Derek tapped the table, the noise bringing Sally back to the present. “Derek, did you contact her?”
He shook his head.
“Derek, do you know about Roland?”
“Did he go west?”
“Derek, that’s a horrible thing to say. Roland died in the service of his country. Your mother thinks both her sons are dead.” Sally stood up. “I should send her a telegram or something.”
“Leave it. I’ll do it later. Sit down, woman.”
She glared at him. But he put his heads in his arms and started to cry. Surprised, she stood looking at him for a few seconds before she flung her arms around him. She would have kneeled but for the glass on the floor. He gathered her to him and pulled her onto his knee.
“Oh, Sally love, I can’t believe I hurt you. I’m so sorry. I’d never hit you. You don’t deserve that. You’re what’s kept me alive. The thought of coming back to you, to this house. That’s what kept me sane, or at least as sane as you can be when you are a prisoner.”
Sally held onto him, his painfully-thin, skeletal form making her wonder just what he had experienced. They had seen pictures of the concentration camps and the mountains of bodies on Pathe News but she couldn’t remember seeing anything about the English prisoners of war.
“Why didn’t they tell me you were alive?” Sally hiccupped. “When I got that telegram, I thought I would die too.” But for the children, she might have but she had to behave like normal for their sake. They had been through so much already.
“I don’t know why. I lost my dog tags on the beach. Sam was hit in the stomach. I bent down to help him, not that I could do anything. He was a goner. The next thing I knew, I was lying in a German hospital. When they found me, I was unconscious and when I came around, I didn’t remember anything. Was that way for a couple of years until I met someone I used to go to school with. He recognized me and over time, my memory came back in bits and pieces. Still don’t remember everything but I remembered you, even when I didn’t know your name. Every time I closed my eyes, I saw my brown-eyed girl smiling at me. You, Sally. You are the reason I lived.”
Tears choked her throat as she cuddled him, and he cried and cried. She lost track of time, as their tea went stone-cold but neither of them moved. Only when his sobs subsided and he wiped his nose with his sleeve much like Tom did, did she remember the children.
“Oh my, is that the time. I have to go to Enid’s. She will be wondering where I am.”
“Let her wonder. She will probably be telling all the neighbors what a savage I am. And she’d be right. Look at what I did to your beautiful face.”
She held her hand up to the tender area. “It was an accident. You didn’t mean to hit me.” No, you meant to hit a defenseless child, but those words were left unsaid.
31
“Let me help you.” He took the sweeping brush and swept up the broken glass, not commenting when she retrieved the picture of Harry. Liesl loved looking at her brother dressed up in his uniform but Sally preferred the second photo, the one of the four of them together. Her, Liesl, Harry and Tom. They looked like a family. A real one. Only her real family was stood in front of her and he didn’t want the children. Maybe he’d change his mind.
“Sally, how long do they have to stay here? The war is over.”
“The war with Germany is over but the search for their mother or other surviving family members has only just begun. Nobody knows who survived the horrors that were the camps.”
“But you can’t mean to keep them until they find their family. That could take months, years even.”
Sally counted slowly in her head. Once she reached ten, she said quietly. “I want them to stay here forever. I never want to let them go.”
There she had said it. Finally admitted it out loud. She loved the kids and couldn’t imagine not having them with her.
“But… what if their real parents show up?”
“Tom’s father died after Kristallnacht. He was beaten up, for sport, by the guards at some place called Dachau. His mother died soon after he was born.”
“But he said Liesl was his sister.”
“His half-sister. His father married a much younger woman. She’d be about twenty-eight now. If she survived.”
“But if she did, she would claim the children. You wouldn’t stand in the way of reuniting the family, would you?”
Sally didn’t want to answer yet. She wanted to scream, YES! She would! She’d do anything to keep the children. But, in her heart of hearts, she knew that was wrong.
“What about when we have our own children?”
His question surprised her. She had given up on having her own baby. With her husband presumed dead and having the children, that dream had been filed away a long time ago. Feeling embarrassed now, she turned her face away from him. “If that should happen, the children would see the baby as their sister or brother. I don’t have a limited supply of love.”
“My child wouldn’t be related to Germans. Over my dead body.”
She whirled around to face him; her hands clasped together.
“Derek, can’t you see they are not Germans. They are Jewish. If the
