When We Meet Again Read online

  As I drove away from Belle Creek, I felt further from the truth than I had been when I’d started searching. I had the uneasy feeling that I’d never really known my grandmother at all.

  My cell rang just after I got back on the Turnpike at Yeehaw Junction, and I saw Scott’s name on the caller ID.

  “Hey,” Scott said when I answered. “I think I found something on your Peter Dahler. Sort of.”

  My breath caught in my throat. “You did?”

  “Well, a lead, anyhow. I could only find one Peter Dahler with the middle initial ‘A’ in any of the databases, and he’s too old to be your guy. Peter August Dahler, born 1897.”

  “Oh.” My heart sank.

  “But he was born in Holzkirchen, where that letter was from. I think maybe he’s the father of the guy you’re looking for. This Peter Dahler is listed as the father of two sons. I can’t find names for them, but they were born in 1921 and 1924. What do you want to bet that one of them is the Peter A. Dahler who ended up over here?”

  “Well, the ages would fit.” Both men would have been old enough to have fought for Germany during World War II. Old enough to have fallen in love with my grandmother in the mid-1940s. “Did you find anything else?”

  “I have a death certificate for the Peter Dahler born in 1897. Looks like he died in the early seventies. And there’s a Franz Dahler currently listed at the last-known address of the elder Peter Dahler, in Munich. I’ve found his license, and it appears he was born in 1924.”

  “Munich,” I murmured. “So maybe he’s the brother of the man I’m looking for. Is he still alive? He’d be in his nineties by now, wouldn’t he?”

  “I haven’t found a death certificate. And it looks like the son born in 1921 has totally vanished.”

  “But that’s a bad sign, isn’t it? If he was in the military, there’d surely be a record of him.”

  “Not necessarily,” Scott replied. “I talked to my contact at the London Times, and I guess a lot of the German military records from that time period were destroyed.” I could hear keys clicking in the background, and then he added, “Anyhow, Em, I’ve got to go. I hope this helps. I’ll e-mail the address to you, okay? There’s also a phone number, but I tried it myself, and there was no answer. This might be the best we can do from over here. Maybe you can find someone in Germany to help you out.”

  “Thanks, Scott. I really appreciate it.”

  “You owe me a date.”

  I smiled, despite myself. “You bet. My treat.”

  He hung up, and I put my cell phone down on top of the letters on the passenger seat, my mind reeling.

  All roads seemed to be leading to Munich. Somehow, I had to find a way to get there too.

  * * *

  I barely slept that night, and when I finally got out of bed the next morning at six, the first thing I did was to call the Munich telephone number Scott had given me for Franz Dahler. I let it ring eight times, but not even a machine picked up. I tried again at eight and eleven while I worked on my assignment for Seventeen, but by the time I called for the fourth time, at three, which would have been nine in the evening in Munich, I was feeling discouraged. What if Franz Dahler was screening my calls because he didn’t recognize the number? Or what if he didn’t live there anymore? I had no idea how I’d track him down from across an ocean armed only with an address and a phone number.

  I clicked over to KAYAK.com, hoping to find a reasonable fare to Munich, but the cheapest option I could find for the next week was a $1,162 round-trip with two stops in each direction on Turkish Airlines, with a total travel time of more than thirty hours each way. Air Berlin offered flights for $1,520, but they were also time-consuming at sixteen hours each way. Both options were out of my price range too, considering that I’d just lost my source of stable income. I’d still need to pay for a hotel in Munich, and I couldn’t afford to drop more than two thousand dollars on a single trip. I extended the search for the next month, but the prices were similar, and besides, I didn’t want to wait much longer to go. Aer Lingus could get me there for $1,064 in a month, but by that time, the trail of the painting might have grown even colder. No, I needed to go now.

