Safe Haven (30 page)

“Hi,” he said as she mounted the steps and started toward the front door.

“Hello.” The greeting was guarded and filled with suspicion. She hesitated but did not move away from the door.

“If you’re not too tired, I thought we might take a walk. It’s a beautiful spring night.”

She dropped her shoulder bag onto one of the wicker chairs and perched on the arm. “This is new,” she said.

“Yeah, well, sometimes I can act like a spoiled brat—just ask my brother and sister. I realized I had gone a little overboard, but then time went by. You were busy. I had extra duty at the shelter, and—”

“If this is your idea of an apology, you are really bad at it.”

“What if I said I miss you—miss what we used to have?”

“And what was that exactly?”

“Friendship?”

She shrugged. “More like two lost souls thrown together.”

“Maybe. Seems like we helped each other, though. Back last fall it seemed like we might find our way together.”

“Friends,” she murmured as if it were a foreign word to her.

“For starters.”

She let this linger in the silence. “How is Ilse?”

“Stronger than I gave her credit for.”

“I’m glad to hear that.”

“So can we go for that walk?”

“Okay.”

They covered three blocks before either spoke, but by the second block he had taken her hand and she had not pulled away.

“Ilse gave me your sister’s mailing address in England to give to Buch,” she said finally.

“She told me she had done that. At first I didn’t understand why, but then she reminded me that Beth’s husband deserved to know what had happened to his parents regardless of what they had done. I really couldn’t argue the point.”

“That was … right after you and I quarreled. She saw me at the fort one day and handed me the information, but she has refused to speak with me since. She is always cordial when we happen to pass on the grounds or in town, but she does not stop to chat.”

“She believes that Buch can either tell her what happened to her sister, Marta, and the children or that he knows how to lead her to someone who can help her. Has he said anything to you?”

“We … I haven’t spoken with him.”

“About my aunt?”

“About anything. I am no longer interviewing Detlef Buch.”

Theo tightened his hold on her hand. “Why not?”

“Because you were right. I was walking a dangerous line, and my contact with him has hurt my position with those living at the fort.” She walked with her eyes on the ground, not looking at him. “Remember Gordon Langford—the man who ruined my career last summer?”

“Yeah.”

“He’s now serving on the Immigration Committee for the House. He was here on official business and asked me to meet him for dinner.”

“And did you?”

“Yes. It was the same night I ran into Detlef Buch at the library—talk about coincidences. Gordon had just asked me to see what I could find out about a high-ranking Nazi official who was supposedly living in a nearby POW camp. That night when I met Buch, I knew I had found him.”

“And?”

“And nothing,” she snapped. “You know the rest.”

“What about Langford?”

“What about him? He writes and calls. He thinks Detlef is the answer for resurrecting his career.”

“As did you once,” Theo gently reminded her.

“Yeah, well, somewhere along the way I seem to have grown a conscience. Sorry I can’t say the same for Gordon.”

“I won’t pretend not to be relieved. This is why I wanted you—and my aunt—to be careful how you interacted with Detlef Buch. I don’t doubt for a moment that, like your congressman, his first priority is his own future.”

“He is hardly
my
congressman.” They walked for another block in silence before she asked, “What exactly did he tell Ilse—about her sister?”

“Nothing, but he did recognize her brother-in-law’s name and identified him as a double agent who had been captured and hung.”

Suzanne shuddered. “And he knew nothing of Marta?”

“He said that he believed she had been arrested. If he knew anything more, he was not giving that information away. Perhaps it is something he sees as information he might trade.”

“For what? Ilse has no power.”

“I don’t know, but this is a desperate man. He is not a simple soldier of the Reich who will likely be set free and returned to Germany once the war ends. Detlef Buch is a war criminal who will be expected to pay for his crimes.”

“And what if he, too, was playing both sides?”

“Is that what he told you?”

“Not in so many words, but there are hints in what he has said that perhaps he tried to warn others as he did your uncle and that he made copies of the records he was charged with keeping and smuggled them from the office.”

