When We Meet Again Read online

  “I know.”

  “So why are you trying to rewrite history? We’re never going to be buddies, you and me.”

  “I hope you know that makes me profoundly sad.”

  “But it’s your fault!” I could hear my voice rising an octave, and I knew my blood pressure was rising along with it. “You can’t just sit there and act like this is some sort of unfortunate thing out of your control. You screwed up. Then you spent years and years pretending I didn’t exist, because it was easier for you that way. And now, suddenly, you think you can just stroll back in and we’ll be friends again? What, because you’re a good German translator?”

  My dad opened and closed his mouth without saying anything, and I tried not to be bothered by his wounded expression. I wasn’t sure whether he was speechless because I’d hit the nail on the head or because he was appalled that I was such a terrible daughter. “I really hurt you,” he finally said.

  I blinked a few times. “Yes.”

  “I’m sorry.”

  When I looked up at him, he held my gaze.

  “I’m sorry,” he said again, more firmly this time. “And I’ll keep telling you that for the rest of my life, because it’s truer than you’ll ever know. I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again. I left because I was a fool, and then I didn’t know how to fix it. I know you think I rode off into the sunset and didn’t think about you anymore, but the truth is, you were with me every day. I just didn’t know how to undo what I had done. It was my own weakness, pure and simple. I have to live with those regrets every day, and I know I deserve every angry word you say to me. I just hope that someday, you’ll understand, and you can forgive at least a little bit of what I’ve done.”

  I didn’t reply, because I couldn’t seem to summon words. It wasn’t just that I’d never heard my father declare his emotions so plainly. It was that he was echoing some of my own sentiments about Nick and Catherine. I just didn’t know how to undo what I had done. It made me uneasy to be reminded of how closely I had followed in his footsteps.

  But I didn’t know how to forgive him. And if I couldn’t forgive him, how could I ever expect Nick and my daughter to forgive me for walking away? Was my father living with the same kind of guilt I was day in and day out? Maybe I owed it to him—and to myself, in a way—to try harder to understand where he was coming from, but the thought of letting down my walls was terrifying. It was my anger that kept me safe.

  We ate in silence for a few more minutes before I pushed away my meal. My appetite was gone.

  “I know you mean well,” I said finally. “I’m just not ready to move forward with you, okay?”

  “Understood.” My father looked like he wanted to say something else, but then he shook his head and placed a hand on my arm. “Let’s change the subject, then. Would you like to see a bit more of Munich this evening?”

  I shook my head. I wasn’t capable of switching tracks that easily. “I think I need to catch up on sleep. And I want to read a bit more about Ralph Gaertner and see if I can find any connection between him and Grandma Margaret. Maybe he was a POW in Belle Creek too.”

  “I’ll walk you back to the hotel, then,” my father said, pulling his credit card from his wallet and beckoning to the waitress. I reached for my wallet too, but he waved me away.

  When we walked outside, twilight had already fallen over the city, and I was struck by the thought that the rich purple sky here looked a lot like the sky over Belle Creek in the painting. The city had come alive with twinkling lights, and the fading sun cast an ethereal glow over the rooftops as it sent its last rays over the horizon.

  As my father held the door to the hotel lobby for me and walked with me to the elevator, I couldn’t quite believe that we were here, together, on the other side of the world. What would my mother say?

  “This is you,” my father said, pausing at my doorway and waiting while I fumbled around in my purse for my room key.

  “Thanks for walking me back.” I felt suddenly awkward. “So are you heading out again?”

  “I think I’ll walk for a little while,” he said. “But I should be back in an hour or two. And it looks like I’m getting e-mail access on my phone, so if you need anything in the meantime, just shoot me a message. I’ll keep checking it.”

  “Thanks, but I’ll be fine.”

  He leaned in for a hug, and I felt strange as I hugged back. I couldn’t remember the last time we had done that.

  When he pulled away, he cleared his throat, took a big step back and said, “Good night, Emily. I’ll see you in the morning.” He was walking away before I had a chance to reply.