  I opened my retirement account—the one thing I’d been responsible about as a freelancer—and evaluated my balance. I didn’t want to do it, but if I needed to, I could borrow the money for the ticket from myself. Considering that my grandmother had taken me in during my darkest hour—when I was pregnant, alone, and scared—this felt like the least I could do to repay the favor. Still, it made me uneasy. Spending so much money now would leave me with virtually no cushion, and I had no idea how long I’d be between steady writing gigs.

  Conflicted about what to do, I called my father an hour later to update him. He listened silently while I recapped my visit with Julie and what I’d learned from the letters and from Scott.

  “So I think Peter Dahler never intended to leave Grandma Margaret,” I concluded. “I think somehow, their letters never reached each other, and they both thought the other person had moved on. Maybe Peter came back, after all, but Grandma Margaret was already gone.”

  My father was silent for a moment. “So what do you think we should do next? What’s our next move?”

  “Our move?” I didn’t mean to sound rude, but the idea that we were working together was almost laughable.

  “I want to help,” he said. “She was my mother, Emily. And this is an overwhelming thing for you to be working on alone.”

  “Dad, this is the kind of thing I do all the time for my job,” I said stiffly, bristling at his words. “I’m not overwhelmed.”

  “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean it that way.” He took a deep breath. “I just meant that sometimes things are easier when you work as a team.”

  “And when, exactly, have you and I ever been a team?”

  He hesitated, but only for a second. “When you were a little girl. You and your mom were the best team I ever had.”

  His response stunned me into silence for a moment. I didn’t know how to reply, so I finally cleared my throat and said, “I think I need to go to Munich.”

  His answer was instant. “I agree. I’ll go with you.”

  “What? No. I don’t need you to go.”

  “Do you speak German?”

  “No.”

  “Well, I do. A little, anyhow.”

  “Dad—” I began.

  “I’ll pay for the trip,” he interrupted. I could hear clicking in the background; he was typing something, and for a second, I was convinced that he was so uninvested in the conversation that he was writing someone an e-mail while we talked. But then he added, “There’s a flight tomorrow afternoon that arrives in Munich the next day. Say yes, and I’ll book it now.”

  “No, Dad. I’ll find a way there myself.” I’d never asked my father for a dime, and my pride prevented me from doing so now.

  “But you just lost your steady source of income.” There was more clicking in the background, and I tried not to let the words sting. “And we may be running out of time. If Franz Dahler is still alive, who knows how much longer he’ll be around? He’s in his nineties, right? And even if we can’t find him, isn’t it a good idea to track down where the painting came from while it’s still fresh in everyone’s mind?”

  “I guess,” I said slowly. “But really, you don’t have to—”

  “It’s already done.” My father’s tone as he interrupted my protests was firm. “I’m buying the tickets now. I just need your passport number, and I’ll meet you at the airport tomorrow for a three o’clock flight.”

  I hung up five minutes later feeling unsettled—and like I’d lost a battle I hadn’t been prepared to fight. I had the uneasy feeling that although I’d kept my retirement account safe for the time being, I’d just put everything else I’d worked so hard to protect on the line.

  * * *

  For the second night in a row, I couldn’t sleep. I tossed and turned for hours, battling my apprehension about t
aking a trip with my father. We hadn’t spent more than a few minutes in each other’s presence in more than twenty years, and now we were setting off together on a transatlantic journey? The more I thought about it, the more insane it sounded.

  I finally drifted off sometime after two in the morning, and I dreamt of being trapped in a deep pit filled with quicksand. I was trying to get out before I was pulled under, but everyone I knew was peering over the edge at me with blank expressions on their faces. My father was there, scrolling through his cell, while I screamed for help. “Dad!” I cried in the dream. “Save me!” He looked up only briefly, shrugged, and turned his attention back to the phone. It was then that I noticed Nick standing there at the top of the pit, staring down at me with a look of horror on his face. “Nick?” I cried, somehow not surprised at all to see him there. “Help!” Without a second of hesitation, he jumped in after me, wrapped his arms around me, and began to pull us both up the walls of the pit using his bare hands.

