“Riki Chavez.” He extended his hand.
Elsie raised an eyebrow. “Reba’s Riki?”
Riki adjusted his stance.
“Yes,” said Reba.
He looked to her, as though he was about to ask a question, but then returned to Elsie and nodded.
“A pleasure to finally meet. Excuse my hands. I’ve been in the dough rolling.” Elsie wiped her palms on her apron and smoothed back her hair. “Your first time here, you need something special—how about a lebkuchen? This is gingerbread. Baked this morning.”
Riki nodded. “Sounds delicious, but Jane mentioned something about celebration cake.”
“Celebration cake? It is your birthday?”
Reba winced.
“No, uh …” Riki looked to Reba, then Jane.
“It has to do with what I was talking about,” said Jane. “The emergency, Mom.” She balled her fists and stood tall. “Sergio and I were married this morning. He got picked up yesterday for not renewing his visa, and Reba and Riki helped get him out. We’ve been seeing each other—romantically—for years, and I figured it was high time I stopped taking things for granted. I’m a forty-five-year-old woman, after all.” She reached a hand out to Sergio and inhaled deep, her breath spent.
Elsie stood completely still. Reba worried for her health.
“Missus Meriwether.” Sergio caught them all off guard. He stepped forward. “I know I am not what you hoped for your daughter, but I respect you very much. You have been kind to me since my first piece of bread, and I would be honored to call you my family. I love Jane. Please, we ask for your blessing.”
Jane bit her bottom lip. Reba gulped. There was an awkward pause that nobody dared interrupt. They waited for Elsie. Slowly, she lowered her head to her chest and sniffled.
“Mom,” Jane whispered.
Elsie looked up with a wide smile. “Thank Jesus! I thought you were lesbian.”
“What!” Jane put her fists on her hips.
Elsie dabbed away tears of joy. “Like you said, you are a forty-five-year-old, unmarried woman, always playing with the boys. Never took to the feminine side and then Miss Reba came.”
“Huh?” said Reba. “Me?”
Elsie continued, “She is so strong-minded and not deciding about … well, you know. I’m no dummkopf—that kind of thing has been going on for years. Look at Marlene Dietrich.” She put her hands on either side of Sergio’s face. “Bless you, bless you.” She kissed his cheeks.
“Ha!” Riki popped.
Jane frowned. “Mom, are you serious? All these years, I’ve been looking for the perfect man for you.”
“He is dead and gone.” She shrugged and threw up her hands. “If you were into women, it was none of my business as long as you were happy. But you did not seem happy—and I would like grandchildren!”
“Oh, Lord-dee-day.” Jane’s complexion broke out splotchy red.
“Don’t worry about your age, either. On the computer, I read about a woman having a baby at sixty years old. You are—what do they call it—a spring chicken compared to her.” Elsie bent down and pulled a tall black-and-white cake from the display case. “Ack ja, a celebration!” With a serrated knife, she cut through the vanilla icing swirls and chocolate shavings, perfectly partitioning each slice with its own cherry. “Come eat.” She placed the wedges on a stack of nearby tea saucers.
“A lesbian—really, Mom, you need to get off the Internet,” huffed Jane.
“And you have needed to get your head out of the dirt for years, but did I say anything?”
“Sand, Mom,” corrected Jane.
“Sand what?”
“It’s ‘head out of the sand.’ ”
“Exactly!” Elsie nodded. “I always thought you and Sergio would make a nice couple. It was the way he smiled at you.” She patted Jane’s cheek.
Jane gave an exasperated grin, then took her piece of cake and sat beside Sergio, feeding him with her fingers.
“One for you.” Elsie handed Riki a slice and started to cut another. Reba stopped her.
“I’ll share with Riki.” She turned to him. “I eat dairy now.”
“Really?” he said. “What else about you has changed since I’ve been away?”
“A lot of things needed to,” she said.
He took a fork from Elsie and gestured to a café table. “Care to tell?”
After their last bite of cake, Jane put Sergio on the till while she and Elsie worked double time in the kitchen. Riki and Reba sat at the table a long while, sharing their slice down to the last chocolate morsel as one by one the day’s patrons filtered in.
Chapter Thirty-three
GARMISCH, GERMANY
MAY 1, 1945
The 6:00 p.m. train came and went with neither Elsie nor Josef on it. Josef worried that Elsie hadn’t received the message he’d slipped under the door, so he trudged back to the bäckerei, keeping to the alleys. He tapped on the back entrance. No one answered. Voices echoed around the building, and he followed them to the front where a handful of enemy Amis lounged. He hid in the shadows, the setting sun slowly expanding the dark perimeters.
“Mighty kind of you, miss,” said a portly soldier with a fat bullet embedded in his helmet. “We’ve been living on hardtack, cigarettes, and chocolate for weeks. Good to get something fresh.” He shoved a roll in his mouth, pulled it apart with his teeth, and chewed. “You should meet our cook. Teach him a thing or two,” he muttered, then gulped. “Hey, Robby!”
A dark-haired man with a burning cigarette dangling from his lip turned.
“You need to learn to bake these—make some decent food for a change.”
“Give me ingredients and maybe I will,” Robby quipped.
“You got a pretty little town here,” said a slim, soft-spoken Ami who looked as Aryan as they came. “Climate reminds me of home. I’m from Gaylord, Michigan—you ever heard of it. North of Detroit?”
“Shut up, Sam. We ain’t supposed to be fraternizin’ or talkin’ to these people. Not countin’ she don’t understand a word you’re sayin’,” said another.
Josef craned his head around the corner to see to whom they were referring. There stood Elsie, a basket set on her cocked hip.
“Lady gave us food that don’t come out of a cold can. She deserves at least a thank you,” Sam mumbled and readjusted his rifle on his back. “Besides, everybody’s heard of Detroit.”
“Not if you’re German and don’t know the difference between hello and good-bye, never mind New York and Hollywood.” The portly trooper picked his teeth with a dirty thumbnail, then took another bite.
“Hollywood,” said Elsie. “Jean Harlow?” She put a hand on her waist, cocked her chin up, and recited in near perfect English, “ ‘You don’t know the tenth of it. You wouldn’t believe the things I’ve stood for. The first night I met the guy he stood me up for two hours. For what? A woman in Jer-zee had quad-ruplets, and it’s been that way ever since.’ ”
The group went silent then burst into laughter.
Josef leaned back against the cold building. A searing pain cleaved his skull. What was Elsie doing giving them bread? Talking to them—in a foreign tongue! He questioned whether it was another hallucination.
“Looks like you’re wrong, Potter,” said Robby He stubbed his cigarette out on the cobblestone and tucked the nub behind his ear. “She knows more than you think. That’s right, Jean Harlow.” He nodded. “But personally, I’d peg you for Lana Turner.”
Somebody whistled. Potter puffed up his chest and batted his eyelashes. The men laughed. Elsie laughed. Josef gripped the stone against his back, trying to keep the pounding in his head from knocking him over.