Chapter 57 The Prodigal Returns
THE PRODIGAL RETURNS
The woman who walked into the suite an hour later was unknown to me.
Of middle age, with dark hair and eyes of deepest brown, her cheekbones and her manner most decisive.
I offered tea, she accepted, and I prepared her cup while introducing the others.
Her name was Rachel Levy, and she had a curious accent I couldn’t place.
“I’ve come,” she said in German, one hand on the pocketbook in her lap, “because of your story. I wasn’t following it—I don’t use social media, nor do I watch television—but one of my patients told me about it.”
“Your patients,” I said, after translating for the others. “You’re a doctor, then.”
“Yes,” she said. “Like my father. Gerhardt Becker.”
She’d said as much to Ashleigh, but hearing it from her lips was making my heart race, and I put a hand over it. “Oh,” I said. “Dear Gerhardt. Is he still alive?”
“No, I’m afraid not. He died almost ten years ago; his health was never the best.”
“I’m very sorry. I’d have loved to see him again. And your aunt? Andrea?”
“She’s gone as well. For five years now. She became a professor of biology at the Weizmann Institute of Science.” Dr. Levy smiled. “She said that she wasn’t interested in poking about in people’s insides.”
“Where is that?” I asked. “The Institute?”
“In Israel. Where my grandfather moved with his children in 1948.”
“Oh, I’m glad,” I said. “He deserved a refuge.”
“Yes,” she said. “Absolutely.” Her mouth firm, and her voice as well. “But he told us about you, too. About you and your parents. He was very grateful always.”
There was such a lump in my throat! “And I was grateful to him,” I managed to say. “Did he also resume teaching? I believe he was a very good teacher.”
“Oh, yes,” Dr. Levy said. “He became rather eminent, in fact. He tried to write to you, you know, after the war, but the letter was returned. Obviously because you went to America.”
“One lost track of many people in those days,” I said. “There was a great deal of disruption. Tell me, did he marry again?”
“Yes. To a survivor.” Of the camps, she meant.
“I believe he felt some guilt. He was surrounded, you see, by those with the tattoo on their forearm. He became quite devout as a result. My father—Gerhardt—married as well, obviously, but my Aunt Andrea did not. She was a very reserved woman. Kind, but reserved.”
“She was that way when I knew her, too,” I said. “I sometimes wondered whether she resented me. It wouldn’t be a surprise; I’d lived in relative luxury, after all, while your family was living in poverty and terror.”
Dr. Levy frowned. “I don’t think that was why. I think she felt guilty, and perhaps a little awed. You were like an adult, she said, deciding what to do and where to go, while she could only follow behind.”
“So,” I said, “she resented me. I’ll accept that. And here you are in Dresden again. How did that come about?”
Dr. Levy smiled. “I met my second husband when he traveled to Israel for a conference. Like me, he wasn’t Jewish by birth.
You aren’t, you know, if your mother isn’t, which has always struck me as ironic.
He was practicing here, and I thought—why shouldn’t I go back?
Why shouldn’t I help make this a place where Jews can live at peace again?
So we married four years ago, and here I am. ”
“And how is it going?” I asked.
She shrugged. “Na ja, it’s very different. But then, you’ll know, as you went to the United States. But yes, I feel some pride in repopulating Germany with my Jewish self. We weren’t so easy to kill off after all.”
“No,” I said, liking her. “Hitler failed in that as with everything else.” I didn’t put a hand on her arm, but I wanted to.
“I’m very glad you came to see me, and so happy to hear the news of your family.
Your grandfather was a brave man. Very brave, and very kind.
A mensch.” I laughed a bit. “You see, I married a Jew also. But you know that. It’s odd to put so much of oneself out into the world. I keep forgetting I’ve done it.”
“Yes,” she said. “Grandfather told us often of your bravery, too. But I didn’t come merely for that.”
“No?” I asked, taking a sip of tea. “Tell me, then. Whatever questions I can answer, whatever I can do to help, I will.”
She smiled, though it was a bit forced. “When my Aunt Andrea became ill, I sat with her sometimes. We understood each other, she and I. We both kept most things inside. She charged me with a most important task, which so far I’ve been unable to fulfill.
She didn’t remember your married name, you see, or know where you’d gone. ”
My heart had somehow begun beating harder again. It was the intensity in her eyes. “And what was the task?” I’d forgotten to translate long ago, and I spared a thought for the others, then dismissed it.
Dr. Levy said, “I’m going to ask you to try to understand what you perhaps can’t. She was angry, Aunt Andrea.”
“At—at me?” I was puzzled. “Why?”
She shook her head. “Not then, but when she was young. When you were escaping the fire. She was angry, and confused, and hurt, and …” She stopped.
“I find I can understand a great deal nowadays,” I said. “That’s the one consolation for becoming so old. One has seen so much, you see, including one’s own imperfection. So please. Whatever it is, tell me.”
Dr. Levy didn’t, or not exactly. She opened the clasp on her pocketbook and took something out of it. Something in a black velvet bag. Something … round.
My hand was shaking when I took it, when I released the drawstring. I reached inside and pulled the thing out.
A circlet of the most beautiful mellow gold. Emeralds the size of robin’s eggs, surrounded by diamonds that flashed in the light.
It was the tiara.
I wore my black evening gown to the opera.
The enormous stone building glowed gold in the evening sun. Sebastian, dressed in a dinner jacket I hadn’t realized he possessed, had me on his arm, and I walked up the stone steps, one hand holding up my skirt, like a queen.
Inside, then, through passages with their columns of marble and their exquisitely painted ceilings, in the glow of chandeliers. Another corridor, and a door leading to a box. A man waiting outside, stout and bespectacled and wholly German.
“Your Highness,” he said, and took my hand gently in his. “I am Helmut Larsen, mayor of Dresden. Would you do me the honor of joining me in my box?”
And so I stepped into the Royal Box, with its red velvet draperies, and sat down in the light of a chandelier as big as a house, wearing my mother’s earrings and her tiara.
When you are a beautiful young lady, you will wear silk and pearls and sit in the royal box at the Semperoper.
The orchestra was tuning, and Alix had my hand in hers.
My hand with Joe’s ring on it, the one he’d given me after the colonel had granted us permission to marry.
A great emerald with a baguette diamond on either side, which must have cost him the earth, and also must have cost such a pang to the one who’d had to sell it.
I’ll look after it for you, I’d promised the unknown seller that day, and I’ll treasure it.
I know what it’s like to lose everything that’s most precious to you.
I hope you’ll be happy again, as happy as I am today.
And below it, the ring of simple gold that Joe had put on my finger on the day we married.
In the Registry Office, in my yellow dress with purple flowers and my ugly BDM shoes, with the Beckers and the Adelbergs and Frau Neumann and even Frau Lindemann in attendance, and some of Joe’s comrades, too.
When we put aside all that divided us and celebrated what united us.
Flowers and children and books and music—and, always, good bread. A love of life, and a life of love.
“L’chaim,” I whispered to Joe. He was gone, but he was so fully here in my heart.
To life.
If you enjoyed this story, read on with Heaven Forbid: Portland Devils Book 7, in which Marguerite and Joe take their adventure Stateside. Available January 1, 2026.