  I awoke with a start, still feeling the solidity of Nick’s chest and the comfort I’d felt in his arms. I’d known for a moment that everything was going to be completely okay. But it was just a dream, and lying in my bed, staring at the ceiling at four in the morning with a racing heart, I was just as alone as ever.

  I got out of bed, booted up my laptop, and clicked over to the bookmarked site for NW Creative, the advertising agency I knew Nick owned in Atlanta. Scanning his website was a guilty, self-destructive pleasure, an urge I gave into now and then when I was at my lowest. Yawning, I skimmed the news column on the left of the main page—noting with a smile that Nick had just won a prestigious ADDY Award for a campaign he’d created for a local nonprofit—and then I clicked over to his bio, which I knew practically by heart. It was playful, revealing just enough tongue-in-cheek information about Nick for potential clients to feel like they already knew him. It appeared he still liked ’80s movies, enjoyed golfing, and had appeared on The Today Show once to discuss advertising trends in America, a clip I had found and rewatched so many times that I knew every word. And according to the bio, he was married to a woman named Jessica. I knew it was bizarre that I kept checking that last sentence, waiting for it to disappear, but of course it never did.

  Sighing, rubbing my temples, and feeling like a loser, I went back to Google, and for the next fifteen minutes, I scrolled through the threads of the most popular adoption search sites, looking—as I always did—for some trace of Catherine. But no one matching her description had posted anything about looking for her birth parents, and all of my search strings remained unanswered. I finally closed my laptop and climbed into bed feeling dejected. I was tired of being so lonely.

  Before I could stop myself, I reached for my cell phone and dialed Scott’s number, even though I knew he was certainly in bed already. “I can’t sleep,” I said when he picked up.

  “Is that an invitation to come over?” he asked, his voice thick.

  “If you want to.”

  “I’ll be right there.”

  Twenty minutes later, Scott was at my front door. He leaned down to kiss me, and I silenced my internal objections and leaned in to the feeling of being wanted. I led him to my bedroom, where I let him clumsily peel off the T-shirt and boxer shorts I’d been sleeping in. As we fell into bed, I wasn’t thinking about Munich or a path of destroyed relationships anymore. I was just thinking about Scott’s hands on my body, the feel of his skin against mine, the way he filled me when he slid inside me with a groan.

  But afterward, as he was snoring beside me, I closed my eyes, and all I could see was the painting. My mind spun with the details of the letters, the things I’d been told, and the blanks I was beginning to fill in about a past I didn’t yet understand. Finally, I drifted off to sleep thinking of Catherine and the life we could have had together if I’d been stronger, wiser, better. No amount of distraction could change the regrets I’d always carry with me in my heart.

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  * * *

  The next evening, after a connection at Dulles International Airport, I was on a flight to Munich with my father.

  “You didn’t have to spring for business class,” I said as we took off, the monuments of Washington, D.C., spreading out below us like miniature pieces on a Monopoly board.

  My dad patted my knee and smiled. “Once you’ve gone business class, you never go back. I don’t think I could have managed folding myself into an economy seat for a flight this long.”

  “Well, thank you.” I paused and gave him a half smile. “Although I suspect you’ve now ruined economy flying for me.”

  He chuckled. “I think you’ll be okay. Besides, it’s a father’s job to spoil his daughter, isn’t it?”

  The sentence hung awkwardly between us, the silence an indication of the wrongness of his words.

  “Dad—” I began.

  “I’m sorry,” he said before I could complete my thought. “I keep sticking my foot in my mouth, but it isn’t really about that, is it? It’s the fact that I totally screwed up for all those years. I can’t expect you to forgive that.”

  I pressed my lips together and shook my head. “Let’s just not talk about this for now,” I said. “Nothing will change the way you left, but I can’t keep punishing you for it, can I?”

  He looked surprised. “It would certainly be your right to.”

  “Honestly?” I looked out the window for a second before turning back to him. “I’m exhausted. I’m so tired of being angry at you.”

