WE CREPT INTO THE HOUSE AND VEERED RIGHT. Franklin D. waited in my bedroom. I headed to the kitchen to pour the gallon of milk down the drain. Step one in my plan.
I found Vickie in Oma’s room, tucking a sheet around my grandmother’s legs. Oma’s eyes were closed. She had the sweetest smile on her face, like she was dreaming wonderful things.
Vickie noticed me standing by the door. She pressed a finger to her mouth. I waited for her to finish, then trailed behind her to the kitchen, where she snapped, “Yes?”
“We’re out of milk.”
“That’s not possible. I just bought some two days ago.”
I shrugged. “Oma’s been drinking a lot of it lately.”
She looked into the fridge and frowned. “You know I need milk for my coffee, Livvy. Didn’t I ask you to tell me if it’s running low?” She pulled a wad of cash out of her wallet, peeling off a ten-dollar bill. “Please bring me the receipt so I can expense it.”
“I have homework. I’ll get it later.”
She gave a dramatic huff. “Fine, I’ll go. But you’ll have to watch your grandma until I get back.”
My smile was so warm, it could start a fire.
After Vickie left, I darted down the hallway and flung open my bedroom door. Franklin D. followed me to Oma’s bedroom. She was in the same position Vickie had left her, flat on her back. A snore rumbled in her chest. Franklin D. and I nodded at the same time. I leaned over my grandmother and inched back the sleeve of her blouse, as gently as if I were removing a bandage from a burn wound. Oma didn’t move, didn’t stop snoring.
When we were in the park, we’d used Franklin D.’s phone to look up Anne Frank’s tattoo number on the U.S. Holocaust site. The exact identification record hadn’t been preserved, but the site listed a range of possible numbers. Franklin D. started to write them down, but with me around, it was pointless. The facts lodged in my head, an endless reservoir for details that kept to themselves most of the time, but surfaced with random thoughts to remind me of their existence. For as long as I lived, I would never forget that Anne, Margot, and Edith Frank had been inked with numbers that fell between A-25060 to A-25271.
Now, with Oma’s arm exposed, we saw the tattoo. Only it wasn’t what we expected. An inch-thick black line covered whatever numbers had once existed. The name HERBERT floated above it.
With Vickie at the store, Franklin D. and I checked that the papers were still hidden in the library. The zipper was in the same position as I’d left it. As I closed the cushion back up, I twisted the tab until the teeth bent. Now it would take scissors to open it. Vickie was a snoop, but she wouldn’t destroy furniture to feed her curiosity.
We searched in the kitchen for the memoir. My best guess was that my grandmother had shed her identity after the war, shutting out her child, and maybe even her husband. I was more determined than ever to find the answers that she wouldn’t give when she was younger and that she couldn’t give now.
“I’m sure she put that tattoo over her camp numbers,” I told Franklin D. as I pushed a waffle iron to the side to search the cabinet. I had looked for the memoir there before, but I couldn’t rest until I double-checked every inch of the house.
“Don’t get ahead of yourself.” Franklin D. climbed up on a chair to look on top of the fridge.
I turned to face him. “What do you mean?”
“Granted, it’s a compelling idea, but it goes against historical fact.”
“You always said facts aren’t everything.”
“I think it’s too early to jump to conclusions.” He stepped off the chair and crouched down, peering into the bottom cupboard.
I kneeled beside him. “Anne was born in 1929, which would make her eighty-eight now. Remember when I suggested that Oma had been a kid, listening to Anne’s stories, and you said she looked too old now to have been that young? But she could be in her late eighties, right?”
“Doesn’t your mom know how old she is?”
“She said Oma pretended to be thirty for a really long time.”
Franklin D. laughed. “Sounds like her.”
“So?” I waited expectantly.
“Do you think she looks like Anne Frank?” he asked.
I shrugged. I still hadn’t found any of her photo albums, and it wasn’t easy seeing similarities between a teenager and an old lady. I told him this. “Don’t you think it’s possible that she might have done something to change her appearance anyway? If she was Anne, people would recognize her after the diary became a best seller.”
“What do you mean, like plastic surgery?” Franklin D. asked. “Did they even do that back then?”
“Actually, I read there was an increase after World War II.” I’d done my research, and I wanted Franklin D. to know every bit of it. “When the injured soldiers stopped coming in, the doctors targeted women to keep their practices going.” I saw the skepticism on his face. “What? You think this is crazy?”
Franklin D. shook his head. “Just playing devil’s advocate here.”
