Saving Amelie (26 page)

Amelie tugged his sleeve and pointed again to the book. Then she nestled her head once more against his chest.

“You feel the vibrations when I talk—that’s it.” He smiled. “I guess I can read anything, say anything, and that will be all right, as long as we point to the pictures.”

Amelie wriggled against him, and he knew she was content.

The book seemed to open a world of memory for her. As soon as he’d finished, she held up four fingers and proudly pointed to herself.

Jason held up all his fingers, peeled shoes and socks from his feet, and pointed to his toes, then his ears, eyes, nose, mouth, and one elbow. He pointed to himself, then mimicked astonishment. The Hausfrau laughed in spite of herself, and Amelie giggled in delight. She had a beautiful giggle, just a little off-key.

Barely an hour had passed when Jason stood and stretched. Amelie looked up at him, and he saw in her face a tentative fear that he was preparing to leave.

“Not on your life, kiddo,” he whispered, smiling. “I just needed you to know you can trust me.”

The Hausfrau walked in with a filled wash basket, linen fresh from the line. “Good. You’re leaving. My neighbors will return from the town soon. They must not see your automobile. Too many questions it would raise.”

“I’m taking her with me. Thank you for keeping her this while. I know it was dangerous for you and your family. If you’ll just pack her things—”

“Taking her? Where are you going? The man who brought her said nothing about her leaving. He has not yet paid me for this week. He promised to pay me in two weeks.”

“There’s been a change in plans.”
I should have known the urgent note was a middleman ruse for more money.

“You must not take her—not until I talk with him. Not until I have my money.”

Jason scanned the room as she spoke. He’d seen no telephone or telephone wires leading into the farmhouse, but he wasn’t about to get waylaid, to allow the woman to call for reinforcements. “Get her things. I’ll pay you.”

“I don’t know. . . .” She hesitated.

Jason shrugged. “Suit yourself. We’re leaving.” And he picked up Amelie as she was.

“Wait! Wait! I’ll search for what she came with—though it was very little.”

“Be quick.” Jason pulled out his wallet. He couldn’t risk leaving a trail of Amelie’s things for a blackmailer.

The woman’s eyes widened and she nodded, disappearing quickly up the stairs.

She returned in less than a minute with Amelie’s dress and shoes, her hair ribbons and underthings.

“Where’s her mother’s jewelry?”

“Jewelry? For a child? There was nothing.”

Jason knew she was lying. He’d seen Kristine finger something
at Amelie’s neck before walking her into the clinic. He also knew it was likely that Kristine had given her daughter something of her own. Jewelry would have been the ticket—a locket, a ring on a chain, something small and wearable. Jason pocketed his wallet. “You’ve taken your pay. Try to sell that on the black market and I’ll have your name and picture in every newspaper in Germany for kidnapping.”

“
Nein!
Wait! Wait!” she cried.

“You’re trying my patience, Frau.”

“Let me look again. There may be something. One moment!” And the woman ran back up the stairs.

Jason heard a drawer pulled open, a bit of rummaging.

The woman returned to the kitchen, a little more slowly, a little less certain. “Let me see the money,” she insisted, her palm clenched.

Jason pulled out his wallet again. “Let me see the jewelry.”

The woman opened her hand. A small silver locket nestled there—a filigreed heart.

“Open it.”

Inside was a photograph of Kristine.

Jason wished he could drive Amelie to Oberammergau himself. He wanted to, felt the need to protect her. Nobody had ever looked at him with such trust, such hope.

He confessed to himself that he also wanted to see Rachel, to know she was safe, to see if her blue eyes held any response to his concern for her. But a member of the foreign press, an American, traveling with a young German child—male or female—would only arouse suspicion. He’d be headlights beaming a trail to their hiding place.

He knew that Amelie was in good hands with Frau Bergstrom, that her connections in Germany and her ability to see the little girl safely to Oberammergau or out of the country far surpassed his own.
Still, he hated leaving Amelie with more strangers, especially the maid at the Bergstroms’ kitchen door.