  He nodded. “I don’t think you have to forgive me,” he said after a moment, “in order for us to start over.”

  “I know. But the starting over scares me.” I didn’t elaborate, but from the look on his face, I knew he understood what I meant. What guarantee did I have that he wouldn’t do the same kind of thing again? What if I let down my guard and began to reestablish a relationship with him and he decided to simply walk away again? I hated to admit it, but it would destroy me. The walls I’d built up were my only protection.

  “I don’t blame you for hesitating, but I give you my word that I’m not going to let you down this time.”

  I nodded and looked out the window again. I wasn’t sure whether to believe him, and at the same time, starting over with him felt like a betrayal of my mother. He’d hurt her, and now she was gone. But my mother wasn’t a person who held grudges, and maybe she wouldn’t want me to be either. Maybe she’d encourage me to open my heart a little.

  Your mom probably wouldn’t want you to hate him, you know. The words floated back to me unbeckoned, startling me with their clarity. It was exactly what Nick had said to me when I first told him about my father, about a month after we’d started dating. It had also been the start of the only real fight we’d ever had.

  “Oh, so you know exactly what my mom’s thinking and feeling?” I had snapped defensively, turning away from him. We were heading to a movie in his little Honda Civic, and as I stared out the window, I tried hard to blink back my tears before he could see them.

  “I didn’t mean it that way,” Nick said. “I just meant that, well, you seem really mad. And it’s not like you’re wrong or anything. But I think it’s hard to be that mad at someone for such a long time.”

  His patient tone somehow made me feel even more combative. “It’s actually pretty easy when the person you’re talking about just completely vanished from your life.”

  “I know, Em. But I guess what I’m saying is that maybe your mom wouldn’t want you walking around so pissed off just for her sake, you know? Like, she’d want you to be happy and not to worry about her.”

  “You don’t know anything about it,” I said flatly, trying not to let his words worm their way inside my brain. I knew on some level that he was right, but my anger toward my dad was like a badge of honor, something that united my mom and me. Letting it go would be like losing a piece of who I was.

  “But I know you,” he’d said after a long pause. His tone had turned careful,
and I knew he was trying hard to say the right thing, but I’d been so annoyed at him for butting in that there wasn’t anything he could have said that wouldn’t make me angrier. “And I know you would do anything for the people you love. But I don’t know, sometimes you kind of forget about doing things for yourself.”

  “Yeah, well, looking out for my mom makes me happy, okay?” I snapped. “And it’s none of your business.”

  “Yeah, you’re right,” he said finally. “I guess you’ll let go when you’re ready.”

  “So have you been to Germany before?” my father asked, cutting into my thoughts and jolting me back to the present. I realized I’d been silent for a long time.

  I cleared my throat. “It’s actually the first time I’ve been anywhere outside the United States except for a cruise to the Bahamas,” I admitted, and my dad looked so surprised that his mouth literally fell open.

  “What about seeing the world? Experiencing life beyond our borders? Eating a baguette in Paris or drinking a cup of tea in China?”

  “Last time I checked, the supermarket carried French bread and green tea.” I didn’t want to tell him that I’d always dreamed of traveling the world, but I’d never made the time. And somehow, I’d never lucked into the journalistic assignments that came with international travel.

  We were interrupted by a flight attendant delivering us small bowls of snack mix and offering us flutes of champagne from a tray. My dad and I clinked glasses, and we both took long sips of bubbly.

  “I could get used to this,” I said.

  He looked past me out the window. “You’re going to love Germany, Emily,” he said after a minute. “I’m glad I’m going to be there with you.”

  * * *

  From the air, Munich looked like something out of a fairy tale. We landed just past eight in the morning, and by the time we got through customs and retrieved our luggage, it was nearly ten. I’d slept on and off during the eight-hour flight, but I still felt groggy and disoriented; Germany was six hours ahead of Orlando, which meant that as we climbed into a taxi at the curb, it was just past four in the morning at home.