AllFreeNovel
Share Us
“I have no idea,” she confessed with a laugh.
“Well, neither do I, but a lot. So then I decided to talk to my sister, the one who loves all the genealogy stuff?”
“Eleanor.”
Simon smiled. “That’s right. And, on a desperate hunch, I asked her what she knew about Lily. Not much, as it turned out, and she never met her either, but she had a bunch of certificates in a file—my grandmother had kept them, a whole load of dusty papers that didn’t seem all that interesting. But one of them was a marriage certificate between Lily Mather and Matthaus Weiss, New York City, 1946.”
“They married,” Abby said, a grin spreading across her face. “They stayed together.”
“They must have emigrated, which is why I suppose I didn’t hear about them as a child. It’s too bad, considering I spent a year in Philadelphia, but I suppose my grandmother and my great-aunt must have been virtually estranged by then.”
“So you could have found out about Matthew all along.” Abby shook her head. “He was right there, waiting for you.”
“But I wouldn’t have been able to find out all the things we know now.”
And that she knew, as well. Abby hadn’t yet had a chance to tell Simon about her grandfather, or, more crucially, her dad. So many things had happened—some seventy years ago, some yesterday. So many important, life-changing things, and she was still trying to come to terms with all of it.
“I wouldn’t have connected Tom Reese to Matthew Lawson, for one,” Simon continued. “Isn’t it strange? This whole story, from one medal to another, Germany and back, has led us right back home. To family.”
And that was a good place to be. This morning, Abby and her father had eaten breakfast together—mostly in silence, but he’d poured her coffee and he’d asked her about her plans for the day. Small steps, those first halting, stumbling ones as they learned how to walk. How to be.
“So do you think they really had their happily-ever-after?” Abby asked, a bit wistfully. “Do you know if they had children? You’d have second cousins…”
“I do,” Simon said. “Three. I actually found Lily on Facebook. Look.” He typed a few words into the search bar and then pushed the laptop over so Abby could see the screen.
It was Lily Weiss’ Facebook page, now a memorial. She scrolled through, smiling a bit at the photos of a small, white-haired woman surrounded by grandchildren; another one of her with Matthew, both of them wrinkled and frail, but with big smiles.
“I can’t believe that’s actually them.”
“They lived in Albany,” Simon told her. “He worked as an accountant. She was a schoolteacher. And they were part of a charity that fostered Jewish children, refugees from the camps. They had over twenty live with them at various stages, over the years.”
“You found all this out on Facebook?”
“They link to a website.” He grinned. “They sound as if they were kind of incredible, if I’m honest. I wish I could have known them.”
“It’s a shame Lily and Sophie drifted so far apart.”
“It is. But knowing how high-strung my grandmother could be, and the distance…” He shrugged. “I can understand how it happens.”
Abby thought of Maggie, and nodded. Yes, it could happen all too easily.
“Lily died only two years ago, sadly,” Simon continued, and Abby let out a soft sound of distress, even though she supposed it should have been expected. “I didn’t know about it at the time. My grandmother must have, though—she had her marriage certificate, after all. She must have received some of Lily’s things after she’d died.”
“Wow.” Abby shook her head slowly. “It’s so much to take in. You could meet your second cousins! Where do they live?”
“All in America, as far as I can tell. One in New York, another one in Seattle. It’s so weird.” He let out a little laugh. “I have family I didn’t even know about.”
“I suppose I do too, if I consider Tom Reese’s family that we never met… those grandparents, that whole branch of my relatives.”
Simon raised his eyebrows. “You sound like you know something.”
“I do,” Abby said. “But I’m not sure how important it is, in the end.”
“Tell me?”
And so she did, sharing the secrets that no longer needed to be kept about Tom Reese’s cowardice, and Sophie’s tempestuous declaration, and how it had ended between them, with Sophie keeping Tom’s medal as a keepsake.
“Wow,” Simon said when she had finished. “Wow.”
