I’m taking a lot of risks entering the house. I know that. A wall could collapse. But if they were going to fall, they already would have. Besides, for the past year, I have done nothing but take risks. I have lost so much. I just…
I just…
I just…
The entire time Anna and I were getting ready to escape France, I feared the Nazis would capture us before we got away. I never considered the possibility my sister was dead.
I walk around to the side of the house and go in through the huge gap in the wall. I step into what was once the drawing room, a pile of rubble in the centre burying what might have been the settee. Blue sky peers down at me from the hole in the second-floor roof.
In the corner of the room is a playpen. I cautiously walk over to it, careful not to trip on the debris or step on it wrong. A stuffed rabbit lies in the corner, forgotten, dusty. I lean over the railing and retrieve the toy.
I scan the area and spot two framed photos on the bookshelf against the other wall. My progress to it is slow as I navigate several obstacles that could have once been the roof or ceiling or furniture.
I pick up one of the photos and remember the day it was taken, several months prior to Charles proposing to me. Hazel, Charles, and I were grinning at the camera, genuinely happy. Carefree. We hadn’t known at the time that three weeks later, Hitler would invade Poland, and Britain and France would go on to declare war on Germany.
On the shelf beneath the one with the photos is a carved wooden box I recognize. It used to belong to my grandmother. If not for my damaged hand and Anna nestled in my arm, I would take the box with me.
I struggle for a moment to open the lid, my fingers clumsy and uncooperative. I finally manage to lift the catch, and I pry the lid open.
I search through the contents. Letters. Old photos. Several legal documents. I pull the documents out one by one and read them. Hazel and Charles’s marriage certificate. Their will. I put them aside, not caring to whom Hazel and Charles bequeathed their worldly goods. There are a few other documents that are also of little interest to me.
I unfold the last piece of paper. A birth certificate with Hazel’s and Charles’s names listed. The date of birth is April 22, 1944. Their daughter, Elizabeth, was only a month younger than Anna.
All those times I dreamt about Hazel and I having daughters the same age had been more real than I realized. If Hazel and Elizabeth had survived, Anna and Elizabeth would have grown up to be more like sisters than cousins.
The document shakes in my hand and a new round of tears sting my eyes.
I close them, and memories of the last time I saw Johann seep in. The pride on his face when he looked at his daughter. He and I had envisioned a life together one day. A family filled with love and joy. But that life was stolen from us. It was stolen from Hazel and Charles.
The cruel words I’ve heard over the past four months about Anna’s father being a Nazi repeat in my head. The ignorance and the hatred. Johann wasn’t German. He was an Austrian who hated Hitler and the Nazis and everything they stood for. He was only a German officer because he hoped it would be enough to protect his mother and deaf sister.
He risked everything to protect his daughter and me—like I’ll do everything to protect the person most precious to us. To protect her from the ignorance she will face because her mother is unwed…and the hatred that would follow if anyone were to discover her father was a German soldier.
“From now on,” I whisper on a sob, “you are no longer Anna. You’re Elizabeth Ashley Wright. And I am not your mother. I’m your aunt who loves you so very, very,verymuch.” I kiss her on the top of her head as if that makes my declaration official.
With the documents and photo in hand, we leave the house. The house littered with broken dreams and broken hearts.
56
JESSICA
September, Present Day
Maple Ridge
I checkmy phone for what must be the twentieth time in the past ten hours. Still no text from Troy. A cloud drifts over the sun, throwing me into shadow, cooling the temperature on my patio.
Why would he want to text you? You. Dumped. Him.
He left two days ago to convince Mason Dell to play in the festival with his old band. I haven’t heard if Troy was successful. I only know he hasn’t returned to Maple Ridge.
The festival is in twenty-two days. The organizers haven’t yet posted on the website that Pushing Limits had to cancel.
Bailey grows restless, a sign I need to take a break from my writing.
I’m still reeling from the news Iris wasn’t Anne’s great-aunt. She was her grandmother—and Anne wouldn’t have existed if Iris and Johann hadn’t fallen in love and if Iris hadn’t gotten pregnant. If she had survived the war without knowing and loving Johann, she might have eventually married someone else and had his child, but Anne wouldn’t have existed.
And this new life of mine that Anne and Troy helped make possible…it wouldn’t have happened. Who knows where I would’ve ended up after I was released from prison? It wouldn’t have been Maple Ridge. I didn’t know the town existed until Anne offered Iris’s home for me to stay in while I recovered.
