moment on film. “See that flicker, Ruth? That’s a dragonfly. Did you see dragonflies at the lake in Altaussee?” Ruth looked puzzled. “That was where you were, wasn’t it? Before you came here.”
Nod.
“What else do you remember, cricket? I’d like to know more about you, now that you’re my sister.” Squeezing Ruth’s hand. “What do you remember before coming to Boston?”
“The lake,” Ruth said in her soft voice. Her trace of a German accent was already fading. With her blond braids and blue jumper, she could have been any little American girl. “Seeing the lake every day through the window.”
“Every day?” Anneliese hadn’t said they were in Altaussee very long. “How many days?”
Ruth shrugged.
“Do you remember your father? How he died?”
“Mama said he went east.”
“Where east?”
Another shrug.
“What else do you remember?” Jordan asked as gently as she knew how.
“The violin,” Ruth said even more softly. “Mama playing.”
Jordan blinked. “But she doesn’t play the violin.”
“She did.” Ruth’s eyebrows pulled together, and she reached for Taro’s soft back. “She did!”
“I believe you, Ruthie—”
“She did,” Ruth said fiercely. “She played for me.”
Never had Anneliese said she could play an instrument. She never asked to turn on the radio to listen to music either. And she didn’t own any violin—Jordan had seen her things carried in to be unpacked after the honeymoon, and there was no instrument case. Maybe she had to sell it?
Jordan looked down at Ruth. “Your mama said there was an incident by the lake in Altaussee. A refugee woman who, um, wasn’t very nice to you both.”
“There was blood,” Ruth whispered. “My nose bled.”
Jordan paused, heart thumping. “Do you remember any more?”
Ruth dropped her melting ice cream, looking upset, and Jordan couldn’t keep pushing. She just couldn’t. She opened her arms and Ruth burrowed into them. “Never mind, cricket. You don’t have to remember if you don’t want to.”
“That’s what she said,” Ruth mumbled into Jordan’s middle.
“Who?”
A pause. Then, “Mama.”
But her voice lifted as though she wasn’t entirely certain, and her small shoulders hitched. Jordan bit her tongue on any further questions—what could she even ask?—and hugged her new sister tight. “Let’s go for a swan boat ride. You’ll love that.”
“But I dropped my ice cream.”
“You can have mine.”
Ruth calmed down by the time they got to the boats with their paddle-operated swans. Jordan still felt like a monster. Wasn’t that productive? she scolded herself. You upset your brand-new little sister, all to learn that maybe Anneliese played the violin, and that a refugee woman made Ruth’s nose bleed in Altaussee. That’s proof of nothing, J. Bryde.
Anneliese had brought very few belongings to the house, hardly suspicious for a woman fleeing the wreckage of a war. Jordan had already looked through her closet and drawers, guiltily, but there was nothing to be found. If the new Mrs. McBride had anything incriminating, it had gone on her honeymoon along with the Iron Cross.
Watch and wait. As much as she wanted to run to her father, Jordan knew she’d need more proof than two photographs, or he might just shake his head and say, Jordan and her wild stories.
By Monday the new Mr. and Mrs. McBride were back, laden with presents. Jordan couldn’t help a shiver of relief to see her dad hale and hearty, although what had she been fearing? That the dainty Anneliese would do him harm? That was the wildest idea yet, surely.
“I missed my girls!” He swooped Ruth up in a hug, and Anneliese’s smile for Jordan was so infectious Jordan couldn’t help smiling back.
“Come help me unpack, Jordan. I’ll show you the scarf I found in Concord, just your color.” She was so warm and open, Jordan couldn’t help but wonder if she’d imagined the Iron Cross altogether.
“I wondered,” Jordan asked casually as they unpacked upstairs, shawls and lace handkerchiefs piled around the bed, “did you ever play the violin?”
“No, why?”
“No reason. Oh, that scarf is pretty, Anneliese—” She let her stepmother loop the fringed blue-sequined ends around her neck.
“Anna,” corrected Anneliese, arranging the scarf across Jordan’s shoulder. “Now that I’m a proper American housewife, I’d like a proper American name!”
Yes, let’s just erase your past, Jordan thought, even as Anneliese tugged her to look in the mirror. Because there’s something there you don’t want us to know.
“WE HAVE A SUITE at the Copley Plaza Hotel,” Ginny Reilly was saying. “My sister had her honeymoon there, it’s gorgeous. So when I have my wedding night there, Sean will carry me across the threshold—”