Chapter 33
Oma
Hildy
Ican’t even describe how much I love my new office, and the space I have. There is a stack of student essays that sits to my left, my new desktop, the screen opened to my dissertation chapter outline in front of me, and a mug of tea I keep forgetting to drink cooling slowly beside it.
If I can get through half this stack and tighten the argument in section three before Friday when Lucy and Lenzin get home, the weekend is ours. No grading. No writing. Just the three of us driving to Boston for the game.
That’s the deal I made with myself. Work now. Family and yes, hockey later.
I’m halfway through a paragraph that insists on wandering when the knock comes. Three taps. Firm but not impatient.
I glance at the clock automatically. Too early for Lucy and Lenzin, and they wouldn’t be knocking anyway. I push back from the desk and head to the door, already running through possibilities—delivery, wrong house, someone from the neighborhood.
When I open the door, I stop.
A woman I recognize from research, Lenzin’s grandmother, stands on the porch.
She’s smaller than I expected, though that word feels wrong the second it forms.
Her coat is buttoned neatly to the throat, silver hair pulled back, eyes steady and direct.
“Good afternoon,” she says, her voice calm, lightly accented, and completely unsurprised to see me.
“Hello,” I manage, stepping aside. “Please—come in.”
She enters with the quiet certainty of someone who doesn’t need to be guided through other people’s homes. Her gaze moves once across the living room, taking everything in as she walks to the couch and sits.
“Working?” She asks, looking at my laptop, which sits where I left it last night while editing.
“Yes,” I say, “Trying to get ahead before the weekend.”
She nods once. “Boston.”
It takes me a second to realize she knows.
“Yes,” I say, smiling a little. “The first game we’ll watch with Lenzin.”
“Good,” she says softly.
She looks at a notebook where Lucy has been practicing writing her name.
“You teach her to think,” she says.
“I try.”
Her gaze lifts to mine again. “That is harder than teaching them to repeat.”
I laugh quietly. “You’re not wrong.”
For a moment, neither of us speaks.
She folds her hands in her lap, “Please sit for a moment.”
I sit across from her. “I don’t think Lenzin knew you were in the States.”
“Neither do his parents,” she replies and looks at a photo of the team on the mantel. “You watch him play.”
“Every chance I get.”
She studies me for a moment.
“When he was a boy,” she says slowly, “I watched him play.”
I lean back slightly, curious where this is going.
“He took a hit once,” she continues, “hard enough that everyone thought he would stay down.”
I smile. That part hasn’t changed.
“But he didn’t,” she says. “He stood up, finished the shift, and then checked to see if the smaller boy on his line was hurt.”
I can picture it perfectly. “That sounds like him.”
She nods. “My brother was like that.”
The words are simple, but something in the way she says them makes the room feel suddenly quieter.
“He stayed,” she says after a moment. “Not because he believed he was brave. Because someone had to remain where the doors were that people may need access to.”
I don’t interrupt.
“My mother used to say that strength is not the loudest man in the room,” she adds. “It is the one who does not move when everyone else is afraid.”
Her eyes settle on me again.
“You see that in him,” she says.
“Yes,” I say softly.
She nods once, satisfied. “That is why I worried when he was small. My children were raising their son very gently.”
I smile a little. “That doesn’t sound like the worst thing.”
“No,” she says. “But my mother believed comfort makes people forget how quickly the world can change.”
I think about Lucy, about the way we’re planning this weekend as if the world will always make room for small joys like road trips and arena lights. “And you didn’t want him to forget.”
“I wanted him ready,” she replies.
“For what?”
Her gaze drifts toward the window for a moment before returning. “For responsibility,” she says simply.
The word sits between us for a moment, heavy in the quiet of the room.
I wait.
Something about the way she said it makes it clear the sentence isn’t finished yet.
“My brother was named Elias,” she says finally.
I straighten a little in my chair.
