and sat down next to her mother. “Isn’t the Führer wonderful?”
“Mmmmm,” Frau Rehme agreed.
“Mother! Weren’t you paying attention to him? His speech was wonderful!”
Frau Rehme shrugged slightly, but Korinna caught the subtle movement and she frowned.
Frau Rehme said, “His speeches are all beginning to sound the same.”
“He repeats himself only because he wants us to remember the important things.”
“What important things?”
“Who our enemies are, of course, and what we can look forward to when Germany wins the war and becomes the power it once was,” Korinna said, repeating the very words her Jungmädel leader had said the day before.
“And our Führer is going to do all this?”
“Of course.”
Frau Rehme put down her sewing. “At whose expense? At what cost?”
Korinna stood up. “Mother, I can’t believe you’re talking like this!”
Frau Rehme gently reached up and took her daughter’s hand. “Sit down, Korinna. I love the Fatherland as much as you, if not more because I’ve been alive longer. But you mustn’t follow blindly behind great promises.”
Korinna allowed her mother to pull her down beside her. “Mother, how can you question the Führer? Someone might report you.”
“Is that the only reason it’s wrong to question what one man is saying? Fear?”
“It’s not fear, Mother,” Korinna said impatiently. “It’s love and respect. I have nothing to fear from anyone, because I’m a loyal German, just like you, Mother. And you should never question the Führer, because he’s only doing what’s best for us.”
Korinna’s mother didn’t say anything. She picked up her darning and once again began to sew.
Korinna sat silently, watching her mother for a few moments. Finally she said, “Rita is going to tell our leaders about her cousin, Elsa Demmer.”
“Her own cousin,” Frau Rehme said with a sigh, shaking her head.
“Elsa said she felt sorry for our enemies.”
“Who? The English? The French?”
Korinna picked impatiently at a loose thread on the couch. “No, the Jews.”
Suddenly, they heard a muffled crash upstairs. “What was that?” Korinna whispered, afraid to move. She noticed her mother’s face looked pale, as though she had put on too much powder.
“Stay here,” her mother whispered firmly. She stood up and walked out of the room.
Korinna heard her mother make her way stealthily up the stairs. Then only silence. Korinna didn’t move. She strained her ears to hear anything at all. Had someone managed to break in upstairs? Had someone crept in the front door while they had been listening to the radio?
“Korinna!”
Korinna jumped up when her mother called. She raced upstairs. Her mother stood in the larger bedroom, looking at a fallen brass figurine, which normally sat on her father’s desk. She cuddled Korinna’s kitten.
Frau Rehme smiled. “This little rascal is into mischief already. I don’t think she’ll be playing with this statue any more.”
Korinna bent down and picked up the heavy brass figure and placed it back on the desk. Taking the kitten from her mother, she said, “She must be pretty strong to have knocked that thing onto the floor.”
Frau Rehme nodded in agreement.
Just then they heard the back door open.
“Hello,” Herr Rehme called, stomping the snow off his boots. “I’m home!”
Korinna and her mother hurried downstairs to the kitchen.
Frau Rehme reached up to give her tall husband a kiss on his smooth cheek. “Couldn’t you have come in the front door where we have a mat for all this snow?”
“The back door was more convenient,” he said shortly. He glanced down at his wife, and she said nothing more about it.
“Hi, Papa,” Korinna said, thinking the back door was rather inconvenient. It led out to a narrow back alley, which ran between the tightly packed houses at the edge of the city until it finally emptied out onto a seldomly used road. This road was bordered by occasional houses on one side and a thick forest on the other, and it led immediately out of the city. “Why did the school have such a late meeting?” she asked.
“How about a kiss first?” her father teased, bending over. “The meeting was nothing, just some things we had to go over,” he said casually.
Korinna took her father’s coat. “Was it about Fräulein Meiser?”
“No.” He snapped his scarf over the high back of a kitchen chair and strode into the front room.
Korinna glanced at her mother, who avoided her eyes but took the coat from her arms. She left to hang it up. Korinna followed her father into the front room. He sat in his chair with his feet up on a stool, his head back, eyes closed, and a smoking pipe clamped between his teeth. He should have looked restful, but he didn’t. He opened his eyes slightly to look at his daughter as Korinna sat down on the opposite couch.
He removed the pipe from his mouth. “Sometimes it’s not good to ask too many questions. You could ask the wrong thing to the wrong person.”
“But I just want to know what happened to Fräulein Meiser. She was my favorite teacher.”
“And she was a good friend,” her father replied. “I’ll tell you what little I know, Korinna. But you mustn’t talk about her to anyone else. Promise?”
Korinna nodded.
“Last night the Gestapo went to her house to arrest her father. She refused to let him go without her. She went with him.”
Korinna gasped. “You mean she didn’t even have to go? She wanted to?”
“Her father is old. He may be dying. I expect she wants to be with him in case he needs her. Except, I’m afraid she’ll find that she’ll be separated from her father after all.”
“Why?”
“I doubt they keep the men and women together in those work camps,” Herr Rehme said.
Korinna shook her head sadly. “Then she went for nothing.”
“It wasn’t exactly for nothing, Korinna.”
“Then for what?”
Herr Rehme shrugged. “For love? I don’t know, Korinna, maybe there’s something even more
