Nora pushed the winter coats aside and looked at the floor. Nothing. She ran her fingers down the row of jackets and suddenly felt something familiar, the coat Anneke had bought for Hans only months before he died. His cancer had made him so weak that he was freezing all the time. Nora tried to imagine what that felt like—to have Siberia in your bones. Raising the thermostat to its highest setting hadn’t helped. Anneke had abandoned the Dutch rule against extravagant spending and bought him a full-length navy cashmere coat. From the moment he slipped it on, Nora knew that he would never take it off. On the morning he died, it was wrapped tightly around him, as if he had created his own shroud to avoid further troubling his wife or daughter. She crushed her face into the soft sleeve, wishing he were here now to help her.
An hour later, she was finished. And not one step closer to any discovery than when she began. She felt too exhausted to cry. She heard footfalls as Marijke came downstairs and into the hallway. Marijke looked at her and shook her head.
Nora closed her eyes. Maybe she should take a nap. She hadn’t slept more than a few hours at a time since that horrible day. And Marijke must be dead tired, too. As Nora watched her open the door and walk into the garage, she felt a stab of guilt. Had she had taken terrible advantage of the fortuitous visit of her dear friend? If her mother died, Marijke would never forgive herself for not being there. Well, a few hours’ sleep might give them both the strength they needed to carry on.
But then she thought of the attic. She hadn’t been up there since she was a small girl, playing hide-and-seek with Hans. She went into the hallway and looked up at the trapdoor, its worn rope dangling from the ceiling. Despite Nora’s height, it took her two attempts to grab it and yank it down. The old wooden stairs finally released and lowered, groaning as dust and dirt fell onto her head.
Nora wiped her eyes, stared up into the dusty abyss and then went into the kitchen. She opened the drawer where her father had always kept the flashlight and then walked back to the rickety ladder that hung with an air of crooked despondency. She picked her way carefully up, waving the flashlight back and forth as soon as she entered the murkiness of the attic.
The light traveled over rose-colored insulation and, through dust motes, the fetid air clutched at Nora’s throat. Almost immediately, rivulets of sweat ran down her face. It must be over a hundred up here! Once her eyes adjusted to the dim light, she spotted a row of old cardboard boxes. She opened every one, sneezing at the dust that rose from them.
Their contents were unremarkable. Her grade school records, baby clothes and photos of her with her parents in Galveston in summer. Her heart lurched as she saw the happiness on both their faces. Gone, gone.
When she closed the last box, she stared at her filthy hands as sweat streamed down her back. Weary and disappointed, she took another look around. She saw nothing other than the boxes she had already opened. In typical Dutch fashion, her mother had stacked them neatly against the wall, had even organized them chronologically.
She took a final glance at the marshaled nothingness around her. This was getting her nowhere. And the attic had been her last resort. Surely this was where secrets would have been hidden if they existed at all?
She swept the dim light around one last time. It fell upon a broken chair, an old broom and a pair of heavy work shoes, the kind favored by her father. She pointed the faint beam into every corner, but saw nothing except disabled toys, crippled furniture, old mattresses and torn boxes that revealed their useless contents with an almost defiant air.
She knew why her mother had saved these things. It was the Dutch way—the conviction that the moment anything was thrown away, it would be needed again. Well, it was all just junk.
She turned to go back downstairs. Her feet felt leaden, her mind reduced to dull panic. At ground level, she would call to Marijke, only to learn that she, too, had found nothing. And then she would fall into her bed and try, try, try, to make another plan—no matter how crazy—to do something to find Rose.
Thoughts tumbled over in her mind like laundry in a dryer. Why hadn’t she found even a hint of why this son of a bitch had come? Surely there had to be something that would give a clue as to what she should do next!
She again pointed the beam into every corner, but saw nothing. She had turned to go back down when the flashlight shifted in her hand and reflected something metallic in the far corner. She pushed aside a few empty boxes and looked. On the dusty floor was a small container about the size of a toolbox. She wiped the dirt off of the label. Blank. Probably empty. She picked it up. It rattled.
She sat on the broken chair. It wobbled, but held her weight. She put the metal box on her lap. Its clasp was broken, as if it had been smashed long ago. She struggled to breathe as she pulled back the lid and aimed the wavering light at its contents.
Nora stared into it, afraid of what she might find. Could this be it? Could it contain the clue that would connect the dots to these horrible events?
Hands shaking, she cradled the box in her lap and aimed the light down. A sheaf of papers—yellowed onionskin with battered edges bound by a green ribbon. She untied it and spread the papers on her lap. She realized she was holding her breath. She stared at the green ribbon as it fell to the floor, a satin spiral. Would it be a clue, a Pandora’s box, or worse—nothing?
She took a breath, picked up the flashlight and pointed it at the first page. It was thick paper that seemed to be an identification document. The name at the top was “Anneke Brouwer.” A small black-and-white photograph of her mother stared back, unsmiling. Nora felt almost dizzy. Her mother’s maiden name, as far as she knew, was de Bruin. Moving her index finger slowly down, she peered at the card more closely.
“Damn!” Her hands shook so that the beam of light skittered wildly. She gripped it tighter and looked again. The card was dated July 1945 and stated that Anneke was born in 1920. It had an arresting illustration at the top, a black-and-red flag with a triangle in the center. The emblem of the Dutch lion with sword and arrows stood in front of a blue-and-white shield. Nora felt confused. She knew what the Dutch flag looked like, and this was not it. But it was the words in flamboyant print underneath that caused her to gasp. “Nationale-Socialistische Beweging.”
“What?” she whispered. “The NSB?” She knew enough Dutch history to know that during the war, this was the reviled organization of the Dutch Nazis. “No!” she cried out. “It can’t be!” She dropped the stack of papers as if they were coiled rattlesnakes.
Her mother an NSB-er? A Dutch Nazi? The one thing Anneke had told Nora when she had asked about the war was that she had fought for the resistance. Nora strained to process this new information, to see where its edges might fit into the puzzle about Anneke’s murder and Rose’s kidnapping.
She snatched up the documents and peered at the card again. It was incomprehensible! The print before her eyes shimmered and rippled, a mirage in the desert. Dizziness filled her head as she felt the flashlight slip. Her sweaty forehead fell into her filthy hands.
She sat back and stared at the brown dust that had sprinkled over the documents, the lockbox and her hands. What did all this mean? Who was her mother? A hero fighting the Germans or a fanatic Dutch Nazi carrying out Hitler’s version of the New Order?
Moments later, she raised her head. She had to go on. With shaky hands, she laid the first page on the floor and picked up the second. It bore an ornate wax stamp. She picked up the flashlight and examined it, some kind of legal document so translucent and brittle it could have been an ancient scroll. The bloodred seal cracked in two as she raised the paper into the watery beam of light. A small photo of her father as a young man was stapled to the right corner. Unaccustomed to the legalistic Dutch, it took her a while to make out the gist of
