You too?”
“Yes.”
“France. That’s what you’re talking about.”
“And East Prussia. How could I have done it twice? Walked in circles?”
She turned her head so her ear was pressed to his chest. “Do you think this will all end?”
“It will. It has to.” Either there would be a truce or they would all die. Heaven became more real to him with each passing day.
He peered at her, a ray of sunlight falling across her head, the golden highlights in her brown hair shining through the grime.
“I’m not sure I can keep going. God is punishing me for what I did. For what my country did. He may never relent until He has purged us from the earth.”
“I have to believe He continues to love us. How else could we get out of bed every morning?”
She sat in his embrace a moment more before she pulled away. “We must get this notice painted. The girls need me. They have to be so frightened and confused. I never should have left them this morning.”
She held the can of white paint and Mitch traced the letters of the words on the red bricks. He couldn’t spell in German worth a lick, so she helped him, and they painted the message. They set the brick on the steps where Frau Cramer would be sure to see it.
“That’s all we can do for now.”
Gisela shook her head, her wonderful stubborn streak rearing its ugly head. “There’s more.”
She may have failed her cousins, but she wouldn’t fail the girls and she wouldn’t fail Mutti. Along with Mitch and Kurt, she picked her way the few blocks to Frau Mueller’s place.
Dear Lord, let Mutti be here. Bitte, bitte.
She climbed the three stairs to the house’s front door, her legs heavy, stiff. Her hand trembled when she turned the ornate brass knob. Mitch opened the heavy wood door for her. Mutti, she just knew, would be on the other side.
Two little blondes ran to her and wrapped themselves around her legs. “Tante Gisela, you’re back, you’re back.”
“Ja, I am that.” She looked into Frau Mueller’s lined face, asking the question with her eyes.
Frau Mueller shook her head.