Bar and help him find out what happened to his family in Germany. In this day and age, there’s a good chance we can put together the pieces and help him say goodbye. If we travel too soon we won’t get another chance like this. We can use the internet, the museums, all the knowledge of the Holocaust. We have to try, you understand.”
I nod dumbly. Losing Meli and Will was hard enough, losing my favorite brothers is painful. I want to feel anger at Bar, but that would be like striking out at a child. So I muster up a small, pitiful smile and swallow back the ball in my throat.
“Anyone else?” I ask, looking around at my shrinking family. Everyone’s faces are long and serious. My gaze lingers the most on Israel. If he leaves me, I shall lose it. He reaches across the side of the table with his long arm and tousles my head, mussing my braid and calming my heart.
“That’s enough belly achin’,’” Prue says, briskly. “What’s done is done and can’t be undone. Boys, I’m making you food for your trip. Meli and Will, you too. Everyone outta my kitchen, now scoot!”
I manage to shovel in the last of my bacon as Prue whisks my plate away. What just happened here? I somehow lost most of my family in one fell swoop. Although we are accustomed to losing the members of our motley group eventually, no one has ever made the choice to abandon me. Unless you count my mother. This hurts almost as much.
“Why do you have to go, Harry?” I whisper. We are the only two left sitting at the table as everyone else has dispersed. “Someone else can help Bar.”
“No one else understands, Sonnet,” Harry’s voice is firm and he looks a little as though he might be disappointed in me; his surrogate granddaughter.
“I’m sorry. I’m just being selfish, I know. I just don’t want to say goodbye yet, that’s all. You know we’ll never see each other again.” That goes without saying, but I’ll say it anyway.
“Nothing’s impossible,” Harry smiles, the folds of his old skin wrinkling up like tissue paper.
I’d rather scowl, but I manage a halfhearted snippet of a smile instead.
It takes less than an hour for Prue to package up several bags of food, a train schedule to be found, and the goodbyes to start. One nice thing about the Lost: we travel light. Of course I cry hugging Matthias and Harry, but I surprise myself by getting misty over the loss of Will and Meli too. They are not the easiest people to live with, but I know their idiosyncrasies by heart: Meli’s talkative nature and dramatics, and Will’s monotone steadiness. Evidently they have the opportunity to live in someone’s mobile home a couple of counties away, in exchange for caretaking of the property. They have been planning this for a while at least and now I feel guilty for feeling taken aback when apparently Meli had been dropping hints all week. That’ll teach me to pay attention when people talk, even if I’m up to my ears in bubbles at the time.
When it comes to Bar, I don’t know what to say. I feel a little angry with him for putting me in this position but really it’s my own fault for bringing him home. And it will be good for Matthias and Harry to have something to do besides watch game shows. I shake Bar’s hand and try to smile genuinely enough. I would have liked for him to be my pretend cousin. And I wish with all my heart that I could somehow know how his story turns out.
********************
What little enthusiasm I can fake is depleted; I immediately head for the sanctuary of Emme’s apartment. It’s a walk that normally takes me a half hour, but I find myself marching so briskly I make it in twenty minutes. It’s as though my feet are on the verge of escaping – running away. I have been gone only minutes and I already am dreading entering back into my little brown house, made bigger by the absence of loved ones. Israel will be happy to get his own room though; he always said Harry’s snoring sounded like an elk bugling all night long.
I barge in the way I always do once I reach Emme’s front door. She greets me warmly and hears my sob story over tea and blueberries muffins with butter.