Page 15 of The Girl with a Secret
He glowered at her before he reached for his trousers. “I know.”
“Why?” The word was torn from her lips, like the plaintive cry of a child.
Her father’s mouth firmed, his blue eyes flashing with anger.
“I imagine you can guess as easily as I can, Rosa,” he replied tersely. “I’m going to see the captain now.”
He finished dressing and slammed out of the cabin, while, with a sigh, Rosa’s mother snuggled back under the covers. Rosa stared at her, caught between despondency and frustration.
“Mother,” she burst out, “aren’t you worried? We’re headingeast. To Europe! Back toGermany.”
“Your father will sort it out,” her mother replied in a half-mumble as she pulled the cover over her shoulders. Thanks, no doubt, to the sedative, she was already falling back asleep.
“He will, will he?” Rosa muttered under her breath. The only person who had more faith in her father than he did himself was her mother. She worshipped the man, even when she knew his failings just as Rosa did. It made no sense to her, just as her mother’s anger at her, simply for knowing this truth, did not.
With a groan of frustration, she went back to her cabin. It was just after midnight, with hours of darkness stretching ahead of them, and yet Rosa felt the need to get dressed, to go out anddosomething. She didn’t, though, too afraid to wander the ship alone at this time of night, especially when she thought of the odious crew member, Schiendick. She certainly didn’t want to run into him late at night, she thought with a shudder, but she still longed to know what was happening. Had Hannah or Rachel felt the ship turning? Did they know what it meant? At least Sophie was safe.
Rosa paced the small confines of her cabin, her shard of emerald clutched in one hand, before, after an endless hour, her father finally returned.
“The captain refused to see anyone,” he fumed as he came into the cabin; Rosa’s mother was snoring quietly in the bed. “Howdarehe! He formed the passenger committee, after all?—”
“If he didn’t want to see you,” Rosa cut him off, her tone wooden, “then it must be because he doesn’t want to tell you what’s happening—that we’re going back to Germany.” She felt as if she was hollowing out as she said the words, everything in her becoming terrifyingly empty, a void no longer of ignorance, but of knowledge, which felt far worse.
Back to Germany… it was too horrifying to think about. What would happen to them, if they were forced back to the country that despised and reviled them?
“If he told the passenger committee,” she continued, working it out as she spoke, “you’d be obligated to tell all the passengers… and then there could be a riot. Or a mutiny.” Or more suicides.There were many people on board, Rosa suspected, who would, quite literally, rather die than go back to Germany… just as Sophie’s father had said he would.
Was she one of them?
Her father whirled away from her, driving his hands through his hair. “There has to be another way…” he muttered.
Rosa stared at him helplessly. It scared her, to see her father at such a loss. It was easy enough to deride his arrogance as so much folly, and yet… like her mother, she’dtrustedhim. No matter what his own personal foibles—and Rosa knew there were many—he’d guided their little family through the treacherous riptides of Nazi Germany. He’d kept them safe, even if the methods he’d used were more than questionable.
But perhaps this was truly out of his control.
“Schatzi!” her mother called sleepily, lifting one pale arm to beckon her father. “Come back to bed.”
Slowly, he turned around to face Rosa, his face gray with fatigue, with despair. He was fifty-one years old, but in that moment, he looked far older. His broad face sagged, his once-strong jawline was now jowly and wrinkled, and his eyes were bloodshot.
“Go back to your berth, Rosa,” he said wearily. “There’s nothing we can do until morning.”
And, Rosa thought as she turned toward her cabin, there would most likely be nothing they could do then, either.
The next morning, Rosa stood on the deck, narrowing her eyes against the dull glare of the sun filtering through the thick cloud. The sea stretched flat and gray in every direction, underneath an equally flat, gray sky. They were hundreds of miles or more from the coast of the United States… and, as had been announcedto the panicked passengers in the social hall, heading back to Europe… which surely meant Germany.
The member of the passenger committee, Josef, who had made that grim announcement, had not said it as bluntly or bleakly as that, of course. He’d tried to reassure the murmuring, milling crowd that although theSt Louiswas heading back to Europe, it did not necessarily have to mean to Germany. Another country might take them still, he’d insisted… the Joint Distribution Committee, back in America, as well as the captain, were both working hard to find a solution before the ship was scheduled to arrive in Hamburg in a week’s time.
These petty assurances did little to assuage the dreadful fear that now gripped the passengers, like a terrible malaise, twisting their guts. Some stayed hidden in their cabins or drifted down corridors or through the social rooms, pale-faced and wide-eyed, dazed and silent, while others rebelled. There had been, to Rosa’s shock, a potential coup, with several passengers attempting to take over the bridge. Rosa’s father had told her that it had been a close-run thing, but the captain had managed to convince them to step down before any violence occurred.
It didn’t help that now, into the fifth week of their journey, food and water had to be rationed. Gone were the elaborate menus of five-course meals with three choices for each course. Rosa hardly cared about such things, but it still shook her, to come to the first-class dining hall and simply be given one plain course to eat, and not much of it, at that. It made her feel even more like the prisoner she knew she was.
Still, she acknowledged, there had been small kindnesses amidst the hardship and uncertainty—a crew member had smuggled precious fresh fruit to Lotte, and a steward had given her father pipe tobacco when he’d run out. Yet even among these thoughtful gestures, a deeper, darker menace lurked. Rosa had managed to avoid Schiendick since that awful encounterin the corridor, but she’d heard stories of the Gestapo firemen continuing to rough people up. Rachel had told her that in tourist class, they’d broken a man’s nose and thrown all his belongings over the side of the ship.
Rosa slipped her hand into her pocket and withdrew the shard of emerald that she’d taken to carrying with her everywhere, like the talisman Sophie had wanted it to be. Under the gray sky, it looked dark and dull, with no sunlight to catch its glinting depths. Its edge was jagged, its tip a rough point. Sophie hadn’t done a very good job of splitting the stone neatly, Rosa thought wryly. She ran her finger along the edge to the point as a pang of grief assailed her, for the loss of her friend. She hoped Sophie was safe and happy. Shedid… and yet she still feared and lamented her own situation.
Rosa heard footsteps down the deck, and, quickly slipping the emerald back into her pocket, she turned to see Hannah coming toward her.
“Have you heard anything?” Hannah asked, and Rosa shook her head.
