Page 15 of Hell to Pay
“I will pay whatever is needed,” I said. “It’s my quest, after all. Sebastian has no responsibility.”
“Well, Iammarrying the latest princess,” Sebastian said. “That gives me a stake, possibly. That’s another way to look at it.”
“Nonsense,” I said. “The tiara, if we recover it, will belong to Alix. Even in my parents’ day, the marriage contract laid all that out in great detail. Most women didn’t have rights to their own property or even their own selves at that time, but royalty has always been the exception. No, the female line must pay here, as the female line inherits.”
“This piece of the female line,” Alix said, “is happy to do it. You said you wanted to get it back so you could give it to me. That means I should pay.”
I put my two hands on the table. “Stop. Both of you. Stop. This is my responsibility and mine alone. Sebastian has very kindly paid for the flights and hotel, so we’re managing it in more comfort than I had originally planned, but this? This is mine to do.”
An awkward silence, then Ben said, “I can see where Alix inherited that from, anyway.”
“Pardon?” My tone was probably still a bit icy.
Ben said, “Her least favorite thing is Sebastian paying for stuff. She’s going to college, and she’s still paying for, like, a third of the utilities and food at home, and half the time she won’t even fly first class, even though he makes?—”
“Stop,” Sebastian said.
“Geez, dude,” Ben said, “I keep telling you, it’s public record. So, yeah, it’s her least favorite thing, except when it’s her favorite thing, like with her engagement ring. I don’t understand women.”
“I wasn’t going to say,” Ashleigh piped up, “but that is some ring. Oh—I just got it. It’s a big old emerald with diamonds, so I guess it’ll match! If you get the tiara back, anyway.”
“I have the earrings, too,” Alix said absently. “From the parure. OK, Oma, if you’re sure.”
“So,” Ashleigh said with determination, “first step is to call that number and find out what thenextsteps are. And then call the person they recommend. Please say I get to be there.” She put her two hands under her chin and blinked her eyes very fast. “Please please please please please. I so very much want to. Each for each is what we teach.”
“And to film it,” Alix said.
“Well, obviously,” Ashleigh said. “But so quietly. Recording for posterity only. A fly on the wall.”
“It’s up to Oma,” Alix said.
“Fine,” I said, though I doubted the “quiet” part extremely. “We’ll work as a team, starting with a call tomorrow morning, after breakfast, to find out where to start.”
“Why not now?” Ashleigh asked. “It’s just a phone call. Just information gathering.” She was all but bouncing in her seat.
“Now,” I said firmly, “I must rest. Come back tomorrow, and we’ll see.”
8
THE THOUGHTS OF SCHOOLGIRLS
I did go up and lie on my bed after lunch. The sloth of old age, I call it, when even being upright all day is too tiring. I did not, this time, sleep. Too many memories for that, the good and the bad mixed up together.
I opened the drawer in the bedside table and pulled out some of the special items I’d brought. My packet of letters, the ones Joe’s father had given back to Joe—when was that? Thirty years ago? Forty? The decades blur together, unless I can pinpoint the age of my daughter or granddaughter at the time, although to be honest, I don’t always remember exactly how old they are, either. It changes every year, you see, and the years go by as quickly now as they’d gone slowly when I’d been a child waiting for Christmas.
So, yes. The letters—oh, the pang I got, thinking of poor Helga, realizing her beloved Franck’s letters had gone up in smoke. One shouldn’t have to feel such pain in the final hours of one’s life, but few people died peacefully in those days. I wondered whether Franck had, in fact, survived. If he had, if he’d come home to Dresden once the Soviets had spat himout? How dumbfounded he must have been to have survived when Helga, protected by the strongest walls in Dresden, had not. He, on the Eastern Front in those last months of war, when Hitler, in his mad fury, decreed that any commander who retreated would be shot, and so many died so needlessly for a cause already lost! And yet here I was, privileged yet again, with my own bundle of letters in their flimsy wartime envelopes, with Joe’s strong, slanting hand filling the pages, the blue ink faded by now and the paper creased with folding and re-folding. Letters I hadn’t been able to look at these past many years, but I needed to look at them now.
The letters, and the two exercise books, their covers all but falling off, the cheap paper nearly disintegrating in my hands, that contained my diaries. I’d started writing them, strangely enough, at the same time Joe’s letters had begun. December 1944, when the war had become real to both of us.
My courage nearly failed me as I opened the first envelope, but knowing is always better than not knowing, and understanding is better than all. I’d chosen to return to Dresden after almost eighty years, and there was no forgetting anymore. Now, I needed to remember.
November 15, 1944
Somewhere in Kansas
Dear Dad,
Well, we’re on our way at last. I guess there’s no harm in telling you that we’re headed to Camp Kilmer in New Jersey, and you can probably guess where that means we’re going. Being a Californian, I like heat better than cold, but I’m not sure island-hopping in the Pacific would be much of a beach vacation.
