I’d just stepped out of the laundry room into the yard when I heard an explosion—so sudden and so loud that dogs began to bark, and the birds in the trees squawked as they scattered into the silvery sky. My instincts told me to run away from it, but I wasn’t sure where Jürgen was, so instead I ran toward the sound. As I rounded the corner of the house, my footsteps stalled. Jürgen was on the ground, in a heap against the wall.
A dozen or so feet away from him in the middle of our small yard, Lizzie Miller’s brother was standing with a handgun dangling limply from his hand, an expression of shock and disbelief on his face. He released a low whimper when he saw me. Then he dropped the gun and leaped over the low fence in the back of our yard.
The instant Henry was away from the gun, I ran to Jürgen. He was alive—his eyes wild as he stared at me. His hands were clutching his abdomen. The bloodstain on his nightshirt was spreading fast, and he was sucking in deep, desperate breaths.
After everything we’d survived, I couldn’t lose him like this.
“Jürgen—” I whispered. I pressed my hands over his, trying to stem the bleeding. “You’re going to be okay. It’s going to be fine.”
“Sofie,” he gasped.
“Gisela!” I shouted. “Gisela, call for help!” Could she even hear me from her bedroom? She certainly would have heard the gunshot, but my daughter was smart. That sound probably drove her to hide. “Someone help us!” I called, and then I went weak with relief when Klaus appeared at the fence next door.
“Sofie? My God! What’s happened?”
“Please help us,” I said. “Jürgen’s been shot.” I was dry-eyed and my voice sounded stiff, almost emotionless. My hands, over Jürgen’s at his abdomen, were quickly becoming numb. I could hear my pulse in my ears—thud, thud, thud. It felt surreal, like I was watching a film.
Jürgen was still panting, but color was rapidly draining from his face. He was losing too much blood. My thoughts were muddled, but one suddenly seemed clear.
I had to keep him calm. I had to reassure him.
“You are going to be fine,” I said quietly, staring into his eyes.
“Love…you. The children,” he panted.
“Save your breath now and tell me later,” I said.
It felt like the ambulance took hours to arrive. I was vaguely aware of Klaus in the yard with us, but it sounded as though he was speaking from a distance as he told me that Claudia took our children to their house to keep them safe. Other neighbors were peering over the fences at us, but when I tried to look at them, my vision swam. I stopped trying after a while, and simply focused on Jürgen.
“You’re okay, my love,” I told him. Maybe I was dreaming. Maybe that was why it was so hard to speak and to concentrate. “Everything is going to be fine.”
The sun was on the horizon when I finally heard sirens in the distance.
Jürgen fell unconscious then, his eyes panicked as his lids fluttered closed, his hands growing limp beneath mine.
That was when the panic my shock had held at bay came rushing in at me.
44
Lizzie
Huntsville, Alabama
1950
Just about everything seemed a little broken when I woke up that Saturday morning.
Cal was trying to carry on as if nothing were wrong, but he seemed tender almost, as if I’d bruised him badly. I still had no idea what to do about it. And Henry had been so late home the previous night I started to suspect he wasn’t really “working late,” as he’d claimed all week. Calvin and I agreed to sit him down for a discussion over dinner, and I still wasn’t sure what we were going to say to him.
I had a lot to worry about with the two men in my life, and whenever I was worried, I was drawn to my garden. That was why I was up with the sun that Saturday morning, hoping to clear out the unwanted plants from a few of my garden beds before the sun grew too hot.
I was pulling on my boots when I heard the explosion in the distance—not so close that I felt I needed to run for cover, but close enough that it startled me. It was probably just a car backfiring—some laborer, leaving for an early shift to beat the heat. Nothing to be concerned about.
I started to work on the garden bed just off the laundry room, near the stairs to Henry’s apartment. If he was working that day, he’d be down those stairs soon. But just a few minutes later, Henry burst into the backyard through the gate that came from the street. He was wearing nightclothes, and there were sweat marks around his armpits.