Kitty didn’t allow her to finish the sentence. “She also told me that thousands of European Jews emigrated to Shanghai before the war broke out. The chances of that person remembering my parents—if they went there—would be pretty slim.”
“But you’re going to write?”
“Yes, I will.”
Martha caught the flash of tears in her eyes. She longed to give her a hug. But she remembered how Kitty had shrugged Delphine away when she’d tried to do the same. It had been a while since then—and there were chinks in the armor Kitty wore around her heart—but Martha sensed that what she wanted right now was to be left alone to think things through.
“I know it’s easy for me to say,” Martha murmured, “but try not to lose heart. They got away from Vienna: that’s the important thing. Just keep telling yourself that.”
Kitty nodded. “I just wish I knew that they’d made it, that they’re alive, somewhere—anywhere. If I knew that, I’d write a thousand letters if I had to.”
CHAPTER 21
Delphine didn’t usually wake before the others. It wasn’t properly light when she sat up in bed and peeled back a corner of the curtain. But she could see enough of the gray landscape beyond the window to know that it hadn’t snowed in the night. The roads would be clear.
She lay back on the pillow, thinking about what this day might have been like. Claude would probably have planned a trip away for them. They might have gone to a hotel on the Cote d’Azur—maybe to the Negresco in Nice, where they’d spent their first-ever vacation together.
She thought of the time when Philippe had tried to surprise them with breakfast in bed on one wedding anniversary. He’d only been eight years old—barely old enough to know how to make coffee. He’d gotten everything ready while they were still asleep and brought it up on a tray. But instead of putting it down when he reached the bedroom, he’d tried to balance it in one hand as he opened the door. The coffee pot had flown off the tray, spraying its contents over the walls, and two of her best china cups had been smashed to pieces. But the worst thing had been seeing him so upset. He’d wanted so much to make the day special.
Remembering it brought tears to her eyes. She blinked them back, trying to steel herself for what lay ahead.
The landscape had a stark beauty in the weak sunshine. A thin layer of snow still covered the fields, shimmering like diamonds where the sun’s rays caught it. As he drove along the road to Dachau, Father Josef was asking her about how she and Claude had met. She wasn’t sure if he really wanted to know or was just trying to take her mind off the coming ordeal.
“We were working at the same hospital,” she replied. “On the same ward, actually. We had our first kiss in the linen closet.” She glanced at him, wondering if she’d embarrassed him. But he was smiling. “We got married two months later. It wasn’t a big wedding—just our parents and a few friends from the hospital. We were one year into the First War, so you couldn’t have a proper celebration. We were back on the ward in the afternoon—no chance of a honeymoon.” She paused, remembering their first night together, in the spare bedroom of her parents’ apartment, trying not to make noise in a bed that creaked every time they moved. “Claude took me on holiday to the South of France as soon as the war ended to make up for it. We stayed in some fabulous hotels—in Nice and Antibes—but it wasn’t quite like a honeymoon, because Philippe was on the way by then and I had terrible morning sickness.”
“The photograph you showed me—was that taken in the South of France?”
“No, that was Brittany. One of the surgeons at the American Hospital had a house in Saint-Malo and we used to go there most summers. They had a boat—a little dinghy. They’d just been out fishing when that photo was taken.” She had a sudden flash of Philippe coming up the path grinning, holding out a bucket of freshly caught sardines for her to see. She heard something—a gulping, choking sort of sound. It had risen from her throat without her even realizing. “I . . . I’m sorry,” she mumbled.
“Please, don’t apologize,” he said.
“Losing them was the worst moment of my life. That photograph was the one I put up on the wall of the Hotel Lutetia, where all the prisoners of war were brought. That was how I found out what happened to them—when someone recognized them and came to find me. I spent days after that just wandering around Paris in a fog of despair.”