“Libeled Lady?” said Elsie.
“You sure are.” Robby winked.
Elsie smiled and handed him a roll.
He took it. “I could get written up as a Benedict Arnold for saying this to you but—to hell with it. Thank you. Danke schön.”
“Bitte schön,” she replied.
“Sure is an eager beaver. Ain’t like most of these German girls,” said Potter.
“Ee-ager bea-ver?” repeated Elsie.
“Ha!” Potter slapped Sam on the back, knocking his bread from his hand. “Fast learner.”
Sam picked it up and cleaned away the dirt on his sleeve. “Maybe we should give her something. Pay her for the meal?”
“Good thinking.” Robby dug in his side satchel and pulled out a rectangular bar. “Being a baker, she’s gotta like chocolate.” He handed it to Elsie.
She turned the bar round, then tore back the paper in strips. Her eyes lit up. “Schokolade!” She took a bite of the side. “Ist gut!”
“Now we’re talking,” said Robby. “What else you boys got?”
“Pack of cigs,” said Sam.
Robby took the pack and offered her one. “Smoke?”
She selected one of the thin fingers. Somebody threw Robby a lighter, and he lit the end for her. She sucked and blew out a curl of smoke with the ease and sophistication of a movie star.
Josef couldn’t believe his eyes. Elsie was a completely different woman. Even the way she stood, so confident and bold. Not at all the dainty girl who clung to him at the Weihnachten ball.
Suddenly, she set to mouse coughs, and the men came round the sputtering Elsie.
“You okay?” asked Sam.
Elsie took deep breaths. “O-key, o-key?” she repeated like a squawking blue jay, then handed the cigarette to Robby. “Nein.” She took another bite of the chocolate bar, then wrapped it back in the package and slipped it into her basket. “Thank you.”
Again, the men broke into laughter.
“She’s a trouper.” Potter scratched his belly and readjusted his gun over his shoulder.
“Wie ist your name?” asked Robby.
“Elsie Schmidt,” said Elsie. “Und sie?”
“Sergeant Robby Lee.” He bowed.
“Cook extraordinaire,” added Potter. “I’ll admit, given the time and rations, this boy can make a mean pork barbecue.”
“North Carolina, born and raised.” He took a drag from Elsie’s cigarette. “It’s in the blood. My momma ate nothing but barbecue the whole time she was pregnant with me. My baking is a little rusty, though.”
Elsie held a roll up high. “Brötchen.”
The two locked eyes, and even from the alley shadows, Josef felt the electricity between them. An ache shot through him. There was no ring on her hand. After everything he had done for her, how could she have so quickly abandoned him and their country? Traitor, he thought, and suddenly the voice that cut his mind in two was not his own but Herr Hochschild’s son. His muscles tightened from head to toe; his breath stopped. He closed his eyes, unable to fight the spasms and the tunneling of his vision.
Chapter Thirty-four
ARMED FORCES R&R CENTER
19 GERNACKERSTRASSE
GARMISCH, GERMANY
JUNE 26, 1945
“Add Kirschwasser to cream,” instructed Elsie in English. “Stir to stiff.”
Robby nodded. “Gotcha.” He whisked.
“More oomph!” She motioned with her arm for him to do it harder.
He picked up the pace. Beneath his olive-drab undershirt, his biceps moved in rhythm with the sweet filling, round and round the bowl. Elsie tried not to notice, not to imagine the familiar flesh beneath. So she focused on shaving chocolate with a carrot peeler.
She’d made schwarzwälder kirschtorte a thousand times, but never before had sifting flour and pitting cherries seemed so provocative. It was irrational and absurd—this was a normal kitchen with an oven and pots and pans. Nothing alluring or risqué about it, except that it was an American kitchen with Robby Lee in it.
“How’s that?” Robby held the whisk right side up. The cream remained a perfect whorl.
Elsie swiped a finger through the twist’s top curl and licked. “Gut. Taste.”
Instead of sampling the filling, he put a hand behind Elsie’s neck and kissed her sticky lips.
“Sure is,” he said.
Elsie elbowed him back to his bowl. “We have to bake a cake,” she told him in German.
“Ein kuchen. Jawohl, fräulein.” Robby laughed and saluted.
Elsie had been coming to the Armed Forces R&R Center since it opened. Within a week of occupation, the Americans turned the Nazi compound across town where she’d attended the Weihnachten ball into a G.I. playground. Soldiers across Europe came on vacation passes to ski, hike, play cards, and eat food that didn’t come in a C-ration. The town was swarmed with smiling men wanting a day or two out of the trenches.
When the war ended, her family all hoped to hear from Hazel. Elsie expected her to walk through the bakery doors any hour, but she didn’t; and with each passing day, their hearts grew more certain of what their minds refused to imagine. Rumors swirled of men, women, even whole families killed by foreign bullets or their own hand. The Lebensborn Program and all its members had disappeared overnight. Even those who spoke of it with high regard months prior now shook their heads and shrugged their shoulders. It infuriated Elsie, who saw it as another act of betrayal. She bit her tongue whenever Papa brought up Josef.
“What’s the news? Did you check the mail?” he’d ask daily, as if nothing had changed and the post was running routinely. “Josef might’ve sent word.”
She hadn’t heard from Josef since his scribbled note and imagined him on the shores of Argentina or Brazil, someplace far from Germany. He would not make good on his promise to find Hazel. He had no remaining authority. There was no German authority. Berlin had been obliterated. Whatever archives might’ve been were piles of dust.
She hadn’t heard from Frau Rattelmüller either since that icy day by the woodpile, before the Allied troops invaded. The Americans confiscated the frau’s home and made it into a makeshift officer’s quarters. At first, Elsie had feared for the old woman’s life and the lives of her hidden boarders, but the house had not been ransacked by the Gestapo as they had the bakery. Elsie had gone to check, peering through the open windows. There was not one crumb on the floor. Not one cat hair. The pillows on the parlor couch sat comfortably in their usual places; the Hummel figurines aligned just so. The house had been purposely abandoned.
Elsie hoped Frau Rattelmüller had joined her Jewish friends after all, and it brought her great peace to imagine Cecile might be in the care of such kindness. It would have brought Tobias solace, too, she thought. She missed him profoundly. Her room felt as if its heart had been extracted, void of the quiet beating that had become a natural rhythm. Her consolation was that despite the thorough searches of the town and forests, the Americans had not reported the body of a small boy. He got away. She had no doubt of that and only hoped that one day she might hear from him again.
Julius never spoke of Tobias or Kremer’s attack. He never spoke of those grim April days at all. Something in him had changed. He was still a brooding boy, but the affectation of his former self had greatly diminished. He did as he was told without argument and seemed to have a natural aptitude with numbers. He helped Mutti count the money in the till and was excellent at gauging the dough segments to make an exact baker’s dozen. They were all glad to see his interests expanding; his toy soldiers were piled in a milk pail, abandoned.