Saving Amelie (40 page)

“But it’s Christmas, and I must give this to Herr Hartman.” The boy handed the package up to Lea. “You can open it, Frau Hartman. He’d want you to. And then you can tell him what it is.”

Lea could not make herself smile into the boy’s hopeful face. She sat in the rocker by the stove and took the package, pulled the knotted string bow, and folded back the brown paper. Surely it was the Christkind that Heinrich had taken weeks ago. It would be good to have it back. It was Friederich’s best work, and he’d never carve another. She was prepared to kiss the forehead of Heinrich Helphman.

But when the gift was revealed, it was only a block of wood. Another cruel joke, and that stung Lea most of all. Tears sprang to her eyes.

Before she could tell him the pain he’d inflicted, Heinrich rushed ahead. “I took Herr Hartman’s Christkind. It was so beautiful, and I think it’s doing its work—at least I hope it is.”

“Where is it, Heinrich?” Lea demanded. “Where is the Christkind?”

“I can’t tell you that,” Heinrich retorted, as if speaking to a child too simple to comprehend. “But Herr Hartman can carve another from this wood—it’s fine wood! I worked five weeks for Herr Hochbaum at the woodcarving school—sweeping up and oiling the tools. It’s a fine piece,” he repeated. “A precious piece, he told me—the best that he had.”

Lea shook her head, too hurt, too angry to speak. To be given a block of dead wood instead of the beautiful Christ child Friederich had carved—the babe with the face they’d hoped would look like their own—was like being given a shriveled corpse in place of her husband, a husk instead of the smiling, charming man with the strength of an ox. She was sick to death of taking whatever was left over—whatever anyone threw away once they’d taken the best at her expense.

She stood and Heinrich’s gift dropped to the floor with a loud thud.

Staring up into Lea’s eyes, the boy looked stricken.

Lea felt her face flame in fury and shame. But she lifted her hand to strike just as Oma stepped through the doorway.

“Lea!” Oma ordered.

Lea trembled with a violence of her own making. Withholding the slap she wanted to give the world, never mind Heinrich, wreaked havoc on her nerves. Oma stroked her granddaughter’s shoulders, her arms, from behind, and pulled her hand from the air above Heinrich’s head.

“Why is it you want the Christkind, Heinrich? Tell us that. Help us understand,” Oma insisted.

Now the boy’s eyes filled, and he shook his head. “I can’t tell. It might not come true if I tell.” He stooped to pick up the wood, setting the block on the rocker by the stove. “It’s not beautiful yet, but I know Herr Hartman will make it so. He’s the best woodcarver in Oberammergau—I tell everyone.” He looked hopeful, but uncertain. “Don’t be sad, Frau Hartman. It won’t be long. You’ll see.”

But Lea turned her head into Oma’s shoulder and wept.

“I think you’d best bundle up and go now, Heinrich,” Oma whispered. “You’ll want to get home before your mother finds you’ve gone.”

“Yes, Frau Breisner.” The little boy, worry lines creasing his forehead, pulled black boots over his shoes.

Oma continued to cradle her granddaughter against her shoulder.

Heinrich had just buttoned his coat and was pulling his cap down over his ears when he picked up the handkerchief doll from beneath the kitchen table and swiped his finger over the chocolate stain. “Is this yours, Frau Hartman?” He handed it to Lea, hope of redemption written in his features.

“No,” Lea gasped, not claiming the doll. She hadn’t the reserves to invent anything, had not one more cunning bone in her body.

The little boy frowned in confusion. “Do you have a little girl?”

Lea did her best to claim her senses, and shook her head.

“Mother made my sister one of these before she was born.” Heinrich looked very sad. “But she wasn’t able to play with it. She was too little when they took her away.” He set the doll on the chair, lovingly spreading its embroidery-and-lace pinafore across its skirt. Soberly, he looked up. “Did they take your little girl away too?”

Lea moaned and tore from the room.

Rachel held Amelie still in the attic, silently berating herself for not scooping up the child’s new doll before they climbed into the cupboard and up through the wall.
A stupid, costly mistake! My only real job is to mind Amelie, and I failed again! Please, please don’t let Oma suffer because of my stupidity!

Rivka leaned close to the stovepipe, where it was easy to hear everything said below. As she did, Rachel saw the necklace Jason had given her dangle from beneath her blouse—a small diamond cut into the center of a gold oval locket. Rachel closed her eyes and swallowed the burning coal in her throat. Not once had Rivka spoken of any
feelings for Jason, though she’d caught the girl’s glazed eyes mooning over something, or someone, far away from time to time.
She’s a teen! What is Jason Young thinking, leading on a girl of that age! What does he see in her that he doesn’t see in me?

When Heinrich Helphman had gone at last, Rachel released a long sigh, her neck and shoulders aching from the tension, and dropped her forehead on Amelie’s crown.

It was the longest, most tense Christmas Day in Oma’s memory. Both her granddaughters looked very close to tears, one as fractious as the other. Rivka looked as if she’d stepped into a world in which she didn’t belong—and guilty to boot, poor child. Little Amelie wandered sleepily from adult to adult, peering into faces, holding her handkerchief dolly closely, as if it might tell her which of her frowning grown-ups would be willing to play.

