Rhineland Inheritance by T. Davis Bunn

the effect she was having. “He was a leader. Not born that way, but made that way through his faith. All the credit for his life he gave to God.” Sally looked at him, but saw him not. “I’ve never met a strong man who could be so humble. I admired him. I admired him as much as I loved him.”
    â€œAnd you loved him a great deal,” he said softly.
    â€œMore than my own life,” she said, her voice trembling. “More than . . . More than I thought it was possible to love and lose and survive. But I did. Lose him and survive the loss. For the longest while I didn’t think I would. He taught me to see God as somebody alive. That was an incredible gift, his ability to make the unseen seem within reach. And now that he’s gone, I can’t find that invisible strength when I need it most.”
    â€œBut you’ve made it.”
    â€œIn a way. I almost didn’t, though. I almost accepted the fact that this old body would keep right on ticking for another fifty years or so, but the life would be gone. Dead and dried up and blown away.”
    â€œWhat changed your mind?”
    â€œThe children,” she replied simply. “Seeing others who hadn’t ever had the chance to live and love at all suffer a hell as bad or worse than my own. It woke me up, Jake. It made me realize that I had a purpose too. It gave a meaning to what was left of my life. But I had to make a choice. I could either drown in my sorrow and watch my soul die, or I couldstruggle back to the surface and survive. Or try to. And I did. But I didn’t do it for me. I would never have had the strength to do it for myself. I did it for them.”
    She toyed with her cup, her eyes downcast. Jake waited quietly. At that moment, he would have been willing to wait for her all his life, and still count himself lucky. Then she said softly, “If only I could find my way back to what he taught me about the Invisible, maybe I could count my life as worth living again.” She looked at him. “Do you think it might happen?”
    â€œI don’t know,” Jake replied quietly. “I’ve never been much of a believing man myself.”
    â€œHe would have liked you, Jake” she said, the tender smile returning. “He used to say that strength wed with wisdom was God’s most underrated gift.”
    â€œI don’t think of myself as particularly strong,” Jake countered. “And I don’t rank high in wisdom.”
    But she chose not to hear. “It’s so easy to talk about God when I think of him,” she mused aloud. “And so hard otherwise. I wish I could understand why.”

Chapter Six
    The next morning, Servais was ebullient over Jake’s scheme. “A masterpiece,” he declared. “A stroke of genius.”
    â€œJust trying to feed a few kids,” Jake said.
    â€œNonsense. You wait and see, my friend. This will benefit not only your young charges but us as well.”
    â€œThey don’t have a chance in a million of finding treasure, and you know it,” Jake protested.
    â€œI was not speaking of the treasure,” Pierre answered. “Not just, anyway.”
    â€œWhat do you mean?”
    â€œLet us wait and see,” he replied. “Come. This is an important meeting today, and we must not be late.”
    The incoming French forces had established an initial base of operations next to the Rhine. The great river began high in the Swiss Alps, ran up through Germany, and ended its twelve-hundred-mile journey off the Dutch coast. It also formed the border between France and Germany from Basel to Karlsruhe, a distance of some one hundred miles. To the west of this border lay the province of Alsace, over which the Germans and French had fought for more than two hundred years. To the east loomed the Black Forest foothills. The river jinked and curved and split and tumbled over drops. The skeletal remains of bombed-out