But this time the sturdy woman placed a comforting hand on his arm. “We’ll take good care of her. You can trust Frau Bergstrom. Take the dress and hair ribbons and shoes with you and burn them. They must not be found—they’re too easy to identify. We’ll save the locket for her.” She began to pull the door closed. “Ach! I almost forgot. Frau Bergstrom said to give you this.” She shoved a scrap of paper in his hand and pushed him away. “Now go.”

Jason nodded miserably and pulled the door behind him. Amelie’s guttural sobs broke his heart.

That night, in the privacy of his room, he read the scrap of paper. An address, with the initials
D. B.
“Dietrich Bonhoeffer,” he whispered. “Somebody I need to know.”

Jason finished reading the Scripture passages Frau Bergstrom had marked for him, and he pored again over passages he’d marked in Bonhoeffer’s book. He closed both and turned off the light. It was easier to admit things in the dark—like the fact that he’d hoped to play the hero to Rachel and Amelie and still wasn’t entirely sure where his motives divided. He’d fallen hard for the little girl—a kid who’d started life with all strikes against her. He knew about that, had lived that in his own way when his dad, the town drunk, had beaten his mother silly before finally bailing on the family. Jason was six years old at the time, and all he could do was shove his kid sister under the bed, away from their dad’s boots. Jason had started out with high hopes to impress Rachel through helping Amelie—first for a story, but it was no time before he fell even harder for one older, shapely blonde.

Sacrificial? Hardly.
“Cheap grace.” He winced.
There’re no words more fitting.

Frau Bergstrom had him pegged. He’d even imagined the headline: “American Journalist Saves Deaf Child from Ruthless SS Father”—no
matter how long he must wait to print the story. And he would have waited—for Rachel’s sake, and Amelie’s. But the risks he took weren’t selfless.

What was it Granddad used to say? “You can fool some of the people some of the time—but you’d best not be fooling yourself, the biggest fool of all.”

Jason punched his pillow and rolled over. It was well past midnight. Truth had a way of shining a light too bright, too penetrating, for sleep.

29

L
EA
HADN
’
T
WORRIED
about Friederich’s missing letters for the first few days. After all, he’d told her that there might not be reliable post in war zones. So much depended on supply and the time and opportunity to write, the means to send or receive mail. He’d urged her not to worry.

But when October turned to November, and Germany had formally annexed western Poland, Danzig, and the Polish Corridor, she wondered. If things were going so well for the German military, why was there no mail?

Frau Rheinhardt, one of the village shopkeepers, received word that her husband, who’d been deployed at the same time as Friederich, had been wounded outside Warsaw and was recovering in a hospital near there. Widow Helmes received a formal letter stating that her son had been killed in the Polish campaign, that he had died bravely for the Führer. Still, Lea heard nothing.

When other women in the village received letters from their husbands and sweethearts detailing military victories, Lea’s heart constricted. It was all she could do to smile at her neighbors and wish them
guten Morgen
.

By the time a brisk knock came at Oma’s door late one Sunday evening, Lea’s heart had nearly failed her.

But it was simply a delivery. At first Lea argued with the man hefting the large wooden box. They’d ordered nothing, and if it was forgotten wood for Friederich’s carving shop, it should be delivered
there. She had no way to carry such a load. The driver ignored her and pushed past her into the house, talking loudly. He glanced anxiously into the gathering dark, shook his head, and urged her to sign. She refused without knowing what was being delivered.

“You are Frau Lea Hartman?”

“
Ja, ja,
certainly.”

“Then the package is for you.” He urged in a whisper, “Close the shutters before you open it, but open it quickly. This goes with the package.” He pulled a small envelope from his chest pocket and shoved it into her hand.

Lea blinked, and the man was gone. She closed the door.

“What is it?” Oma asked.

“I’ve no idea. Friederich said all his orders were in before he left—that I should not be bothered. Who delivers on Sunday night?” She circled the box, clutching the envelope. “The man said to close the shutters and open it quickly.” She tore open the small envelope and tipped it toward her palm. Out fell a small heart-shaped necklace. “A locket.”

