who I think about when I sit here at night and look up at the stars. I . . . had a lot of family in Europe. Not many of them made it here. I . . . don’t know what happened to everyone, but some . . .”
“They didn’t make it there, either,” I said, my voice soft as the breeze.
“No, they didn’t.”
“Were they Jewish?” I asked, trying to find a way to steer the conversation around to who her family was without being horribly insensitive to her loss. But I had to know what the connection was, or if there even was a connection.
“Yes. We are. I am. My family . . . my father owned a store. He sold antiques. He did very well for himself in Stuttgart, buying from estates and selling to private people. He was very fair, but everyone assumed because he was a Jew, he was cheating them somehow, even though he often changed the terms of an agreement in their favor if they didn’t ask for enough money for something they sold him, or if they offered too much for some trinket in his shop window. But it didn’t matter. He was a Jew, so he was cheating them.”
“You said he was . . . ?”
“Yes. He died. Fighting the Nazis. We moved here after one of the local businessmen bought his shop. He was offered a fair price, of course.” I could tell by the twist of her mouth that the price wasn’t fair at all, at least not to her mind. “After Papa sold his business, we moved here. When the Americans joined the war at last, he enlisted. He was killed in a forest in France. France was not very good for our family . . .”
“What else happened in France?” I asked, my voice as gentle as I could make it despite my heart trip-hammering inside my chest.
“My aunt and cousin died there. Murdered by Nazis. My cousin Edgar was sent to one of the camps and no one ever heard from him again, but my aunt Anna . . . she was murdered. My grandpapa in Stuttgart received a telegram from some man he’d never heard of telling him what happened. He wired the news to Mama. She was devastated. They were very close, even closer than most sisters. She had begged Anna and Gerald to come with us, but they didn’t want to leave Europe. Anna loved Germany, and France, and Austria, and Edgar studied with some of the best music teachers in the world before . . .” Her voice trailed off and she let out a soft, embarrassed chuckle.
“Forgive me,” she said. “I don’t know why I’m rambling like this to you. I haven’t even introduced myself Mr. . . . ?”
I shook myself out of the trance I’d been in ever since she mentioned her aunt Anna, and looked dumbly at the hand she held out in front of me. After an awkward pause, I took it and shook. “Harker. Quincy Harker. And you are?”
“Rosalyn. Rosalyn Reismann. Harker . . . that name is familiar . . . oh yes! Like the character in that book. The one about the—”
“Vampire,” I said with a slight sigh. “Yes, that’s the one. No relation, of course.” Unless you count being the literal son of the man in the aforementioned book, but telling people that usually led to all sorts of uncomfortable questions about when the book was written, when I was born, and then landed on why I looked like I was still in my early thirties when I should be in my midfifties. I generally try to avoid those conversations with people I meet in public parks. Very little good ever comes from them.
She laughed, her voice a merry tinkle through the night. “Of course not, silly! That’s just a story. That kind of stuff isn’t real.”
But the way she cut her eyes to the side when she said it made me think she knew exactly how big a pile of manure that was the moment she said it. “Well, maybe not vampires, but this old world could certainly use a little magic,” I said, leaning back on the bench and looking