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She froze, wanting nothing more than to run back to her room, crawl under the covers, and hide like a child during a thunderstorm. But this wasn’t a thunderstorm, and she was no longer a child. She had grown up more in these last weeks—heck, these last twenty-four hours—than she ever thought possible.
Turning, she found his gaze in the dark. He struggled against the blankets, propping himself up with muscle-thinned arms.
“Is everything okay? Is it GG?” he asked, and Abby watched as the knowing flashed in h
is eyes that he no longer needed to wake in the night and worry about her health. She no longer needed anything. She was no longer with them.
He settled himself against the pillow, as Abigail bit her lip, reigning in the despair threatening to detonate inside of her like a nuclear bomb. The way he struggled, his strangled voice, his expression cloaked in sadness and loss—everything about him was weak and vulnerable. Yet, she knew better. At one time, he had been a much different man. A monster.
The old man staring back at her in the dark was a brutal killer. He once reveled in the pain and suffering of others.
Abigail fisted her hands by her side, knowing she needed to confront him but not knowing if she could.
She pulled oxygen into her lungs and braced herself.
“Why?” she asked in a strangled voice.
He blinked back at her, confused, which made her angrier somehow. He had done this to them. He had kept this from them all these years. How could he?
She straightened, standing tall, prepared for a firing squad.
“Grandpa, I know. I know your secret.”
A flash of alarm glinted in his eyes. “I don’t know what you mean. I think you need to get back to sleep.”
“I don’t need sleep,” she said through gritted teeth, although that couldn’t be further from the truth. She hadn’t had a decent night’s sleep since GG died.
“I need to know why you did it. All of it. Actually, no.” She held up a trembling hand. “Forget that because nothing you say will be good enough. But maybe what I really need to know is... Are you sorry? Do you regret it? Is that why you kept it all from us? Is that why you ran? Or was it just the fear of being caught and finally held responsible?”
“Abby, I know how hard GG’s death hit you. It affected all—”
“This has nothing to do with GG!” Abby’s chest heaved. “I know. Don’t you get that? I know everything!” She stalked toward the bed and pointed a finger at him, allowing her anger and fear, to fuel her. “Stop pretending.”
“What do you know exactly?”
His lips pressed into a flat line, while the muscles in his jaw tightened below his sagging skin. The flicker of irritation in his eyes was so hot, so quick, she almost missed it, and in that moment, she saw Irma Mentz in all his cruelty and all his rage.
“I know you are not Yoel Gutman. I know about Auschwitz and how you were an SS. Officer there, not a Jew like you’ve fooled everyone into believing. I know about the property in Austria. How you’re a war criminal instead of a hero.” Her voice broke on the last word. Her shoulders slumped in defeat because in the end, they would all lose, and all her courage drained from her with the weight of this revelation. “I know what you...” Her voice trembled, as a single tear fell down her face. “You did terrible things,” she said, wiping the moisture from her eyes. Her voice shook. “Terrible, terrible things.”
Her grandfather tore his gaze from hers and stared out the window into the moonlight, looking twice his age, like he had lived a thousand lives in the last few minutes. His lip quivered, and sorrow illuminated his eyes when he turned back to her and whispered, “That was so long ago.”
All the wind escaped her lungs like a punch to the gut. Knowing the truth and hearing him admit to it were two very different things, and until the moment he confirmed what she already knew, a little seed of denial had stored itself inside her heart. But with that one admission, he plucked it out.
“Sometimes it feels like three lifetimes ago. What do you want me to say?” he asked.
That it wasn’t you. That there’s an explanation for all of this. It’s all just an elaborate joke.
“Say you regret it. Tell me you’ve spent your whole life living as Yoel trying to make up for what you did. Tell me you’d change your past if you could, and that you’ve done everything in your power to put it behind you. That you’ve lied to all of us because you can’t stand the man you were before. Because you wanted a second chance to make things right, to live with a moral compass. To make a difference, even if it was only within your own family. Tell me that,” she said, her voice trembling. “And I’ll forget all of this. I’ll try and put it behind me. I’ll try and keep your secret. But I need to believe this first.”
“Of course I think all of those things.” His eyes hardened on her face. “You think I’m proud of what I did?”
On shaking limbs, her grandfather shifted in bed and got to his feet, standing before her, his back hunched in the dark. His flannel pants and t-shirt hung on his thin frame.
“I hate what I did, who I was, and I’ve spent the last sixty-three years of my existence trying to be a man who made their family proud. I’ve devoted myself to my family and living in peace.”
He stepped toward her, sending her stomach spiraling, part of her afraid of his touch and part of her needing his embrace, doubly ill at the notion he frightened her. How did GG separate the man she suspected he was—the killer—from the man she married? How could she? Abby knew she would forever live with the task of reconciling the two.
He reached out to her, and when she flinched, he dropped his hand and his eyes filled with tears.
