Secrets She Kept by Cathy Gohlke

stores, discovering scarves and sweatshirts and coffee mugs all touting the Big Apple   —a world as surely foreign to a Southern girl as Berlin. Boarding took another hour, but at last we pulled to the runway. I sat back, closed my eyes, chewed my Doublemint, and felt the world fall away.
    I changed planes in Munich. It was late morning when my plane taxied to the gate in Berlin’s Tempelhof airport. The little German I’d gleaned from an English-German dictionary on the plane through the night did not help much through customs. Weary and bleary-eyed, I finally stood in the middle of a terminal aisle, doing my best to read signs and thumbing through the book for inspiration.
    “Fräulein Sterling?” A silver-haired gentleman of perhaps fifty-five spoke softly.
    “Mr.   —Herr Eberhardt?”
    “ Ja, very good, Fräulein.” He smiled.
    “Oh, I’m so glad to meet you. How did you know who I was?”
    He gestured toward my dictionary, then glanced around the terminal.
    No one else looks so green or lost. I didn’t know whether I should be miffed that he pointed out my inability to blend in or show my relief at being rescued. I felt very much like Alice having fallen down a rabbit hole. “Thank you for meeting me.”
    “You must be greatly fatigued from your journey. Allow me.” He lifted my carry-on from my shoulder   —a weight gladly released   —and grasped the heavy suitcase whose contents had been rummaged through and turned upside down in customs. Gratefully, I trailed him through a maze of corridors, out the door, into a frigid German morning, and to a waiting Mercedes.
    “If it is convenient, Fräulein, we will go directly to your grandfather’s home. I spoke with him last night and he is most anxious to make youracquaintance. Certainly, you are ready for a hot meal and some uninterrupted sleep.”
    “They fed us every little bit on the plane, but a hot bath and a bed would be fabulous.”
    Herr Eberhardt’s eyes widened, as if I’d said something too personal and entirely inappropriate. I turned away, feigning interest in the passing landscape, realizing that I had a great deal to learn about German men and their culture.
    I must have dozed, despite my embarrassment, for the next thing I knew the driver stood by my open door, coughing discreetly. Herr Eberhardt waited on the cobbled walkway with my luggage at his feet. The driver offered his hand, and it was all I could do to let him pull me up from the deep leather seat and the lethargy of plane fatigue.
    A low stone fence bordered every front yard or garden on the street   —just enough to keep trespassers out and small children in. Or to mark boundaries, territories. The house, of matching gray stone, loomed three stories high and ran narrow for its shape. Daddy would have called it an efficient roofline   — lots of living below, minimal expense above.
    Herr Eberhardt introduced the stocky older woman who answered the front door as Frau Winkler, Grandfather’s cook and housekeeper. Frau Winkler eyed me with more suspicion than welcome, but hefted my bags up the stairs with a grunt.
    “Will you meet your grandfather now, Fräulein?” Herr Eberhardt took on a more kindly, almost fatherly, tone   —perhaps to make up for Frau Winkler’s frost.
    “Yes   —please.” It was what I’d traveled thousands of miles to do, hopeful and glad that someone wanted to meet me   —perhaps wanted to claim me as his family. That meant as much as   —maybe more than   —discovering Mama’s secrets. But now that it was time, my feet dragged like somebody’d stuffed pie weights in the toes of my pumps. What if he doesn’t like me? What if I remind him of Mama? I knew I looked very little like her, though we’d at least shared a resemblance before the cancer. Willhe think that’s a good thing or bad? Whatever happened between them that Mama never answered his letter?
    Herr Eberhardt knocked softly and pushed open the heavy wooden door,