She stood by the television’s flickering black-and-white images and thought, This is where I slept and played dress-up with Hazel. She took a step: Where I celebrated my seventeenth birthday with Tobias. Another: Where Major Kremer stood. And another: Where Mutti told me her secrets. This place held so many moments she could never forget and yet, nothing was as it had been.
Moritz set her luggage beside a sofa where the door to her bedroom once arched. He went to Mutti and Papa’s door. “Lillian?” He knocked.
The door cracked open, and Lillian’s face appeared.
“She is here,” said Moritz.
“Tante Elsie?” Lillian whispered and slipped out the opening. “Tante!” She embraced Elsie as though they had lived side by side for all their days. Her shoulders trembled. “I am so grateful to have you with us.”
“There, there,” soothed Elsie. “How is she?”
“No better, but you made it in time.” Lillian wiped the tears away with the back of her hand.
Lillian had sent a handful of snapshots over the years, but this was the first time Elsie had seen her niece in the flesh. The resemblance to Hazel was so extraordinary that the old stitches of Elsie’s mended heart pulled at their seams. Her eyes stung at the vision of her sister reborn.
“You look so much like your mother.” She gripped Lillian—ensuring she was made of matter and not spirit.
Lillian turned her chin down. “I am but a shadow of her.”
“Nein,” said Elsie. “You are the brightest parts.” She wrapped her arms around Lillian again to hide her budding tears.
Lillian took Elsie’s hand in hers. “Come. They’ve been waiting.”
Inside Mutti’s room, the curtains were drawn tight. A small lamp on the night table cast a pink glow over the bed.
“Elsie is here,” announced Lillian.
Mutti’s delicate fingers moved over the edelweiss-embroidered coverlet. “Elsie?”
Elsie’s knees turned to jelly with each step until she could no longer stand. She knelt by the bedside.
“Dear, let me look at you.” Mutti cupped her chin and leaned forward from the shadows.
Her lips were sallow, her face gaunt, and her eyes so dark and tired that it pained Elsie to hold their gaze; but Mutti’s touch was tender, and the smell of her buttery skin, ever the same.
“My beautiful daughter,” she said.
Elsie turned her lips into her palm and kissed it.
“Isn’t she, Max?”
Papa sat on the opposite side of the bed with bowed head.
“Ja, Luana. My girls … the most beautiful in Germany.” He swallowed hard and laced his fingers tight.
“How is my granddaughter Jane?” asked Mutti.
“She is well.” Elsie’s voice broke.
“Strong and healthy?”
Elsie nodded. “She eats me out of lebkuchen.”
Mutti gave a satisfied “Hmm.” Then she said, “I am sorry to have made you leave her and Albert.”
“They are fine. I wanted to come. So did Al, but we were afraid that …” She bit her lip and looked to Papa.
He cleared his throat and stood, his stature so much smaller than in Elsie’s memory. “I will bring us soup. Lillian, help me please.”
Lillian obeyed and followed him out.
Alone, Mutti stroked Elsie’s hair. “I like it down,” she said. “It reminds me of when you and Hazel were young, and I would comb your hair before bed, remember?”
“I have to iron it to get it this way,” Elsie sniffled. “Otherwise it is wavy and crimped. Hazel’s hair was like silk, so straight and fine.”
“You have your papa’s hair. When it makes up its mind to stand up in the morning, you will not get it to lie back down the rest of the day. Vitality.” She grinned. “Hazel had my hair and look at it now”—she softly touched her temple—“limp and lifeless. All I can do is braid back and hide the bald spots.”
Though she tried to keep it steady, Elsie’s breath came in ragged snippets.
“That was not funny. I know, I know,” Mutti comforted, and she opened the bedsheet a ways. “Come, lie beside me.”
Elsie slipped out of her matching blue pumps and spooned Mutti. Her body was angular, reedy thin, and colder than it should’ve been beneath the wool comforter. Elsie hugged herself to her mother and rubbed stocking feet against Mutti’s bare ones.
“I’ve missed my girls,” Mutti whispered and kissed Elsie’s head.
Against her chest, Elsie counted each heartbeat and prayed for the next, and the next, and the next. She could contain her grief no longer.
“I’m sorry I stayed away so long,” said Elsie.
“Hush, dear. I never blamed you for doing what you felt was right and best. I have always admired that in you. I wish I had a cup of your courage. Perhaps things would have been different for our family.”
“You are the strongest woman I’ve ever known.”
“Doch, look in the mirror, and you will see the strongest Schmidt.” She leaned in close to Elsie’s ear. “And those are your papa’s words.”
Elsie hugged her tight and wished the moment could be suspended for all eternity.
“Before I go,” said Mutti, “there are things I need you to know.” She lifted Elsie’s chin so their gazes met. “Your papa loves you deeply. Make amends with him. He sees how wrong he was about Albert and the war. His pride kept him from admitting it, but he knows.”
Sorrow filled up Elsie’s chest and spilled out. “Mutti, I was wrong too. I lied because I thought I was protecting you. There was so much I should have told you … so much.”
“The past is a black, heavy thing. It will quietly smother our spirits if we let it. You must make peace with it and move forward. Promise me?”
Elsie nodded.
“The second …” Mutti breathed deeply. Her rib bones bowed in Elsie’s embrace. “You must know that your sister, Hazel, is dead, as is her son Friedhelm.”
“For certain?”
“Inside, we’ve both known for many years, ja?” She gave a sad smile of comfort. “I’ve kept in touch with Ovidia. In her search for her missing son, she came upon the Lebensborn birth and death register for the Steinhöring women.” Mutti inhaled sharply, pressed her fingers to an unseen lower pain, then continued. “Hazel’s twin boy. He was listed as disabled and part of something called Operation T4.” She blinked hard. “A Nazi euthanasia program. Common practice, apparently.”
A chilly draft swept through the room. Elsie rubbed her feet against Mutti’s.
“The document also listed the deaths of Program mothers.”
The lamplight thinned. A wave of rain pelted the roof. Below, men’s voices carried through the floorboards.
“How?” asked Elsie.
“Suicide,” Mutti whispered.
“Oh, Hazel.” Elsie squeezed her eyes tight.
“I never told your papa. We each carry our own coffer of secrets. Some are best buried with us in the grave. They do no good for the living.” She gripped Elsie’s hand. “There is an unmarked headstone in our family plot at St. Sebastian’s Cemetery. Will you see that Hazel’s name is rightfully engraved on it?”
Elsie nodded.
“I will see her soon. That is my consolation. God is just and merciful in all things.”
Elsie prayed Mutti was right. There was so much she wanted justice for and so much more for which she wanted mercy.
“Last,” said Mutti, “is a secret I am ashamed to say I kept, though it did not belong to me.”
They both had their secrets, some shared, some not, but Elsie could not imagine whose Mutti had to confess now.