“He was the oldest of us. Then Marta. Then me.”
Her voice doesn’t change, but the room feels different now, like a door just opened somewhere behind the walls.
“Our parents had land,” she continues. “And enough money to understand what was happening before most people allowed themselves to believe it.”
I don’t interrupt.
“They sent my sister and me away,” she says.
“Where?” I ask quietly.
“Switzerland.”
That makes immediate sense. Close. Neutral. The sort of place people with means could send children if they saw the storm coming early enough.
“Marta and I went to live with cousins outside Zürich,” she continues. “A small house near the lake. Clean air. Quiet streets. People who asked very few questions.”
Her hands remain folded in her lap.
“My brother refused to go.”
I don’t need to ask why.
“He was eighteen,” she says. “Old enough to think he could help.” The corner of her mouth lifts faintly. “He was not wrong.”
The air in my chest tightens.
“He stayed with our parents,” she continues. “And with the people who worked the estate.”
“What happened to them?” I ask.
Her eyes return to mine. “They did what they could.”
The simplicity of the sentence makes it land harder than anything dramatic would.
“The land was large,” she says. “There were places to hide people. Old barns. Root cellars. Rooms that had been built long before my grandfather’s time.
” She pauses. “If anyone had known what they were doing,” she says quietly, “none of them would have survived.” A chill runs along my spine.
“Not my brother. Not the workers who helped. Not the families they hid.”
I think about the property records I’d seen weeks ago while tracing something completely unrelated. The way the acreage spread farther than I expected, parcels connected in quiet ways that didn’t make much sense on paper.
“And after the war?” I ask softly.
She exhales slowly.
“After the war,” she says, “Germany did not know what to do with itself.” Her gaze drops briefly to the table. “To the outside world, our family is Christian.”
Something about the phrasing makes my pulse jump. “To the outside world,” I repeat.
She nods once. “My mother was born Jewish.”
The sentence is delivered as calmly as everything else she’s said today, but it lands like a stone dropped into still water, and like everything I found was verified.
“Our grandmother before her as well,” she continues. “The name changed when it became necessary. The faith did not.”
I feel my mind scrambling to catch up with what she’s saying.
“They raised us quietly,” she says. “Quiet belief. Quiet observance. Quiet charity.”
Her mouth curves faintly. “Quiet survival.”
“People would have killed them,” I say before I can stop myself.
“Yes.” No hesitation or softening. “They would have.” She leans back slightly in the chair. “After the war, many families like ours became Lutheran.”
I frown slightly. “Why?”
“Because it was simple,” she says. “Recognizable. Safe.”
Her fingers brush lightly against the table. “The faith we were raised in was not something people spoke about openly anymore.”
“Because of what had happened,” I say.
“Because people did not want to remember how easily neighbors become enemies,” she replies. She studies me for a moment. “And because many people still believe things about Jews that make them uncomfortable when they learn the truth.”
The quiet certainty in her voice makes it clear this isn’t a theory. Even now. Even decades later.
“They shunned it,” she says. “The history. The belief. The identity.” She lifts one shoulder slightly. “So, we lived quietly.”
“And Elias?” I ask.
Her eyes soften in a way they haven’t since she arrived.
“He believed that if the world ever became dangerous again,” she says, “someone would need to remember who they were.”
The sentence settles deep inside me.
“He believed land meant responsibility,” she continues. “That if you had space, you used it.”
I think about the size of the estate. The way she described barns and cellars and hidden rooms like they were simply part of the landscape.
“He stayed,” she says again.
Two words.
A lifetime inside them.
I look down at my hands for a moment, trying to absorb everything she’s just said.
Then I look back up.
“And you sent Lenzin to school where you did,” I say slowly, “because you saw that same thing in him.”
She nods once.
“My mother used to say something,” she says.
“What?”
“That the world never runs out of people who hate.” Her eyes meet mine. “But it also never runs out of people willing to open a door.”