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“I suppose not,” he sighed. “I should call Calvin, though.”
“No,” I blurted. Jürgen looked at me, surprised. “Lizzie is just so hateful, Jürgen. You have no idea.” I struggled to explain just how distressing her visit the previous day was. It had been such a short encounter—just a few minutes—but her hatredfor us was evident, and I still couldn’t figure out how to take her odd comment that I’d assumed was about Avril. “I don’t want to inflame things with her.”
“But the photos, my love,” Jürgen protested. “Telling Calvin what happened might be your only chance to get them back.”
I covered my face with my hands. Jürgen moved to sit beside me, his arm gently resting over my shoulders.
“I promise I won’t make this worse. I just know how much those photos mean to you, and we can’t go on like this. Calvin was in a meeting when I left, but I’ll go back in to work and—”
“No!” I shivered, shaking my head. “Please. Can you take the day off? I don’t want to be alone.” His arm around my shoulders tensed, and I turned to press my face against his neck. “I’ve dealt with plenty of anxious moments on my own over the years. I want things to be different now. I want things to be betterhere. I want you and me to ride out the hard things together.”
“Okay,” Jürgen murmured, without hesitation. “I’ll call in and let the team know I’m needed at home.”
That night, we went out and picked up hamburgers for dinner, and then all four of us cuddled up on the sofa to watch television—Felix at one end, then me, then Gisela, then Jürgen at the opposite end of the sofa, which was as close as Felix could allow him.
“Progress?” Jürgen mouthed, nodding toward Felix over Gisela’s head. He flashed me a lopsided smile.
“You’re clutching at straws if you thinkthisis a win,” I whispered back, but I was teasing him. The last few days had been awful, but even in the midst of that, I found myself feeling grateful. Itwassome progress that Felix was finally sitting on the sofa with Jürgen.
Once the children were in bed, Jürgen checked every latch on every window, and then he checked the doors—making sure everything was locked, even though we’d already been through this exercise before we went to pick up dinner. I followed him around,double-double-checking, just for my own peace of mind. At the front windows, I scanned the street for signs of trouble.
“Come to bed, my love,” Jürgen said, taking my hand. “I’ll hold you until you fall asleep.”
As we climbed into bed, I turned automatically to the table beside me to look for the photos. When I remembered they were gone, my heart ached.
It was bad enough that our house had been violated—but the objects taken were so personal, and those images had no value to anyone other than me.
I wondered if whoever took them—be it Lizzie Miller’s brother or a stranger—had any idea what they’d really stolen in taking the simple stack of paper that represented my last mementos of Adele and Georg and even Laura, and of course, Mayim.
Jürgen and I destroyed every trace of her from our lives, just as the Gestapo told us to—but that one photo came back to me at the time I needed it most. Was it some kind of penance that even my photo of her kept slipping from my grasp?
