Free Secrets She Kept by Cathy Gohlke Page A

help of Dr. Peterson, rising every day. Your brother is more eager to please the Gestapo than Muller is to lead it. One mistake   —one word spoken in anger or in your sleep   —and you could be arrested. There would be nothing I could do to stop that. And I won’t have it on my conscience. I won’t have you in danger.”
    I would have protested more loudly, vehemently, but for the first time Lukas did not look at me as he had before. I did not see a child reflected in his eyes. And suddenly he was embarrassed, reaching for his coat.
    He cares for me.
    “I thought you were staying to eat with me.”
    “Perhaps it’s better if I   —”
    “I’ll heat the soup. You find the bowls   —in the cupboard, there.”
    I wouldn’t look at him, but busied myself at the stove, stirring the fragrant stew. This was something new, something different with Lukas. And if this had changed, what more might change?
    I heard him rummage in the cupboard, pull the spoons from their holder.
    “Tumblers are on the shelf by the sink.”
    Less than five minutes later we sat at the table, like two members of a family. Lukas searched my face, and whispered, “I’ll pray, then?”
    “Ja.” I bowed my head, certain my heart sang. “You pray.” With Mutti and all the angels in heaven, my heart sang.

CHAPTER SEVEN
    HANNAH STERLING
    DECEMBER 1972 – JANUARY 1973
    Three anxious and excruciating weeks passed while I waited for Ward Beecham’s call. He’d felt certain he could track the two addresses in Germany. Whatever he discovered might close the door on my past with Mama or open it wide. Either way, there was so much I wanted to know. Why had Mama and Daddy both lied to me   —never told me Daddy wasn’t my father? And since he wasn’t   —who was? I couldn’t see myself closing the door on the past without knowing. What would that search mean for my teaching position in Winston-Salem? And what about my future relationship with Aunt Lavinia? Was there anything else she wasn’t telling me? All my life I’d trusted her implicitly. Now there was no one to trust.
    Ward and I had agreed that all correspondence to and from Germanywould go through him. It felt safer that way, he was still on Mama’s retainer, and I needed a confidant and ally. I certainly didn’t have one in Aunt Lavinia, despite our tenatative truce.
    Clyde emptied the house of everything I didn’t want and sold what he could to a secondhand shop and the local junk man. The boxes and few pieces of furniture I’d saved were stored in Aunt Lavinia’s attic. I closed up the house and turned the key over to Ernest Ford and multiple listing two days before Christmas Eve. Ernest posted a For Sale sign on the property before the ink was dry. It felt like the beginning of the end.
    The day after Christmas Ward Beecham phoned me at Aunt Lavinia’s. “I’ve received a reply. You’d best come by the office.”
    * * *
    Ward reached across his desk, handing me a sheet of embossed ivory letterhead, the name and return address in German, the body of the letter in English. “I was only able to track the address on one of the envelopes. I couldn’t get a return on the others.” The furrow creased between his brows, “I’m not sure if you’ll think this is a belated Christmas present or a lure through a dark tunnel.”
    I smiled tentatively, eager and afraid at once.
    Dear Esquire Beecham,
    I write on behalf of my client Herr Wolfgang Sommer, who is naturally distraught to learn that his daughter, Lieselotte Sterling, is now deceased.
    Herr Sommer searched many years for his daughter to no avail and believes now that she must also have assumed he perished during the war. Though he deeply regrets this lonely passage of time, he would be most happy to make the acquaintance of his granddaughter, Hannah Sterling.
    Herr Sommer invites Fräulein Sterling to his home in Berlin at her earliest convenience and trusts that she will consider hishome as her own. He has advised