“What does that mean?”

Lea shrugged just as the box gurgled. Both women stepped back.

“What is it?” Rachel whispered from the bedroom.

“We—we don’t know,” Oma answered. “It—it—”

“Get your hammer, Oma. We must pry off the lid. Rachel, close the shutters and black the windows.”

“Isn’t it early?”

“Do it,” Lea ordered.

Oma handed her the hammer, and Lea expertly pulled long nails from the perimeter of the lid. She pushed the top aside. A tiny whimper came from the box, and Oma’s mouth fell open.

“Rachel, I think you’d best come here.” Lea spoke in wonder at the child curled in blankets, hair matted into spikes, tearstained eyes wide and blinking in the sudden light.

Rachel stepped beside her sister. She gasped, speechless.

“Is this your Amelie?”

“No—I—I don’t know,” Rachel stammered. “This is a boy. I mean, I’ve never seen her—except her picture. But this . . . Jason said they cut her hair to make her look like a boy. So—”

Lea opened the locket in her palm. A woman’s smiling face looked up at her—a beautiful, fair-haired woman. She held the locket up for Rachel to see. “Do you know her?”

“Kristine!”

Lea waited only a moment longer for Rachel to reach for the child. When she didn’t, Lea lifted the little one from her nest of blankets. “I’ve surely never seen a boy this pretty!”

The child looked from one woman to the other, fear written in every feature.

“What an ordeal you’ve had, Amelie,” Lea crooned. “To think you’ve ridden all this long way in a box! You must be famished and thirsty.”

“She can’t hear.” Rachel sniffed and stepped back. “She’s soiled the blankets.”

“So would you, if you’d been locked in a box for who knows how many hours,” Lea retorted.

“Help me pull them up, Rachel,” Oma ordered. “We’ll set them to soak—see if there’s a note in the bottom.”

But there was nothing, and no return address.

“Your friend is certainly creative in his modes of transportation,” Lea observed.

“You don’t think he was here, do you? The deliveryman?” The lift in Rachel’s voice raised eyebrows from Lea and Oma.

“He wasn’t American,” Lea said. But seeing Rachel’s disappointment, she softened. “At least he sent the child.”

Rachel didn’t smile.

Oma filled a basin with water and pulled it by the stove. “A wash
is in order, I think. Thank heaven we have enough fuel to keep the stove going. We can heat it at least a little.”

“But a drink first, and maybe something to eat,” Lea said. “She must be hungry.”

Amelie’s eyes, round in wonder, searched the faces before her and landed on Lea’s.

Lea smiled gently, pressing a cup into the little girl’s hands. When Amelie had her fill, Lea pulled the child’s lederhosen off and pitied the rash between her legs and up their backs.

“She’s been in these boy’s clothes too long,” Oma clucked.

“Only to disguise her,” Rachel defended.

“
Ja
, well . . . Rachel, bring the chamber pot from the bedroom. We’ll see if she can go before her bath.”

Rachel’s shoulders squared, but she did as she was told.

Oma placed her hand on Lea’s arm and whispered, “Perhaps you should ask Rachel if she wants to bathe and feed the child.”

Lea stiffened. She didn’t want to ask Rachel, didn’t want to give the little one up. She saw no maternal inclination in her sister. But Oma was right. Amelie was Rachel’s responsibility, her child for all intents and purposes.

When Rachel returned with the pot, Lea set Amelie upon it.

“She’s a girl, all right,” Rachel observed.

“Do you want to bathe her,” Lea asked, “or shall I?”

Rachel’s eyes opened wide. “I’ve never done that.”

“Then it’s time to learn,” Oma encouraged. “We’ll help you.”

It was all Lea could do not to jump in. But she pulled an apple from the bin and began cutting it into slices. While Oma coached Rachel in pouring water into the basin and testing the heat, Lea fed Amelie thin slices and bigger smiles.