Free Prisoner of Night and Fog by Anne Blankman Page B

in with a flourish. “After you, Sister.”
    She hated having to walk in front of him. She darted inside, pressing her back against the wall as he lumbered into the unlit kitchen.
    Her brother’s footsteps thudded as he crossed the room, and then he knelt to open the icebox. He made a face. “There’s never anything decent to eat.” He reached for an apple from the fruit bowl and polished it on his shirt. “I heard you’re starting at the Braunes Haus tomorrow.”
    Gretchen nodded. The Braunes Haus, or Brown House, was the new National Socialist Party headquarters, and where Hanfstaengl maintained his office. “I’ll be helping in the foreign press department.”
    As Reinhard chewed, she saw the large muscles in his neck moving, forcing the bits of apple down. Somehow, the sight made her sick.
    “Good.” His teeth shone white as he grinned. “Working is better for girls than studying anyway. Besides, you wouldn’t want to show up me by getting more schooling than me, would you?”
    Comprehension blazed through Gretchen’s brain as Reinhard went into the hall. Standing stock-still, Gretchen listened to his feet on the stairs, the wood groaning beneath his weight. In her mind, she traced his route in the twisting stairwell, then down the second floor’s corridor to his bedroom, beside their mother’s.
    She hoped she was wrong.
    Mama kept her account ledger locked in a kitchen cupboard. The key was hidden in an empty sugar tin in the pantry. It took Gretchen less than a minute to skim the last three pages and realize her mother had lied to her. Next to each Müller family account in her mother’s tidy handwriting were the words paid in full .
    They could easily afford to continue her schooling. Every single one of their bills was paid, and there was an excess of nearly two hundred marks, which her mother had noted “for emergencies” in her round script. They could have paid the 2.70 marks for her school field trips, too, but Mama had always said the amount was too high, and Gretchen had to stay home instead, feigning illness on those days.
    They could afford to send her to university.
    The truth was obvious: Reinhard hadn’t wanted her to graduate. He hadn’t wanted her to become a doctor. He hadn’t wanted her to rise above him. He had never finished vocational school, and his job in a butcher’s shop was menial and backbreaking. He spent his days hacking apart meat and came home with his work overalls splattered with guts and blood.
    Gretchen shoved the ledger back into the cupboard. Mama had lied to her. Because maintaining an uneasy peace with Reinhard was more important than Gretchen’s happiness and future success. Because Reinhard had always mattered more.
    She wanted to yank open her mother’s bedroom door and demand an explanation. She wanted Mama to sob and apologize, arms outstretched for forgiveness.
    But it was no use. They wouldn’t speak about it, not tonight or in the morning. The decision had been made. Reinhard had gotten his way, as he always did; they were forced to circle around him like dying planets, and he, the sun whose magnetic pull directed their rotation, was the glowing orb that might blaze into uncontrollable brightness at any instant.
    Moving like a sleepwalker, Gretchen headed for the stairs, stopping when she saw a dark shape looming on the landing. The outline was unfamiliar: a bowler hat, slim shoulders, small build. The shape shifted and moonlight from the window slid across it, and she recognized the man she had nearly knocked down in the front hall last night. He must be the new boarder her mother had mentioned while they were washing up after breakfast. An Englishman, Mama had added, and she didn’t know what he was doing in Germany, but as he had paid two months’ lodging in advance, she didn’t care either.
    He made an awkward bow. “I beg your pardon, Fräulein,” he said in slow, careful German. “It was not my intention to eavesdrop on the conversation,