“So he says. Suddenly you of such little faith are willing to take this man at his word?”

“Let’s leave my faith out of this.” She pulled her hand free of his.

“Okay, sorry. That wasn’t fair. It’s just that during this time we’ve been … apart, it occurred to me that I know so little about you.” This was why he had waited on the porch for her—not to talk about Detlef Buch—or Gordon Langford.

“What do you want to know?”

A thousand questions flooded his brain and finally melded into one. “Who are you when you are not the journalist? Who were you before you were a journalist?”

She did not answer him for a long moment. He waited, giving her the time she clearly needed to form her response. Did she even know herself who she was without the label of “reporter”?

“You are really asking what happened. Where did I lose my way?”

“All right. Start there.”

She sucked in a breath and slowly blew it out between pursed lips. “When I was a teenager,” she began, “my sister—Natalie—was in a car accident that left her confined to a wheelchair and that damaged her brain to the point that she could barely communicate. The thing was that her mind still worked—she just appeared to be retarded. …”

“Natalie was younger?”

“Yes. By the time she entered high school, I was already a senior. She used to tease me about how glad she was that I would finally be going off to college and she could finally have the bedroom we had shared all her life to herself.”

Theo saw the wistful smile that flickered across her lips and disappeared. “What happened?”

“The summer after I graduated, Natalie went off to summer camp. We had both attended this camp from the time we were nine, and that summer, Natalie was going to be a junior counselor. She was so very excited. I was supposed to be there as well as a senior counselor, but I got the opportunity to take a writing course at the college in our town and decided to do that instead.”

“The car accident happened while she was at camp?”

Suzanne nodded. “She got involved with some boy from the nearby town and started sneaking out after curfew to meet him. He was older, and that night he was drinking and …” Her voice trailed off. “My parents were out when the call came. I was the one who answered the phone.”

“Oh honey, that must have been awful for you.” He reached out to touch her, but she held up her hand, preventing his comfort.

“The next week was a complete nightmare. Natalie had to be transferred to a hospital miles away. She was barely clinging to life for days. My parents never left her side, sleeping next to her bed. I put off starting college for that fall semester so I could work in my father’s store in the small town where we lived. Our neighbors and friends were incredible. But that boy—and his parents …”

“He must have been injured as well.”

She turned on him, her eyes blazing. “Not a scratch and do not defend him. He almost killed—he actually did kill her—and not once did he call or write or come to see her. His father was some bigwig in that town, and the boy was a huge football star who had a scholarship to a major university. The whole thing was covered up. I don’t think he got so much as a ticket.”

They had circled the area and were again approaching the boardinghouse. The windows were all dark, and the porch was in shadow lit dimly by the streetlamp. “Let’s go sit,” he suggested.

They sat side by side on the swing. He put his arm around her shoulders and pulled her close. “You don’t have to tell me the rest,” he said, afraid that remembering what had happened was causing her pain. He was sorry that he had pushed her.

“No. I want you to understand.” She settled herself more securely in the curve of his arm. “My parents tried to press charges but were told there was some evidence that in fact Natalie had been driving the car.”

“That’s ridiculous.”

“Yeah, well, one day my dad received an envelope and inside was a check from the boy’s father for a great deal of money. Blood money, Dad called it, and he tore up the check. After that I transferred to a smaller college so I could live at home and help out at the store. Mom took in sewing and mending so she could stay home with Natalie, and Dad took a second job as a night watchman. I don’t know how we managed, but we did. And gradually Natalie improved.”

Theo felt her stiffen as the memory of what came next hit her. “It’s okay. Stop if you don’t want to remember.”

“Natalie improved so much that she was able to go back to school, and in spite of her appearance—the lolling head she could not hold up, the drooling that required constant attention, and the inability to speak—she made her mark. She was able to move herself through the halls in her wheelchair and to write answers to questions on a small slate she carried everywhere. When she was a sophomore, she was elected to the homecoming court.”

“But?” Theo’s mouth had gone dry.