Well, don’t, I thought.
“If the average life expectancy of an inmate at Bergen-Belsen was only nine months,” he continued, “and in March, alone, 18,168 people died … it would take a miracle for a girl as sick as Anne Frank to have survived.”
It was both sweet—and frustrating—that he’d memorized facts to persuade me.
“Let’s keep looking for the memoir,” Franklin D. said when I didn’t respond. “Why don’t you check the pantry? Didn’t you say your mom found some stuff that Oma had put in there?”
I looked behind the boxes of cereal. Most were open and long expired. I started to chuck them, but Franklin D. stopped me. “Vickie has to find things exactly the way she left them.”
We moved into the living room next, even though we’d looked there many times before. I peered under the couch, hoping to find a manuscript obscured by dust. Franklin D. lifted the heavy drapes off the floor, searching for a hiding spot within the folds of velvet.
“It’s not in this room,” I said. I crossed the floral rug to the porcelain Siamese cat, staring haughtily at us from the fireplace hearth. I gave a cursory glance behind it and froze. Franklin D. came to my side. A tiny green dot glowed on the baby monitor. I turned it off. How long had it been there? And why?
We heard a click at the door. I barely had time to step back from the hearth when Vickie walked into the room, holding a gallon of milk. “I’m back. I’m going to go put this in the fridge.” Her eyes swung away from me, narrowing for a flash before her lips curved into a smile. “Hello, Franklin.”
D. I thought to myself. Franklin D.
“Hi, Vickie,” he said.
“Listen, since I have you both here, I want to extend the olive branch. I know it’s been a stressful time since Gretchen left. For all of us. Livvy, I know you’ve gone through a lot since moving here. As for me, it’s been hard to make ends meet on a caregiver’s salary, but the job market’s horrible right now.”
I wanted to see how Franklin D. was reacting to her sob story, but I didn’t dare take my eyes off Vickie’s face.
“Anyway, I won a gift certificate to a restaurant through this radio contest,” she continued. “It’s a good place, right downtown, but definitely a steak and potatoes joint. I’m thinking about going vegetarian, so I thought you might want to have it. It’s worth a hundred dollars. You can have a good meal for that. Oh, and I hear it’s a nice place for couples.” She winked at me, which made me want to bend over the settee and throw up. “It has to be used this Tuesday, though.”
“My shift starts at five,” I said.
She shrugged. “It won’t kill me to work a few extra hours. You can owe me the time.”
“Thanks,” Franklin D. said, his voice flat.
Vicky pulled the certificate out of her purse. She handed it to Franklin D.
“Yeah, thanks,” I repeated.
“You’re welcome. I just hope you know that when your mother gets back on Friday, the three of us will make a great team for your grandmother.”
When she left, Franklin D. switched off the monitor. “I think she’s been listening so she can catch you doing something irresponsible, like making out with me on your shift,” he whispered. “Then she can tell Mr. Laramie and get you out of the picture.”
“If she’s out to get me, then why would she give us her gift certificate?”
He grinned. “Who knows, but a free meal’s a free meal.”
I smiled uneasily.
“You know, I bet she’s worried about job stability with your mom coming back,” he mused. “You heard what she said about the three of you making a great team, right? She’s keeping her options open. If she can’t get rid of you, she wants to join you.”
I rolled my eyes. Fat chance of that.
I looked behind the porcelain cat again, verifying that the green light on the monitor was still off. “Could Vickie know about the diary pages we found?” I whispered. Between the reshelved books in the library and the hidden monitor, the possibility seemed more likely than ever. But it wasn’t as if she needed to send us away somewhere to look for the diary. I was at school eight hours a day. She had more than enough time to search the house.
I was glad that Franklin D. and I had discussed the wildest part of the theory at the park, away from Vickie’s spy setup. Then again, I couldn’t be sure how long the baby monitor had been recording our conversations. Even if Vickie only had part of the story, the fallout if she blabbed would be major. If Oma really was Anne Frank, a lot of people could be furious that she didn’t come forward. Everything she’d sacrificed for the good of society might come back to haunt us. And what about the revisionists that Franklin D. had mentioned that first day in debate class? Would they claim that Anne Frank’s “lie” about her death proved that the Jews had also lied about the Holocaust?
“Remember when I told Vickie that Oma had written the entries as a short story?”
Franklin D. nodded. “You said you weren’t sure she bought it.”
“Well, I’m thinking now would be a good time to reinforce it.”