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  * * *

  I woke up just past six in the morning, disoriented and confused. It took me a few seconds to realize where I was—a hotel bed in Munich, Germany.

  I turned on the small lamp on my night table and sat up. Had my father and I really connected a bit last night? For the first time in nearly twenty years? I didn’t know quite what to make of it, and in my foggy state, it felt almost like a dream.

  I spent the next two hours on the Internet, clicking through my usual roster of adoption search sites to see if there was anything new from an eighteen-year-old girl who could possibly be my daughter. It was, as usual, an exercise in futility, and I finally shut the computer down, frustrated.

  I met my father in the lobby at nine, and we grabbed to-go coffees in the hotel’s dining room before heading back out to Franz Dahler’s apartment. The streets of Munich were quiet as we walked; the Marienplatz was uncrowded, the market not yet bustling.

  “It feels like we have the city to ourselves,” my father said with a smile.

  I nodded my agreement, but I didn’t reply. The fact that I understood him a little better meant that something had shifted between us, and now the ground beneath me felt unstable and foreign.

  We buzzed Franz Dahler’s apartment once again, and there was no answer. My father and I exchanged disappointed looks. “Let’s try once more,” he said.

  I nodded and pushed the button beside the name Dahler again. We were greeted with silence, and dejected, I shrugged and began to walk away. But just then, a voice crackled from the speakers.

  “Hallo?” It was a man’s voice. “Wer ist da?”

  I looked to my father, confused, but he was already responding in a string of rapid German. I heard my name and his, and then I heard him say Franz Dahler.

  There was a pause, and then the man said over the speaker, “Ja. Kommen Sie herein.”

  My father grinned at me as the door buzzed and he pulled it open. “He said to come up. It’s Franz Dahler, Emily. We’ve found him.”

  We climbed three flights of stairs and found an old man waiting for us on the landing. He looked like he was in his eighties or nineties, with snow white hair, pale wrinkled skin, and cloudy blue eyes. “Sie sind Victor?” he asked, looking at us suspiciously. He asked something else, and my father replied in German, gesturing briefly to me.

  “Ah, you are American,” the man said in a thick German accent. “And your father says you don’t speak German? I can speak some English, ja? I will try.”

  “Thank you, sir,” I said. “You’re Franz Dahler?”

  “Ja,” he said. “Come.” He beckoned for us to follow him into his apartment. Inside, the lighting was dim, and the place was austere, with no photographs or artwork on the walls. It looked like it was barely lived in, and yet the furniture and carpets were obviously old and worn. There was a small table with two stiff chairs pressed up against the wall beside the dated kitchen, and in the living room, I saw a single, worn sofa, a coffee table with a small pad of paper and a pen, and another hard-backed chair. That’s where he led us now, gesturing to the sofa as he settled stiffly into the chair.

  “So what can I do for you?” he asked as we sat, his speech pattern slow and deliberate.

  “Mr. Dahler, we’re looking for information about a man named Peter Dahler, and we believe he’s your bro
ther,” I began. “Are we right?”

  A shadow passed across Franz’s face. “Peter?” He paused and looked at the ceiling for a minute, as if trying to gather himself. “Peter was my brother. He is long gone.”

  “He’s dead?” I asked, my heart sinking. It was irrational to be holding out hope that a man in his nineties would still be out there when I knew the odds were against it. But still, I’d believed there was a chance.

  “Dead?” Franz Dahler asked. “How would I know? I haven’t spoken to him since 1947.”

  I took a deep breath. It meant that there was a chance Peter Dahler was still alive. But the way Franz Dahler was frowning at me made me feel uneasy. “Why?” I asked.

  “He was imprisoned in America during the war,” he replied. My father and I exchanged looks. “And he fell in love with an American girl.”

  “My mother,” my father murmured.

  “What?” Franz asked.

  “Margaret. Was the girl’s name Margaret? She lived in Florida?”

