Page 9 of With a Vengeance
“Well, shit,” she says.
Judd Dodge gives her a sarcastic nod. “Nice to see you, too, Sal.”
In that moment, Sally realizes all her attempts at transformation were for nothing. Even though she lost thirty pounds, elevated her style, and went from mousy brunette to cool blond, there are still people who see her for who she truly is.
Rotten to the core.
Five
In Car 13,Edith Gerhardt leaves Room B and is stopped short by what she sees in the thin strip of corridor. There, directly opposite her door, is a wide window darkened by the nighttime landscape passing outside. And in that darkness, she sees her own grim reflection.
Gray dress under a gray coat. Gray hat atop gray hair. Even Edith’s skin is an ashen shade, her pink lipstick its only spot of color.
I look like a ghost,she thinks with alarm, suddenly recalling her grandmother’s tales of the grand estate that had once been in the family but was lost long before Edith was born. According to her grandmother, it had been haunted by a spirit known as Grauer Geist.
Gray Ghost.
Family lore was that his presence foretold impending doom, making Edith even more perturbed by her spectral appearance. Is she the doomed one or merely the messenger? She suspects it’s a little of both, considering how everyone she had ever loved is now dead. Yet she keeps on living, a fact she acknowledges with a slight nod to her ghostly reflection, which nods back in unison.
Edith continues to the end of the car, feeling slightly foolish forinteracting with her reflection. Almost as foolish as she feels for being on the train in the first place. She shouldn’t be here, she thinks. No good will come of it.
The invitation had almost gone into the trash. Edith had no idea who sent it, after all. Nor did she have any desire to travel, even just for a day or so. Born in Bonn, raised in Munich, and widowed in Berlin, she immigrated to the United States in 1936. That was enough travel, as far as she was concerned. But when she saw the note on the back of the invitation, Edith understood that this was a journey she had to take.
How much will you pay to keep your secret?
The answer, Edith has already decided, is as much as necessary, even though she abhors spending money. She’d grown up poor and remained that way through her marriage and beyond, scraping by right up until she reached America. Now sixty-nine and wealthy beyond her wildest dreams, Edith treats money as something delicate that must be preserved. She lives frugally, spending little, giving less. Her biggest expense is tithing to her church. Ten percent, as the Bible instructs.
Wasting money, she thinks, is a distinctly American trait. And despite living in the United States for almost twenty years, she remains resolutely German. For example, her outfit for the journey—gray wool dress, matching coat and pillbox hat, sensible shoes—is the same one she wears to church each Sunday. If it’s good enough for God, she thinks, it’s good enough for a train trip.
Especially one she fears will end up costing her so much.
While Edith doesn’t know who’s behind this obvious case of blackmail, she has her suspicions. As for what she’s being blackmailed about, well, it could be one of two things—and both have to do with her life in Germany.
Edith hadn’t wanted to leave her homeland. Unlike many German émigrés, she didn’t flee to escape Hitler’s rise. No, she left because her husband died, as had the rest of her family. Faced with building a new life without them, Edith realized it was better to do it elsewhere. She was pragmatic that way. She knew that Hitler sought too much, too fast. His ambition would ultimately lead to Germany’s ruin, especially once the United States got involved. America, she understood, would be the inevitable victor, and so she moved there.
Edith loved Germany, yes, but she loved survival even more.
Survive she did. She even thrived, quickly getting a job as a housekeeper for a rich Philadelphia family. Her employers treated her well, but with indifference. She was just a worker to them. One of many. Their children, however, were a different story. They adored her, and she adored them right back. They were, in many ways, the children she never got to have, and she showered them with affection.
Still, Edith understood it wouldn’t last. She never let emotion cloud her thinking, especially as Hitler’s quest for world domination started playing out exactly as she predicted. She knew a moment would come in which she’d have to choose between her new home and her old one.
The moment to finally pick a side came in 1942.
Edith did—and is now rich because of it.
But that doesn’t keep her from expecting to see Grauer Geist at any moment. If family history is any indication, his appearance is inevitable. That’s why Edith keeps giving fleeting glances to the windows as she moves through the train. Satisfied that it’s her ghostlike reflection keeping pace with her and not a different, more dangerous specter, she pushes into the first-class lounge.
Three other people are there. Two men—one in a garish green suit made for someone half his age and half his weight, the otherin more appropriate black—and a woman in ivory. Despite their clashing styles, Edith assumes they know each other. They stand close together next to the piano, whispering, oblivious to her presence.
“Edith Gerhardt,” she announces in a German accent all her years in America have done nothing to tame. “I am expected.”
The three others stop whispering and look her way. To Edith’s surprise, she recognizes all of them. They do the same with her. And if Judd Dodge, Herb Pulaski, and Sally Lawrence aren’t happy to see her, Edith is even more displeased to see them.
Because there, right in front of her, is another ghost.
But it’s not Grauer Geist coming to haunt her.
It’s her past.