“I wasn’t at the dance and my parents could never really talk about it, but apparently everything was going great. And then Natalie saw the boy she’d been with that night. He had come as the date for one of the senior girls. Natalie had always defended him—she had been so taken with him.”

“How could she …”

“At night in the room we now shared so I would be there if she needed me, I would see her staring at the photograph that had been taken of the two of them before the accident. One night I couldn’t stand it, and I grabbed it and ripped it in half. We had a terrible fight—me screaming at her and her furiously writing notes back to me. The last note shut me up—it said: ‘He is a good person, and I still love him.’ And then she started to cry, and so did I. So I taped the photo back together and put it back on her mirror.”

“So then he shows up at the dance.”

“Yeah. Natalie made a beeline for him as soon as she saw him. My mom said her smile was beaming. He was getting punch for his date. Natalie grabbed at his arm and he spilled the punch on his shirt. He said something to Natalie and walked away. After that Natalie told my parents she wanted to go home.”

Theo waited. It was her decision whether or not she would—could—tell the rest. He would not push her.

In a voice dead and emotionless she continued.” She didn’t speak to any of us for days. She wouldn’t eat, and she refused to go to school or leave the house. She put the photo away in her diary, and I thought that at last she had moved on. She even agreed to let Dad carry her downstairs and put her in her wheelchair so she could eat breakfast. The meeting for worship was to be at our house that morning. After breakfast Natalie said she wanted to sit outside during the meeting—she wanted to sit in the grove of birch trees and sketch. We thought this was a good sign,” she whispered. She shuddered, and he pulled her closer.

“That’s enough for tonight, Suzanne.”

“No. Let me finish. The meeting for worship was followed by a meeting with a concern for business, so for two hours we were gathered in that circle. And all the while outside in the birch grove, Natalie was bleeding to death. She had taken a knife from the kitchen while she was at breakfast and once she was alone …”

“But I thought—”

“So did we. When I opened her diary after the funeral I found that photograph and along with it her last entry. It read, ‘He didn’t even know me. His last words to me were, Get away from me, you freak.’ We were all sitting there—praying and waiting for guidance. Where was the guidance for one of us to go and check on my sister? That boy took my sister’s life—not once but twice—and he didn’t care. How is that possible, Theo? For a person to feel no remorse at all? Where is the Light in that?”

She said nothing more for several minutes, and he allowed the silence, thinking that he had heard enough to have a better understanding of why she had abandoned her faith.

“That was the first of it,” she said, her voice raspy with emotion. “That next summer I went back to the camp as a counselor. I hoped to find that boy—to confront him with what he had done to my sister—to our family. My parents got divorced after Natalie’s death, and a few years later my dad died of a massive heart attack.”

“Did you confront the boy?”

“No. His family had moved to California. I finished out the summer and then went back to school. A few years later, Mom married again. He’s a nice guy and she seems happy. They travel a lot. By that time the war had started—Hitler and—”

She sat up suddenly, pulling free of Theo’s embrace. “Is it really so difficult to understand how I might find it hard to believe that people are born with good inside? Some people simply don’t stop to think about how their actions might impact others and some—like that boy who decided to drink and then drive my sister—are just pure evil. And the more I got out into the world and began covering stories like those—stories where if just one person had dared to stand up and speak out and refuse to take part …”

“Kids think they are invincible. They do stupid things.” Theo knew that words he meant as consoling only served to inflame her fury.

“That’s an excuse? So the lie is that we are not born with good in us after all? You want to let the children and teenagers off the hook? Okay, then answer me this: How do you explain what happened to any one of the adults cooped up in the fort? They are as innocent as Natalie was, and yet their lives were destroyed by people—grown-ups who should know better—who are malevolent to their very core.” She clenched her fists and pounded them against her knees. “There is no Light in such monsters, not so much as a flicker.” She pushed the swing into a jarring motion. “After Natalie died, I finally understood that we are all nothing more than the accident of our birth. Sitting in silence and waiting for some divine inner spirit is meaningless.”