The first week and a half of Ralph’s absence I played with Teddy in the mornings and both children in the afternoons, borrowed novels from the family library, sat by the pool and tried to read the book Ralph left for me, wrote my parents, and pondered how I was going to find something to do that truly mattered when I couldn’t drive, didn’t have any friends yet, didn’t know my way around Los Angeles, and didn’t even have a high school diploma. Mariko, who’d been my tether to my future as an adult, seemed like a vapor to me now, a wisp of a past that barely seemed to belong to me anymore.
Irene took me to her country club to play tennis one afternoon, and while I enjoyed it, I could tell that her friends saw me not as her new sister-in-law, but as an object of immense curiosity. The details around Ralph’s surprise marriage to me and his leaving for an extended trip while we were practically still on our honeymoon was delicious gossip fodder. One of her friends with whom we played doubles murmured to Irene as we were in the changing rooms, “So, when is the baby due?” suggesting Ralph had married me only because I was pregnant.
On another afternoon, Frances insisted I accompany her to a beauty salon for a freshened look. But again, others in the salon—all friends of hers—asked far too many questions of me and about me, and I could tell within minutes that Frances wished she hadn’t brought me with her.
When the first postcard from Ralph arrived ten days after he left, I showed it to the children and let them run around the house with it. He had been in Holland when he wrote it, and the picture on the front was of a windmill with tulips all around it. Getting the postcard was both a relief and a jab; Ralph was doing what he’d set out to do when we left Germany, and I was doing nothing.
That evening following dinner, and after Frances had gone upstairs and Irene had left to play cards with friends, Hugh asked me to come into the study. He said there was something important he wanted to ask me. I thought perhaps he was going to inquire if Ralph had left enough cash for me or maybe he was wondering why I had seemed distracted at the table. I couldn’t think of any other important questions he would want to ask. We walked into the study and he poured himself a glass of whiskey.
“Do you want one?” he asked.
I shook my head.
He sat on a sofa and motioned to a matching armchair with his free hand. “Please.”
The leather squeaked as I sat down. Hugh studied me for a second as though he needed to be certain of what he had to say. He took a sip from his glass and then set it down on the table in front of us. He leaned toward me and steepled his fingers.
“You are not in love with Ralph,” he said calmly, “and he is not in love with you.”
The room grew instantly cold and yet my face felt aflame. “Pardon?” I said.
“I know you are not in love with him, and I know he is not in love with you. You like each other. You may even be fond of each other. But you do not love each other.”
“I don’t know what you mean,” I replied, but my voice trembled like I was a lost child on a busy street.
“I think you do.”
I could feel my chest rising and falling heavily, and icy dread zipping around in my veins. When I said nothing, Hugh went on.
“It’s none of my business why you two decided to marry, but what affects this family is my business. And as head of it now, it is not just my business but my responsibility to protect it.”
I bit my lip and said nothing. I could think of no words to give back to him.
“I want to know what game the two of you are playing. And I want to know now,” he said evenly.
A knot the size of an orange had bloomed in my throat and I tried to swallow it down. “I’m not playing a game,” I whispered. The words were true enough, but I trembled as I said them.
“Well, what is it, then? Do you mean to ruin this family?”
“No!” I said as forcefully as I could, but this answer was also barely more than a whisper.
“But you admit you are not in love with Ralph. And he is not in love with you.”
I said nothing. It seemed too terrible a thing to say aloud that I had married a man I didn’t love and who didn’t love me, even though it was true.
“Look. I know what it is to be in love. I don’t know what Ralph has told you about me, but I was engaged once. I know what it feels like to love someone, and what it looks like.”
“It’s not what you think,” I said, the only thing I could think of to say.
“Then what is it?”
He should have been angry, livid, incensed. But he sounded only disappointed and concerned. Disappointed in me, perhaps, but obviously concerned for his family.
But still no words of explanation found their way to my tongue.
“You didn’t arrive in Germany after the war, did you? You were there for it. That’s what Ralph meant when he said you’d both seen things that had changed you. Isn’t that true?”
It felt so right that he was guessing at the truth. So very right. And yet I didn’t want him to know what I had done in marrying his brother. And I didn’t want to break my promise to my parents that I would tell no one what had happened to us. I closed my eyes for a second to calm my wildly beating heart.
“Is this the reason you’re here?”
I opened my eyes. Hugh was holding the book by Friedrich Engels in his hand.
“Where did you . . .”
“You left it by the pool. Are you on some kind of political mission or something?”
“It’s not my book. That’s . . . that’s Ralph’s. He asked me to read it. I’ve been trying to. But I don’t understand it.”
Hugh stared at me. “This book is Ralph’s?”
“Yes. He told me a professor at Stanford gave it to him. He asked me to read it while he was gone so that we could talk about it when he got back.”
Hugh said nothing for several seconds. Then he set the book down next to his drink.
“Why are you here?” he said simply. “Why did you marry my brother?”
“Because . . . ,” I began and faltered. “Because he asked me to.”
“And why did he ask you?”
I knew I would not be able to keep the awful lie inside, not when Hugh had already correctly guessed so much. Two tears of shame began to slide down my face. They were hot and stinging and yet somehow cleansing. The truth was trickling out and I found to my utter relief that I didn’t want it to stop.
“Because he wanted to help me. He wanted to give back what had been taken from me.”
“And what had been taken?”
Everything that had befallen me from the day Papa was arrested to the moment I married Ralph was poised at the rim of my being. Only one little push from Hugh, one request, and it would spill out like a cascade.
“Tell me what happened to you,” Hugh said.
And I did.
I told Hugh, just like I had told Ralph, about Crystal City and Pforzheim and Stuttgart. I told him everything. I even told him that Ralph and I slept in our bed like school chums, not lovers. The only part I left out was meeting Mariko, because hers was a thread of my story that now seemed to dangle uselessly outside it.
When I was done, Hugh, who had been quiet the whole time, pushed his drink toward me. I was heaving with the exhaustion of letting go of so much and my face was wet with fresh tears of loss, sorrow, and regret.
“Take it,” he said softly.
I reached for the tumbler with a shaking hand and brought it to my lips. The liquid burned like fire but warmed me and stilled the fluttering in my chest.
“Thank you for telling me the truth, Elise,” Hugh said as I set the glass back down on the table.
“You won’t . . . tell anyone, will you?” I asked. “Please? I don’t want your mother and Irene to know. And I promised my parents I would keep their secret. They signed an oath. They—”
Hugh raised a hand. “I won’t tell anyone.”
I exhaled in relief.
“But I would like to help you find whatever it is you’re looking for here. Please let me. I can’t believe Ralph left you like this to find your way on your own after what you’ve been through. Will you let me help you?” His tone was not impassioned, nor was he begging. He was simply asking to assist me. I felt as though a weight that had been draped across my shoulders was being lifted. Ralph had wanted to help me, too, but not like this. Ralph had wanted to reverse an injustice; his concern had been the unfairness of it all. Hugh’s concern was only for me. He reminded me of Mariko in that moment. She’d wanted to be my friend at Crystal City because I was worthy of having one, not because an injustice had created a need for one.
“Yes. I would like that,” I said.
“I take it you were unable to finish high school. You don’t have a diploma, is that right?”
I nodded.
“Then let’s start by getting you a tutor to come to the house to help you with that. Having a high school diploma will always open doors for you. And you can’t attend college without one, if that’s what you’d like to do. Is it all right if I set that up?”
Fresh tears pooled. “Yes,” I said. “Thank you.”