the look she’d captured in the very first picture, the night her father had brought Anneliese to dinner. The woman who looked so fragile and pretty, now somehow dangerous.
“It’s more than just this.” Jordan swept a hand at the pictures. “You spin a story about a refugee attacking Ruth at Altaussee, but it’s you Ruth recoils from. She remembers her mother playing the violin, yet you told me you never played it. Who are you?” From the kitchen came the muffled chime of the timer to check the turkey, but no one moved. “Who are you?” Jordan repeated.
“You haven’t made up your mind about that?” Anneliese said. “You seem very certain about everything else.” Those cold blue eyes swam with tears, and Anneliese was suddenly shaking with sobs.
You are not going to fob this off with crying, Jordan thought, pressing her lips tight. But her dad took a confused, automatic step forward, and Anneliese turned in a helpless movement, turning her wet face against his shirt. “Don’t say anything to Ruth,” she whispered. “It was all to protect her.”
“Stop lying,” Jordan flared, but Anneliese’s tears rolled even faster. Her husband’s arm came around her shoulders, even though his face was still blank with shock.
“There, now,” he muttered. “Let’s all be calm—”
“Be calm?” Jordan cried. “Dad, we let a Nazi into our family. She could be anything, a murderer. Who knows how dangerous she—”
“Stop shouting. I can’t hear myself think—”
“Don’t be angry with Jordan.” Anneliese lifted her face, flushed and dewy with tears. “Please don’t be angry with her.”
“Angry at me?” Jordan’s voice scaled up despite herself. “I’m the one who found you out. You’re the one who lied your way into our—”
“I did,” Anneliese said simply. “I don’t deny any of it.”
Jordan felt as though she’d stepped down a step that wasn’t there, teeth snapping shut on empty air. She’d expected tears, anger, evasions. She hadn’t expected pure, bald-faced acceptance of all charges. “What do you have to say, then?” she rallied, and she cringed to hear how hectoring she sounded.
“Kurt was not my husband’s name,” Anneliese said quietly. “I was never married. The man in the photograph here is my father, and his name was Manfred. He was an officer in the SS, yes. I knew nothing of his work, what any of them did. He never discussed work with me, and it certainly wasn’t my place to ask. I’m not a modern girl like you, Jordan. I went to university and I read English poetry, but my mother died and I came home to keep house for my father, to obey him while I lived under his roof. I wasn’t political; I kept to the kitchen. I didn’t hear the terrible things about the SS until after the war, after my father had already died. Can you imagine my horror? A man who had always been a kind, good father, discovered to be part of . . .”
Her eyes welled up again. She turned her head as if she wanted to bury her face back in her husband’s shirtfront, but with a gigantic effort kept talking, smoothing her cheeks with her hands.
“I wanted no part of Germany or Austria after the war. I wanted a fresh start. Of course I didn’t tell anyone about my family when I applied to come here. Who would? I wouldn’t be accepted if people knew.” Her voice trembled. “My first week in Boston, a boy threw a stone at me because I had a German accent. What would they do if they knew what my father had been?”
“If you’re so innocent, why didn’t you tell us?”
“I wanted to leave it all behind me, all that ugliness. The hatred. People throwing names and stones . . . I wasn’t bringing that into your beautiful house.” She made a little helpless gesture at the four walls, the festive Thanksgiving table. Gently, her hand came to rest atop her husband’s. “I did carry my father’s medal at the wedding. It was the only thing I had of his . . . and I wanted him to walk me down the aisle. Was that wrong?” Her drowned blue eyes turned back to Jordan. “You want to know why you couldn’t find the medal, when you searched my room? I threw it into a pond on our honeymoon. Because that part of my life was finished.”
Something cold and hideous was growing in Jordan’s middle, knotting her stomach. She still had the sensation that she’d taken a wrong