Safe Haven by Anna Schmidt Page A

and on what you believe. If old Hugh were telling the story, it would be about the mistake the president made in bringing these folks here in the first place. If you told my uncle’s story it would be a story of fear and anxiety that when the war ended—a good thing—he and Aunt Ilse and innocent Liesl would be sent back to Munich where he has no job and they probably have no apartment and would have to start again.”
    “Why do you think President Roosevelt did this? I mean, rescued fewer than a thousand people when there are so many thousands in need? And why incarcerate them and send them back? And why—”
    He placed his hand on hers. “All good questions and ones I’m sure you plan to work into that story you plan to write. I’m sorry my uncle turned you down.”
    “He has a point. He and his family have been through so much. It’s understandable that he’s being cautious, not wanting to rock the boat.”
    “Tomorrow I’m picking up shoes for them from Mr. Vastano’s shop on Bridge Street. If you want to come along when I hand them over the fence, maybe Uncle Franz will have changed his mind.”
    “No. He needs some time, and I do understand. I’ll just have to find another way to report this so that it personalizes it for the readers. Statistics don’t get the job done, although they certainly help drive home the point. I need to put faces to those numbers.” She stood up. “Either way I have a deadline of sorts. Stories like this can become old news fast, especially when there’s a war on. Maybe I’ll see if I can find the French actress.”
    “You’ll do fine,” he told her, although he had no basis for knowing that. After all, she might be a terrible reporter. And he wondered why she had described herself as a freelance writer when he’d been under the impression that she was on an assignment for a newspaper.
    He stood up as well. “Good night, then.”
    She opened the screen door. “Coming?” she asked.
    “No. I think I’ll take a walk and maybe it’ll cool off a little more before I go up to the attic.”
    “Good night, then.”
    “Good night—and Suzanne? Don’t let Hugh and Hilda get to you, okay?”
    She laughed. “I was just about to tell you the same thing.”

  CHAPTER 5  
    I t’s not bad,” Edwin Bonner said when he called Suzanne at the boardinghouse after receiving her first submission about the arrival of the refugees. “What’s your angle? I mean overall. People talking through the fence and all—where are you heading with this?”
    Suzanne sat on the chair next to the phone and twirled the cord around her finger. Above her she heard the soft click of Hilda Cutter’s door opening and knew the busybody was listening. Leave it to Edwin to raise the one question she couldn’t answer. At least not yet. “I’m not sure,” she admitted.
    “Well, that’s refreshing. A few months ago you would have been full of bluster and blarney about your plan.”
    She winced. Would Edwin ever let her forget the past? Unlikely. At least not until she proved to him that she had changed and would never again go down that road.
    “Do you wish to know my thoughts?” he asked.
    “Of course.”
    “I am thinking of a kind of diary approach. Little vignettes about life in the fort. I can get the political angle at this end. But you can perhaps raise questions for people to consider. Not blatantly, of course. Delicately. We have to take this in baby steps. Anti-Semitism is every bit as rampant here on this side of the pond as it is over there—the difference being Americans are more subtle.”
    “Edwin, that’s really getting into a dangerous area.” She glanced up the stairway and lowered her voice. “I think if we stick to stories about the refugees as just people like anybody’s neighbor or the man who owns the local shoe shop or—”
    “That’s good. Yes. Stay away from religion and politics.”
    Suzanne sighed with relief.
    “We could run a couple hundred words two