  Franz blinked rapidly, and his face turned a little pink. “Yes. But how do you know that?”

  My father gestured to me. “This is her granddaughter. And I’m her son.”

  Franz stared at my father first and then at me. “Mein Gott,” he murmured. “I see it now. You have Peter’s eyes, both of you. It is unmistakable. But how is this possible?”

  “I don’t know,” I replied. “That’s what we’re trying to find out. We didn’t even know he existed until last week.”

  Franz looked confused. “I do not understand. Surely he came back to America to find the girl he loved?”

  “No. I don’t think he did,” I said.

  “That is a tragedy.” Franz looked tremendously sad. “And I believe it is perhaps a tragedy that began here.”

  “What do you mean?” I asked.

  Instead of replying, Franz excused himself and walked into another room of the apartment. I glanced at my father, and he shrugged. A moment later, Franz returned carrying a yellowed photograph.

  “I do not keep this out,” he said. “There are many things I wish not to be reminded of. But you will see Peter here when he was young, before he went off to war.”

  I took the photograph and stared, my heart in my throat. It was a bit blurry and had clearly been taken in the late 1930s or early 1940s. A solemn-faced middle-aged man with a Clark Gable mustache and wispy dark hair stood in the middle of the image, his arm around a small, light-haired, middle-aged woman who was so pale and thin it looked as if she might disappear. To the woman’s right was a boy of about fourteen or fifteen, with short, spiky brown hair; he was wearing shorts, suspenders, and kneesocks. The only person smiling in the photo was the blond young man to the left of the man with the mustache. He looked like he was seventeen or eighteen, and he was wearing an ill-fitting dark suit. I ran a finger over his foggy image.

  “That is Peter,” Franz said, watching me closely. “My brother. This was the day of his school graduation. Of course that’s me in the suspenders. And those are our parents.”

  My great-grandparents, I thought, studying them and then looking long and hard at Peter. The man who was probably my grandfather. He was handsome and kind-looking, and Franz was right; the shape of his eyes looked a lot like mine. I handed the photo to my father, who examined it and gave it back to me.

  “The photo was taken in 1939,” Franz said after a moment. “The last year we were all together. You see, soon after, Peter went off to the RAD to do his compulsory time.”

  “The RAD?” I asked.

  Franz nodded and seemed to be struggling to find the right words. “The Reichsarbeitsdienst. The compulsory labor force. Early in the war, young men were required to have six months in the RAD before they were drafted into the Wehrmacht—er, the armed forces. Peter did his six months and then he came home for a few days before he left on his military assignment. During that time, there was a large fight that changed everything.”

  “A fight?” my father asked. “Between whom?”

  “Peter and my father.” Franz gazed off into the distance for a long time, and I had the sense he was reliving whatever had taken place seventy-five years ago. “When Peter was younger, when he lived here still, he was sheltered from the news reports. Of course he heard things, saw things, but my father prohibited the discussion of politics at home. It made my mother very distressed, and she was often ill, often weak. It was to protect her, you see.

  “But then, Peter returned from his RAD service, and he was angry,” Franz continued. “My father, he was a Nazi. He was a strong political supporter of Hitler’s regime. And Peter, he was not. When Peter came home, he insisted on discussing politics with my father before he left for the war.” Franz paused and shook his head. “I can still remember him saying, ‘Ich weigere mich zu kämpfen, ohne den Grund dafür zu verstehen.’ It means he refused to fight without understanding the cause. He disagreed with my father, and my father was outraged to have a son who didn’t worship the führer.”

  “How did you feel?” my father interjected.

  Franz sighed. “It was a long time ago, you understand. And Hitler was a magician, a storyteller. He cast many of us under his spell. I admit, I was one of those who were charmed by his words, his promises. I believed that Germany would rise and that somehow, we had the right to do what we were doing.”