By the time supper was finished and the dishes washed and put away, Oma was ready to lay her weary head upon her pillow. But despite the terrible ordeal of Heinrich Helphman and his twenty questions, Lea was determined that they should light the tree in Friederich’s room and sing the carols.

It was almost morbid, gathering and singing round the half-dead man in the glowing light of the flickering candles.
If only he would die before he wears the very life from her. At least she could grieve and eventually get past grieving. But this living death goes on and on!
Oma felt she should regret, repent of such a thought. But she could not.

Still, she could deny her dear Lea nothing, not this year, not this day. They all dressed warmly for bed and gathered chairs in Lea and Friederich’s room, round the tree. Lea lit the carefully spaced candles. Oma cuddled Amelie in her lap, let the little girl lean her ear to her chest to feel the vibrations as they sang. They all sang carols together, and then Lea sang alone—Friederich’s favorite since
childhood, “O Holy Night.” She sang with pitch clear as handbells and the voice of an angel.

Somewhere during the second verse, Oma reached for the handkerchief in her pocket to wipe the tears of Lea’s song from her weathered face. Amelie slipped from her lap. Oma let the child go.

Friederich dreamed he neared heaven, the voices of angels attending his journey. The farther he walked, the nearer and brighter the lights grew. Angelic beings, heads wreathed in Bavarian braids and robed white in Christ’s righteousness, sang in harmony. The weight on his chest lightened, returned, then lightened again. He recognized Oma, glad she was there to meet him, though aware his Lea must be terribly lonely without either of them.

And then the child he and Lea had daily prayed for came to meet him, to run tiny fingers across his lips and pat his face. She looked so much like the face of the Christkind he’d carved, the babe he’d prayed for as he’d worked. He wondered that prayers were answered finally, fully, in heaven.

The braided angels turned—nearly identical, so like Lea. He’d always believed angels must look like his angel wife.

The child made a happy gasp, pointing to him, welcoming him, and Friederich smiled wearily. He was so very tired. It would be good to rest from his long journey.

“Friederich! Friederich!” The angels surrounded him, chorused his name. He felt pulled in two directions—one toward rest and peace, and one toward the voices that grew more insistent.

His body began to prickle—just a little, but something new. He willed his eyes to open, not believing that they would. Faintly, out of focus, two angel faces hovered over him—two Leas. He couldn’t reach with his arms, but he reached, as far and high as he could, with his eyes, his heart. “Lea,” he whispered. “My Lea.”

45

W
HEN
F
RIEDERICH
had focused on Lea’s face . . . Rachel could barely breathe. He was a shell of a man, his body broken, one eye lost, but what she saw in his expression was explosive and beautiful and rare. She envied Lea. She wanted what Friederich gave her sister in that moment—not from Friederich, but Rachel wanted . . . oh, how she wanted. She couldn’t articulate it and couldn’t deny it. She’d slipped from the room, pulling a willing but frightened Amelie with her. Rivka, stunned into silence, followed without a word.

Rachel tucked Amelie into her makeshift bed and climbed into her own pallet, pulled close alongside Amelie’s. For the first time she let the little girl snuggle against her. The kitchen stovepipe, coming up through the attic floor, warmed the room just enough to sleep. Still, Rachel shivered. Amelie’s breathing evened before ten minutes passed.

Rachel pulled the eiderdown over her head, willing the day to be done. She was sleeping on a pallet in a Bavarian attic with a deaf child and a Jewish teenager. She’d been raised—designed and groomed—to become the elite of society, racially and genetically superior to the masses. The philosophy had been drilled into her since childhood. And yet she felt the least of all.

Oma and Lea and Friederich got along fine without her, had lived a lifetime without her. Amelie would thrive under Lea’s care. Even Rivka had grown closer to Oma in some ways than Rachel had, than she probably ever could. Oma and Lea appreciated and served those
who worked with willing hearts and spirits, but they didn’t seem to understand that Rachel was not raised to serve.

Changing that was less about participating in physical labor than about comprehending the levels of evolution within the human species. She could never explain that to them. She no longer understood it herself. And for the first time, Rachel wondered if it was true. Could that be one more lie from her father’s lips? And if it was, how would she ever rid her mind, her very marrow, of its deception?

Rachel rolled over, drying silent tears on the sleeve of her nightdress.

“Rachel?” Rivka whispered behind her.

Rachel wanted to ignore the girl. The last thing she wanted to add to this unholy mixture was the adolescent pleas of a girl who’d stolen the one man whose nearness did raise the hairs on her arms—a man she’d finally admitted she never really had in the first place, and one her father had seen as “the lowest of the low,” simply because of his dogged determination to bring the truth to light.

“Rachel?” Rivka whispered again, this time more urgently.

“What is it?” Rachel tried to sound as if she’d been asleep and wasn’t happy to be woken.

“I must tell you something.”

“In the morning. I’m tired. Go to sleep, Rivka.”