Page 5 of The Girl with a Secret
Rosa walked quickly away from the railing, down the deck, away from the passengers who now, after their silence, were beginning to murmur in hope and joy. She didn’t feel either—not now, not yet. Shewantedto—heaven knew, she wanted to desperately—and yet there was something inside her that was hard and cold and empty, and she found she couldn’t shift it.
She rounded the deck, stopping in surprise as she saw a woman leaning halfway over the railing, her face downturned so she was gazing at the sea below. With a jolt, Rosa realized it was the young woman from the shed. She’d found her, after all.
Rosa started walking toward her, but the woman didn’t notice her approach. Rosa stopped, folding her arms, and then called out wryly, “You’re not going to jump, are you?”
Startled, the young woman straightened and turned toward her, her eyes widening as she recognized Rosa, just as Rosa had recognized her. The knowledge gave her a little dart of satisfaction.
“Jump?” the young woman repeated with a little laugh. “No, certainly not.”
Rosa nodded towards the woman’s hands, still curled around the railing. “Well, you looked as if you might have,” she remarked, smiling, “but I’m glad to hear it’s not a possibility. It would be a shame, having finally gotonthis ship, to get off it again so soon.”
“It certainly would.” The woman took a step back from the railing as she eyed Rosa up and down, making Rosa straighten a little under her obvious inspection.
She knew she wasn’t pretty, not the way this young woman was, with her blond hair and blue eyes, her neat little figure. Rosa was too tall, too mannish, her body going straight from shoulder to hip without much change. Her face wasn’t any better—large eyes, straight nose, full lips, all of it a bit toomuch, as if she didn’t have enough room for every feature. She’d been calledstriking, which, she felt, was a far cry from beautiful, although she’d been gratified by the compliment at the time, more fool her.
“Finished your inspection?” Rosa asked, doing her best to sound amused, for she suspected she came up wanting, compared to this woman’s looks, the ideal of Nazi beauty, never mind that she was Jewish.
The woman blushed and ducked her head. “Sorry. I was just… curious. I recognize you, from before.”
“Yes, I know.” Rosa nodded. “I recognized you, as well. You came with your parents?” She’d seen them standing next to her—a father who had looked elderly and anxious, a woman who clearly bore the strain, and a little boy, as well, she recalled, holding this woman’s hand, tugging at it in his childish excitement.
“My father and stepmother,” the woman replied. “And my half-brother. He’s only five.”
“Ah.” Rosa nodded; judging from what she’d seen before, she thought she understood the dynamic. This woman, all of maybe twenty years old, had been enlisted as her brother’s nanny.
“And you?” the woman asked. “Are you traveling alone?”
Rosa let out a short laugh, now genuinely amused. “No,” she replied, “didn’t you notice my parents making the usual display of themselves for that Nazi photographer?” She shook her head, smiling faintly at the idea that this woman had assumed they couldn’t be related to her. It both amused and stung, just a little. Were they so outlandish—or was she so plain? Both, perhaps, and Rosa knew she shouldn’t fault it; she’d chosen to be this way, after all. She’d chosen to be neither striking nor beautiful, to be as invisible as it was possible to be, because, in the end, she’d decided that was better than being seen… and rejected. “I’m with them,” she explained.
“They’re yourparents?” the woman exclaimed in surprise. “But?—”
“I know, I know,” Rosa cut her off with what she suspected was a slightly hard laugh, “they’re nothing like me. Or, really, I’m nothing like them, thank goodness. But yes, they are my parents.” She tried for another, lighter laugh. “Not that you’d know it. I suppose you thought I was their personal secretary or something?” The woman stared at her helplessly, clearly embarrassed by what she’d assumed. “Sometimes I do feel like that,” Rosa confessed. Or like a useless appendage, no more thana nuisance to the people who, in theory, were meant to love her most. She let out a little sigh, feeling the weight of depression start to settle on her, before she gave a shake of her head, determined to cast it off. Here, after all, was a potential friend, something she hadn’t had in a long while. “Anyway,” she said. “I’m Rosa Herzelfeld.” She stuck out a hand for the woman to shake.
“Sophie Weiss.” She took her hand, and Rosa shook hers firmly. “Pleased to meet you.”
“Likewise. I was hoping I’d see you on board.” Rosa paused and then confessed with more bravado than true confidence, “I haven’t always been very good at making friends, but you seemed something of a kindred spirit.”
Rosa suspected she had been too academic and serious for the girls at school, and too Jewish for others. It had left her feeling lonely, craving the attention and affection her parents so rarely gave her, and finding it in exactly the wrong place.
“Do you really think so?” Sophie asked, sounding pleased, which made Rosa smile. Maybe she’d found another person who didn’t feel like she fit in.
“Well, you laughed at my parents’ ridiculousness, after all,” Rosa replied dryly. “So that’s something. Will you be staying in Havana, or will your family try to obtain visas for America?”
“America,” Sophie replied. “New York. At least, I hope so. My father is—well,was, really—a lawyer, and he has some connections in New York and Washington.”
“Always good to have connections,” Rosa replied. Her father certainly thought so, at any rate.
“I imagine your father must have some, as well?” Sophie ventured.
So, Sophie had noticed her father’s expansive charm and accompanying arrogance. Who else on this ship had? Her fatherwalked the very thin line between impressive and pathetically ridiculous. She wondered which one Sophie thought he was.
“He collects connections the way other men collect stamps,” she joked. “So, yes. But whether they are the right ones…” She shrugged, looking away, not wanting to go into what kind of connections her father had made in the past. The passengers aboard this ship certainly wouldn’t be impressed by those. “Who knows?”
“Will you stay in Havana, then?” Sophie asked.
“We’ll stay where my father can be most successful,” Rosa replied. “He’s a doctor.” She wasn’t about to go into what sort of doctor he’d become, treating the most unmentionable of diseases for philandering Nazis.
There was a slightly tense pause, and Rosa realized that even without mentioning the specifics of her father’s profession, she’d sounded too condemning. She was going to have to hide her emotions a little bit better than she was currently managing to do, she thought, especially if she wanted to make a success not just of this voyage, but the possibility of a new life. Deriding her father for the choices he’d made—and hadn’t she made some as well?—served no purpose now. She had to look toward the future.
