I want so much to say yes. If only it were that simple. “I can’t,” I say, putting my hand on his chest. “You know that.”
“If it’s about Theo, we can find a safe place for him until this is all over,” he replies, putting his hand on top of mine and lacing our fingers together. “Then we could raise him as our own.”
“I know, but it’s more than that. Astrid, she’s risked everything for us. I can’t abandon her now.” Once Astrid might have managed on her own, but she can no longer manage for herself. Everything has been taken from her except us.
“I thought you would say as much.” His face grows resolute. “I have to do this, though. There is no place for me at home anymore.”
“When will you go?” I ask.
“Tonight. If I set out after dark across the hills, I should be able to find the Maquis encampment before dawn.” He pauses. “If only you were going with me.”
“I know.” But I’m not and so this is goodbye. I wrap my arms more tightly around him. We stand together, pressed close, willing the moment to last just a bit longer. I pull back slightly to peer back toward the tent. “I should go. Astrid is waiting for me.” He nods. “I’m so worried about her,” I confide. “First losing the baby and now Peter.”
“I’m sorry I couldn’t do more,” he adds, his voice low with guilt.
“You mustn’t blame yourself. I don’t.”
“Actually, that is the other reason I came.”
“I don’t understand,” I say. What other reason could there be?
“I should have told you sooner, only I was so excited to see you again.” He reaches into his pocket and pulls out an envelope. “A letter came to the village.”
He holds it out and I imagine the worst, news coming from across the miles. Has something happened to my family?
But as I start to reach for it, he pulls his hand back. “It’s not for you.” I take it from him anyway and, seeing the Berlin postmark on the envelope, my breath catches.
The letter is for Astrid.
23
Astrid
Forty feet. That is what stands between life and death, the thinnest sliver of a divide.
I came back to the ring as I said I would and pretended to rehearse for Noa, and leaped as though nothing had changed. She has disappeared from the tent, though, leaving me alone, and so I return to the board. The movement of flying through the air had once meant everything to me. Now each swing is like a knife through my heart. The cavernous space high above the ring, which had been home, is almost unbearable.
I peer over the edge of the board as if it is a cliff, staring into the abyss of the net below. I tried to kill myself once, after Erich told me to leave. He’d walked from the apartment, ostensibly to give me time to pack and go, unable to bear watching or maybe to avoid the hysterics he considered so uncivilized. I’d run to the cupboard and grabbed a bottle of pills and vodka, impulsively downing as much as I could of both. I imagined him finding my body and crying over what he had done. But after a few minutes I realized he wasn’t coming back to check. He had already cut me from his life. Instantly remorseful, I put my hands down my throat and brought up the half-digested mess. I had sworn then never to live for a man again. This loss is more, though—it is everything.
Pushing the memory away, I leap and try to fly once more. There is nothing left for me here, though. Jump, let go of it all. The thoughts tick rhythmically through my head with each swing. Unable to stand it any longer, I launch myself back to the board a second time. My legs tremble as I look down. Was this how it had been for the clockmaker? I see him hanging from the ropes with his neck broken, mouth agape, limbs stiff. I could jump, end it as surely as Metz had. If I die here it will be on my own terms, not at the hands of others. I stretch one foot over the edge of the board, testing...
“Astrid?” Noa calls from the entranceway below. Startled, I wobble, grabbing on to the ladder to steady myself. I had been so caught up in my thoughts I had not seen her return. Her face is a mask of worry. Had she seen what I was contemplating? Or guessed?
She does not seem to notice what I’ve been up to, though. Instead, she motions me toward her, watching somberly as I climb down the ladder.
“What’s wrong?” I demand as my uneasiness grows. “Tell me.”
She holds out an envelope to me. “A letter came for you.”
I freeze. Letters can only mean bad news. I take it with trembling hands, bracing for news of Peter. The envelope bears postage markings from Darmstadt, though. I hold it at arm’s length, as though its contents might be contagious. Just for a moment I want to remain suspended in time, shielded from whatever is written there.
But I have never been any good at hiding from the truth. I tear open the seal. Inside is another envelope, addressed to me, not at the Circus Neuhoff but rather my family’s former winter quarters. From Berlin. Erich’s blocky script reaches out like a hand. Ingrid Klemt, he’d written, using my maiden name. Not his. Even after so much time, the rejection still stings. Someone, whoever had forwarded the letter, had crossed it out and added my stage name, Astrid Sorrell. I drop the envelope. Noa retrieves it quickly and hands it to me. What could Erich possibly want?
“Do you want me to open it for you?” Noa asks gently.
I shake my head. “I can do it.” I rip open the envelope, which is stained and worn. A slip of paper flutters out. My eyes fill with tears as I pick it up and the familiar handwriting, not Erich’s, appears.
Dearest Ingrid,
I pray that this letter has reached you, and that it finds you well and safe. I fled Monte Carlo ahead of the invasion and did not have time to write. But I have reached Florida and found work at a carnival.
“What is it?” Noa asks.
“Jules.” My youngest brother, the weakest and most improbable, had somehow survived. He must have sent the letter to me in Berlin and Erich had sent it on.
“I thought they were all...”
“So did I.” My heart beats faster now. Jules is alive. In America.
“But how?” Noa asks.
“I don’t know,” I reply, scarcely able to process my own questions, let alone Noa’s. “Jules was managing the circus in the south of France when the war started. Somehow he made it out.” I continue reading silently.
I wrote to Mama and Papa for months but received no response. I do not know if you have heard, but I am so very sorry to tell you that they died in a camp in Poland.
“Oh!” I cover my mouth to stop the sob that rips from my throat. Though I have long known in my heart my parents could not have possibly escaped, some part of me had clung to the hope that they might still be alive. Now I am confronted with the truth and it is so much worse.