Reba set the table. Steno pad, pen, recorder. While she waited, she tried to imagine the young girl from the photograph over sixty years later.
Then, through the door frame came Elsie. Her snowy hair was bobbed short, the sides pinned back with brown bobby pins. She was cozy plump through the hips but narrow in the waist and wore a contemporary pair of khaki pants with a cream blouse rolled up at the sleeves. Even at seventy-nine, she was stylish and determined in her gait. She carried a plate with two slices of cinnamon raisin bread and set it in the middle of the table.
“Hallo.” She stuck out her hand. “I am Elsie Meriwether.”
Reba shook. “Reba Adams.”
Elsie’s grip was firm but warm. “Nice to meet you. I apologize for not being able to speak the last time you visited.” She spoke clearly despite the German clip.
Elsie sat and nudged the plate closer to Reba. “Jane says you do not eat milk, so I made this without. It is good.”
Reba didn’t want to start the interview on the wrong foot. “Thank you.” She picked up a slice and ate. “Yes,” she mumbled. “It’s very tasty.” And she wasn’t lying.
“Gut,” said Elsie. She broke off a piece and popped it in her mouth. “So you would like to talk to me about being old.”
Reba swallowed too fast and choked a little. “No, no. I’m doing a Christmas story.” She composed herself. “A cultural profile on holiday celebrations around town.”
“Germans celebrate like everyone else. Christmas Eve we eat and drink. Christmas Day we do it again. I think this is how the Mexicans and Americans do as well, correct?” Elsie arched her eyebrow at Reba, challenging her.
Reba tapped her pen on the steno. It wasn’t exactly a quotable statement. At least not for the angle she wanted. “Do you mind if I turn this on?” she asked and thumbed the recorder button.
Elsie shrugged. “As long as you promise not to put it on the Internet. I’m not so old that I have not seen the horse manure they put there. Nothing but naked bosoms and foul language. I was looking for sticky buns, and you would not believe what came onto my computer screen.”
Reba coughed.
“In all my years, I have never seen such a thing.”
“Mom,” said Jane from behind the register. “Reba doesn’t want to hear about that.”
“I won’t mention what happened when I tried to find a chocolate jelly-roll recipe.”
Reba turned her face to the steno pad to hide her smile.
“Mom!”
“I’m just telling Missus Adams, I don’t want anything to do with such things.”
Reba cleared her throat. “I promise. No Internet. And, please, call me Reba.”
Reba pushed the button on the recorder. It was time to get answers. “So you’re from Garmisch, Germany, correct? Jane talked to me a little about that photograph over there.” Reba pointed across the room. “The one of you on Christmas Eve.”
Elsie broke off a raisin-laden corner of the bread. “That old thing. I’m surprised the sun has not faded it to nothing. Probably best if so. That was a lifetime ago. I left Germany soon after.”
“Did you ever go back?” asked Reba. “Didn’t you miss home?”
Elsie met her gaze and held it. “People often miss things that don’t exist—miss things that were but are not anymore. So there or here, I’d still miss home because my home is gone.”
“Do you consider the United States your new home?”
“Doch! Texas is where I am, where my daughter is and my husband is buried, but it is not home. I won’t find home again—not on this earth. That is the truth.”
Reba inhaled deep and licked her lips. She needed a new approach. This was not coming easily. “Could you tell me about a typical Christmas in Germany?” She decided to be direct, cut and dry, get the information.
“I could not.” Elsie popped another piece and chewed. “I grew up during the wars, so there were never typical Christmases.”
“Okay.” Reba drew a circle on her pad—a bull’s-eye she needed to hit. “How about that Christmas.” She nodded to the photo. “Can you just tell me about that one?”
Elsie’s gaze moved past Reba to the wall and the photograph hanging slightly askew on its nail.
Chapter Seven
NAZI WEIHNACHTEN PARTY
19 GERNACKERSTRASSE
GARMISCH, GERMANY
DECEMBER 24, 1944
Back at the banquet table, Elsie trembled beside Josef.
“Here, eat something hot. It will help,” he offered.
Though they served her favorite cinnamon reisbrei, she could barely swallow the steamy spoonfuls. They burned her tongue tasteless and left her chest stone cold.
Josef didn’t ask her about Kremer in the alley, and she was glad. She couldn’t have spoken of it, even though she wanted to—wanted to stand, point her finger, and scream out his offense. But he was an admired Gestapo officer, and she, a baker’s daughter. With Hazel in the Lebensborn Program and her family’s resources dependent on Nazi patronage, she had responsibilities beyond her honor. Her silence protected them all. For now.
The waiters cleared the dessert plates. The musicians played a jazzy number, and couples rose from their seats to take the dance floor.
“Please, I’d like to go home,” Elsie whispered. She collected her gloves from the back of her chair and slid them over her newly ringed finger. The diamond and rubies bulged the once perfect silhouette.
Josef pulled her chin gently toward him and inspected her face. She averted her eyes. He took her hand and kissed her knuckles. “Of course, Fräulein Schmidt.”
Minutes later, he escorted her out of the banquet hall, down the silver corridor, and into the black car, humming warm and waiting. A short drive across town and they parked outside the bäckerei. A light flickered in the upper window. Mutti waiting up, no doubt.
Elsie and Josef hadn’t spoken since leaving the table. Made paranoid by Kremer’s slander and still in shock, she worried Josef might be angry with her or blame her for the disgraceful incident with his colleague. She played with the buttons on her gloves, loose on their threads.
“I’m sorry to have made you leave early.” It was all she could say without her panic mounting. She had to remain calm. Exhibiting too much emotion might cause him to suspect Kremer’s espionage accusations to be true.
“I’m not one for late parties anyhow,” Josef said and looked away from her, out the window. “I apologize for what happened. I hope you were not hurt.”
Elsie fingered her lip. It had stopped bleeding but had begun to swell. “Nein.” She swallowed hard.
Josef exhaled, but his attention remained fixed in the opposite direction. “Kremer is a good officer. He had too much to drink tonight. Unacceptable behavior.” He cleared his throat. “His marriage is one of convenience, not love. So sometimes he goes searching for it in places he oughtn’t.”
Elsie nodded, her body rigid as a nutcracker soldier.
He drew in a long breath before facing her. “You never gave me an answer, Elsie.”
Then it was she who looked away, to the bakery front door; she wished she were already safe inside with the yeast rolls sleepily rising. She had to tell him how she felt. She wasn’t Mutti. It wasn’t enough for her to simply be a good wife, and she bristled at the thought of Kremer’s “marriage of convenience.” She wanted much more. She wanted the effervescence she felt when Myrna Loy asked William Powell to marry her in Libeled Lady. “To the moon,” Powell had said right before he kissed Loy. That’s what Elsie wanted—the moon.
Emptied, the snow clouds hung low, shrouding Zugspitze Mountain and the stars above and ensconcing the valley in a globe of endless winter.