“He was part of an underground movement against the Nazis,” Alain says. “He believed the rumors of the death camps. He believed they were exterminating us systematically. He was in the minority. But Rose believed him. And Jacob was my hero, so I believed him too. He must have saved her.”
“How?” I ask softly.
Alain looks at me for a long moment. “I do not know. But she was the love of his life. He would have done anything to protect her. Anything.”
I blink. “She loved him too?”
He nods. “With a strength I’d never known she had,” he says. He looks off into the distance for a long time. “That is why, for all these years, I’ve always firmly believed that she died. For if she had lived, I know she would have come back for him.”
“She must have believed that he was dead too,” I murmur. “Was his name at the H?tel Lutetia?”
Alain looks perplexed. “Yes, it was,” he says. “He was hoping beyond hope that she had made it out, that she had survived, despite the rumors we had heard. His name was always there, so if she came back, she would find him.”
“But my grandfather came back,” I tell him. “In 1949. To find out what happened to her family. That’s what my grandmother said.”
“There were no records of me,” Alain says. “That is surely why he did not find me. But Jacob did everything to be listed, just in case Rose had somehow survived.”
I swallow hard and wonder what this means. Had Mamie not given Jacob’s name to my grandpa? Or had my grandfather found Jacob’s name on survivor lists after all and told Mamie otherwise, because he realized how much she apparently loved him and wanted to protect the life he’d already begun with her? I shudder involuntarily.
“Did this Jacob escape, like you and my grandmother did?” I ask Alain. “Before the roundup?”
Alain shakes his head and draws a deep breath. “Jacob was at Auschwitz,” he says simply. “He survived because he was so sure Rose was safe somewhere, and he had vowed he would find her. He told me, when I last saw him, that he could not believe she was dead, because he would have felt it in his soul. It was that hope of reuniting with her that kept him alive in that hell on earth.”
Chapter Thirteen
Lemon-Grape Cheesecake
INGREDIENTS
1 1/2 cups ground graham cracker crumbs
1 cup granulated sugar, divided
1 tsp. cinnamon
6 Tbsp. unsalted butter, melted
2 eight-ounce blocks of cream cheese
1/4 cup white grape juice
Juice and zest of one lemon
2 eggs
DIRECTIONS
1. Preheat oven to 375 degrees. Mix graham cracker crumbs, 1/2 cup sugar, cinnamon, and melted butter until well blended. Press evenly into an 8-inch pie pan.
2. Bake for 6 minutes. Remove from oven and cool.
3. Reduce oven temperature to 300 degrees.
4. In a medium bowl beat cream cheese until smooth using an electric mixer. Gradually beat in remaining 1/2 cup sugar. Gradually add grape juice, lemon juice, lemon zest, and eggs, and beat until just smooth and lump-free.
5. Place cooled crust on a cookie sheet. Pour cream cheese mixture into crust.
6. Bake for 40 minutes, or until center of crust no longer jiggles.
Rose
Annie had been to see Rose earlier that day; Rose was sure of it. But she couldn’t quite make sense of what the girl had said.
“Mom’s in Paris right now,” Annie had declared, her gray eyes flashing with excitement. “She left me a message! She said she might have, like, found something!”
“How nice, my dear,” Rose had replied. But she couldn’t quite place who Annie’s mother was. Was she a relative of Rose’s? Or maybe one of her customers at the bakery? But she couldn’t tell the girl that she didn’t remember her mother. So instead, she said, “Did your mother find something nice at a boutique? A scarf or some shoes, perhaps?” Paris was, after all, known for its shopping.
Annie had laughed then, a bright sound that reminded Rose of the birds that used to sing outside her window on the rue du Général Camou, so very long ago. “No, Mamie!” she had exclaimed. “She went to the Holocaust museum! You know, to find out what happened to those people you told us about!”
“Oh,” Rose had murmured, all of the breath suddenly gone from her lungs.
Annie had departed soon after, and Rose had been left alone with her thoughts, which were closing in on her. The girl’s words had triggered a tornado of memories that threatened to lift Rose off her feet and take her away, into the past, where she found herself dwelling more and more frequently now. Most days, the memories rolled in uninvited, but this day, it was the mentions of Paris and the Holocaust, the Shoah, that sent Rose spinning backward to that terrible day in 1949 her dear Ted had come home and confirmed her worst fears.