I started to walk toward that tree, a million images flickering through my mind of the way the farm once was and the way it would be again, now that it was finally ours—mine, and Henry’s too, because he would always have a home with me. I pictured him there in that new barn, tinkering with the engine of a tractor. I pictured row after row of vegetables and chickens roaming the garden, and cows back in the field where that big old pond was, the rest of the farm planted with wheat, tended and sowed and lovingly grown by me and my brother.
This, my soul cried. This was the life you were meant to live.
By the time I reached that oak tree, I was exhausted and I was overjoyed and I was so damned relieved to be home, I could barely take another step. I dropped to my knees and pressed a shaking hand to the dirt above my parents’ resting place.
“I’m home, Mother and Daddy,” I whispered, flattening my palm against the cool, damp dirt. “I’m finally home. And I’m going to bring Henry home too.”
This felt like the end of a very long journey.
This felt like the beginning of the life I was meant to live all along.
52
Sofie
Huntsville, Alabama
1951
A few weeks had passed since the trial ended and life was returning to our new normal. Felix’s reticence toward Jürgen was a thing of the past, and he’d insisted on his papa driving him to his new kindergarten that day. Gisela and Mila liked to walk to school together now, and that meant I was at home when the mailman passed.
I ran through the house to the mailbox—just as I did every day. I’d written Laura so many times over the ten months since we’d arrived in America, but I never heard from her—not even when I wrote to let her know that Jürgen had been shot, or when I let her know he’d finally recovered. I still hoped and prayed to get a reply, but the ritual of checking that mailbox was starting to feel like I was picking a scab, preventing myself from healing.
And once again, the mailbox was empty. My heart sank, and I turned back to the front door—but to my surprise, Jürgen’s car pulled into the driveway beside me.
“What’s wrong?” I called, alarmed. He fumbled with the handle on his door, cursed, then threw it open and stumbled from the car.
“Sofie,” he said, clearly stunned. He was holding an envelope in his hand, and as he extended it toward me, I saw that he was shaking.
“Is it from Laura?” I whispered, but Jürgen shook his head. Before I could even register my disappointment, he waved the letter and laughed through tears. He ran around the car and came to my side, pressing the envelope into my hands.
“My love. Read it.”
The letter was addressed to Jürgen at Redstone Arsenal, but that wasn’t why my knees went weak.
I knew that handwriting. I’d seen it at school, when we passed notes in class. I’d seen it when she taught Georg to write his name. I’d seen it on a letter I read in Martha’s kitchen while the world went to hell around us.
I turned the envelope over slowly and there were those same scripted letters.
From Mayim Elsas （nee Nussbaum）
I had grieved her, and hope can be a dangerous thing. If I believed for a second that this letter really was from my Mayim and then I found out it was not, I’d have to grieve her all over again.
“It’s impossible,” I gasped, looking at Jürgen with frantic eyes. “It must be a trick.”
“Sofie, read it,” Jürgen said, gently taking my elbow to ease me down to sit on the step of our porch. I was grateful he did—my knees had gone completely weak.
Dearest Jürgen and Sofie,
I thought you were both dead, and I imagine you might have assumed the same about me. But you are alive! And I am alive and well and living in Washington, DC. Please call me as soon as you get this!
Love always,
Mayim
“How far is Washington, DC?” I blurted. The corners of Jürgen’s eyes crinkled as he smiled and pointed to the phone number beneath her signature.
“It’s a long way by car. No distance at all by phone.”
She answered on the first ring, and I imagined her sitting by the phone waiting, ever since she posted the letter.
“Hello?”
Her soft voice, hopeful and anxious and beautiful. I croaked out her name in response.
“Mayim…”
“Sofie…”
“How?”
She was laughing and crying—something about my snow boots and money and a husband and children and a newspaper. Over the sound of her sobs and mine, I couldn’t make out half of the words. But who cared about specifics? I was speaking with a real-life miracle. It was some time before we calmed down enough to swap stories through our sobs.