When Stars Light the Sky (The Women of Midtown #2)

Chapter 34

34

Although Inga enjoyed meeting the townspeople, she was more excited to get reacquainted with her aunt and cousins again. Gita let her hold the baby and give him a bottle of milk at lunch, which made Inga long for a baby of her own someday. The other children were amazingly well-behaved. When the three-year-old approached a basket of her uncle’s shoemaking tools, all it took was a single glower from Albrecht to turn the boy away.

Once again, it seemed everyone wanted to know when she and Benedict expected to have babies of their own. It didn’t feel right to evade the questions, so she simply replied that it would happen if God willed it.

Which was true. While she and Benedict still didn’t have a real marriage, someday they might. Benedict had been so extraordinarily decent to her lately, and she looked forward to their stolen hours together. He was handsome, educated, and honorable. She was proud of him. Even now, on one of his rare days away from work, he spent it touring a prisoner camp, trying to make the world a better place.

She spent the day soaking up old memories and new insights. Aunt Frieda taught her to make the family’s traditional recipe for a cold vegetable salad she hadn’t had since her mother died. They sliced mounds of pickled beets, radishes, and two types of cabbage. The only challenging part was mixing a dressing with the proper amounts of horseradish, salt, and vinegar. Her first taste of the salad was like stepping back in time. Her father had complained this salad was “peasant food.” Maybe so, but she loved it and wrote out the recipe so she could make it once she got home.

By six o’clock the sun had set, and they ate supper by the light of a few flames in the fireplace. Aunt Frieda apologized for how dim the room was.

“We’ve always been frugal with the kerosene, but ever since the war...”

“I understand,” said Inga. A row of kerosene lanterns sat unused on the top shelf in the kitchen. All types of fuel had been severely rationed throughout Germany. At least the Kleins were able to gather wood from the forest surrounding them to keep the fireplace burning.

The children stretched out on their pallets after dinner while Inga sat with the women at the table, talking softly long into the night. Johanna was twenty-four and would have married two years ago except that her fiancé was serving on the Eastern Front. The only reason Gerhard hadn’t been drafted was because he worked at the prisoner camp.

She wanted to stay up to welcome Benedict home, but the others were fighting back yawns. Inga gave an immense yawn of her own and asked to be excused, which the women instantly accepted.

It was pitch-dark and freezing in the master bedroom, although not so bad once she burrowed beneath the mound of blankets. Gita told her to expect Gerhard and Benedict back around nine o’clock, but Inga soon dozed off.

She snapped awake when the door quietly opened. Benedict’s tall silhouette was lit from behind by the flickering fire in the front room. It was impossible to see his expression or his mood.

“Are you awake?” he whispered.

“Yes,” she whispered back.

He closed the door. “Good. I’m freezing! Don’t get out of bed. I’m joining you in sixty seconds.”

The chill came off him in waves as he shucked his overcoat, jacket, and began unbuttoning his shirt. She ignored his command to stay in bed and hopped out to fumble through his suitcase, searching for his nightshirt.

“How was the camp?” she asked as she tossed him the shirt.

“Freezing as well,” he said as he pulled the nightshirt over his head. It was hard to tell if he was laughing or angry. He shivered as he removed his shoes and trousers and threw it all in an ungainly heap atop the suitcase, which was very unlike Benedict!

They raced to their respective sides of the bed and dove beneath the covers, laughing as she cradled his icy hands between hers, blowing on them.

“Oh, that feels good,” he said with a delicious sigh. They both giggled as another round of shivers overtook him. “Come over here,” he growled.

Not that she could help it, as the saggy bed naturally rolled them together. She rubbed his hands, his arms, and his back. At last he stopped shivering and relaxed against her.

“Tell me about the camp,” she prompted.

“It’s quite different from the civilian camps I’ve seen,” he said, sounding thoughtful and not the least bit sleepy. “It’s a mishmash of nationalities. Mostly Russian and French, but I came across a few Serbians and some British too. Oh, and a guy from Canada. It wasn’t as bad as I feared. I got a good look at the kitchen because Gerhard let me in. There’s not a lot of food to be had. The men are thin, although no one is starving.”

“How many prisoners are there?”

“Twelve thousand.”

She gasped.

“My biggest fear is what will happen if the war drags on much longer. The Red Cross is sending food, but it takes tons of it to feed that many men.”

He went on to describe the hastily erected long buildings that served as barracks. The men were put to work digging drainage ditches, so that in the spring the swamp outside the town could be drained to create more farmland.

“The work keeps them busy, and the men who participate get an extra ration of food. Most don’t mind the work since it’s not in a munitions factory making weapons that will be turned against their brothers. Enough of that, though. Tell me about what you did today.”

She snuggled deeper against him as she recounted playing with Gita’s baby and cooking old family recipes. Benedict asked questions and traced patterns along her back.

Was this what it would be like to be married to him? Cuddling together and talking about their day? She liked it, but living among her rustic family was stark proof of her humble roots. She didn’t really belong here anymore, and yet being a diplomat’s wife didn’t seem to fit her either.

Benedict adored her. She could tell from every furtive look, every time he protected or defended her. Even his teasing was a form of affection. It was obvious he wanted to keep this marriage, and her indecision was unfair to him.