  My stomach turned, but then Franz looked up and met my eye. “As I said, it was a long time ago. I have great shame over the way I felt then. But my father always believed that Hitler had been right, even long after Hitler was dead and Germany was defeated. He grew old and bitter, blaming everyone he could think of for Germany’s defeat. Including Peter. Especially Peter.”

  “Peter?” I asked. “How was he responsible for Germany’s defeat?”

  “Of course he wasn’t,” Franz said. “But my father always believed that Peter was a coward. When we got word that Peter had been captured on the battlefield in Africa, my father was furious.”

  “What was he doing in Africa?”

  “He was in the Afrika Korps,” Franz explained. “You have heard of Generalfeldmarschall Erwin Rommel? The Desert Fox?”

  “I think so,” I said while my father nodded.

  “General Rommel was the commander of the Afrika Korps. And the only time my father felt pride in Peter during the war, I think, was when Peter wrote in a letter to our mother that he actually respected Rommel, despite everything. You see, Peter wrote that Rommel refused orders to kill Jews and civilians. You must realize that elsewhere, the opposite was taking place, yes?”

  I nodded.

  “Yes, well, Rommel was different. He was humane, perhaps even a good man. Peter hated the war, but he did not mind fighting under Rommel, because he felt that at the least, he would not be asked to do things that went against his conscience. You understand? But by late 1942, Africa was lost to the Germans, and soon after, Rommel returned to Germany. It was not very many months later that Peter, along with many others, was captured by the Allies. When we received notification, my father was very angry, you see. To my father, the only thing worse than someone who didn’t agree with him was someone who was weak enough to fall into enemy hands.”

  “Were you in the army too?” my father asked.

  “I was three years younger than Peter, so I did my time in the RAD and then joined the Wehrmacht in 1943. It was the same year Peter was captured and the same year our mother died.”

  “Your mother died during the war?” I looked again at the photo, at the waif of a woman who looked like a ghost even when she was alive.

  Franz nodded. “Our father always said that it was news of Peter’s capture that killed her. Of course that wasn’t true at all. She was miserable with my father, you see. He ruled with an iron fist, and she had a tendency toward illness anyhow. But my father lived on blame the way some people live on bread and water. It was his Nahrung, his sustenance. And he blamed Peter for our mother’s death.

  “I spent most o
f the war on the eastern front and was fortunate to survive,” Franz continued. “When the war ended, I came home to a hero’s welcome from my father, but he had become a different man by then. While Peter and I had gone to the battlefield, my father had been stuck in Holzkirchen, our hometown, growing more and more distressed at what he called the death of Germany. When I returned in 1945, I found my father cold, hardened, and bitter.”

  “When did Peter come home?” I asked.

  “You see, the prisoners weren’t released immediately. Peter was sent to a prison camp in Great Britain, where he was compelled to do nearly two years of hard labor before being released.”

  “Of course,” I murmured, thinking of the three letters Julie had given me.

  “He wrote to us from England, but my father never wrote back,” Franz continued. “The letters from America had begun to arrive by then, and my father was furious.”

  “What letters?” my father asked.

  Franz sighed. “The letters from the American girl. Your mother, I suppose. Before leaving America, Peter had apparently given her our family address so that she could reach him. But my father opened all the letters addressed to Peter. The first few—in which she talked of missing him and loving him—infuriated my father. He said Peter had no business falling in love with an American woman. He felt she was the enemy and that Peter had betrayed Germany by doing such a thing. But then there was a letter in which she said she had discovered she was with child . . .” Franz’s voice trailed off as I leaned forward, eager to hear what he had to say. “Something changed in my father that day. His anger at Peter turned to cold hatred. It was irrational but complete.”

  I sat back in my chair. Beside me, my father gently placed his hand on my shoulder. So my grandmother had written to tell Peter she was pregnant, and instead of creating joy, the news had made my grandfather the target of his father’s fury. “So Peter learned that he was going to be a father when he was in England, then?” I asked.

  Franz hesitated. “No. My father burned most of the letters.”