It was time to decide if she had what it took to be a diplomat’s wife.

On Sunday morning, Inga walked alongside Benedict and the rest of their family to the tiny village church. This was where Inga attended as a child, and she wanted to share it with Benedict. The interior was plain, the walls whitewashed, and the altar no more than a bare table at the front. The only charm was the shape of the windows, which were ordinary clear glass but with a pointed arch at their tops.

“When I was little, this was what I thought all churches looked like,” she whispered to Benedict as they sank onto a pew. What a shock it was when they arrived in New York and sought shelter in the colossal church that glittered with stained-glass windows and gilded statues. Inga had now seen cathedrals in both New York and Berlin, yet this simple and intimate church had always been more meaningful to her. No grand art, no grand organ music, but just a gathering of believers who took an hour each week to center themselves on God and his eternal kingdom.

“Can we stay for a few minutes?” she asked Benedict after the service was over.

“Of course.”

Inga knelt down to pray, unexpectedly moved by a feeling of gratitude mingling with grief. The last time she’d been in this church, she was sitting between her parents. They were long gone, but suddenly they felt very close, as if the veil between this world and the next had become paper-thin.

“Oh, Mama,” she whispered as an ache bloomed inside, painful and joyous at the same time. She bowed her head and prayed for her parents, whose life in America hadn’t been easy. She prayed for the soldiers at Puchheim and for the millions of men on the front and in the trenches. She prayed for Johanna’s fiancé and for Benedict in his quest to keep America out of the war.

Benedict knelt beside her. What sort of things did he pray for? They had grown so close these past few months, and yet she didn’t know what went on deep in his soul.

“Ready?” he asked as she settled back into the pew.

She nodded. “Would you mind if we visit the graveyard now?” It was where Marie was buried. Her mother’s only reluctance over moving to America was leaving Marie behind, all alone in an untended grave.

Benedict held her hand as they walked to the burial grounds. There were a few grand headstones from centuries ago when Rosendorff had well-to-do families. Most of the weathered markers were modest headstones, but one was brand-new for a soldier killed at Verdun.

“I don’t know if I can find Marie,” she said. Patches of snow lingered in shady areas, and Marie never had a headstone, only a small rock with her initials and a simple cross.

Luckily, the heat on the stones melted the snow quickly, and she soon found the rock marker near the edge of the graveyard. Time had tilted it to a crooked angle, and Benedict helped her lift it from the ground to position the marker evenly. He used his handkerchief to clean the grime from the markings her father had chiseled so long ago.

A lump swelled in her throat. Poor Marie. She was only six when she died, and she never had a chance to see America or fall in love. Few people even remembered her.

Inga drew a ragged breath. “It doesn’t seem fair,” she said. “Why would God take such an innocent child, who never had a chance to become anything?”

“She’s in heaven now,” Benedict said, “where one day you and Marie will be together again. We’ll never know why she was taken while so young, but it was her death that prompted your parents to leave for America.”

Inga nodded.

“Could that be why God sent her?” Benedict asked. “Was her life and death part of a larger plan we can’t yet see or understand? You only met the Gerards because you were in that church the day after you arrived in America. Maybe God led you there for a reason.”

She didn’t know whether to be comforted or terrified at the thought. “You make it sound like we’re chess pieces.”

“Maybe,” Benedict said with a wry smile. “Would that be so bad? If God was using you and Marie so that you might somehow come into contact with Ambassador Gerard, then there was a reason. You have a purpose. We have a purpose. We’ll never know, but I would like to think we are doing God’s will. We can’t give up. Don’t despair.”

She impulsively reached up to hug him, feeling the pounding of his heart against her own. He was a pillar of strength, and she savored the safety and protection of his embrace. When it was time to leave, she pressed her hand over Marie’s stone to say farewell, knowing they’d meet again when all the heartache and despair of this fallen world was but a memory.

Rather than return to her uncle’s house, she took Benedict up the street so he could see the house where she once lived. Rosendorff had only one major street, and it seemed so much smaller than she remembered. In New York she lived in a building with five hundred women; the entire village of Rosendorff had less than half that many people.

Their steps slowed outside one of the larger houses. The spacious building of three stories with steep gables and dormer windows had once belonged to a wealthy landowner. Now it was shared by several families.

She pointed to a window on the second floor. “That’s where I was born,” she said. “I remember being so proud that I lived in the biggest house on the street. It didn’t matter that we shared it with four other families.”

Even so, the house seemed shabbier than in her memories. She never knew they were poor when she was little, but it was easy to see now.

“Would you like to go inside?” Benedict asked. “I would be happy to knock and inquire.”

She opened her mouth to say yes, then paused to sort through a few hazy memories of the house. There had been a little cuckoo clock in the front hall, and lavender sachets her mother used to cover the musty scent. The steady clink of her father’s hammer as he tacked heels onto shoes, and her mother singing her to sleep at night. The bed she shared with Marie.

“No,” she finally said. “My memories of this house are all good ones. I don’t want to taint them with what it has become.”

Seeing Rosendorff again had been marvelous, but she didn’t belong here anymore, and it was time to go.