When We Meet Again

  * * *

  Four hours later, it was just past one in the morning, and I’d been tossing and turning for an hour. It might have been the time difference from Germany, or it might have been the emotional storm that had been kicked up inside me, but either way, I couldn’t sleep. Silencing the voice of logic in the back of my mind, I picked up the phone and called Scott.

  “Hey, beautiful!” He answered on the first ring. I could hear music in the background and a subtle slur to his voice. He was out drinking.

  “Hey.”

  “You back from your trip?”

  “Yeah. I just got in tonight.”

  I could hear someone shouting behind him, then laughter. “You feel like some company? I’m just down the street at Casey’s.”

  I took a deep breath. It was why I had called, wasn’t it? I wanted to spend the night with someone who wanted me. I wanted to feel that sense of belonging. So why was it suddenly so hard to get the words out? “Sure, if you want to come over, that’d be great,” I said finally.

  “Cool. I’ll be there in fifteen.”

  Nearly an hour later, my doorbell rang. I hadn’t even bothered to fix my hair or put makeup on, which I usually did before Scott arrived, even in the middle of the night. I was glad to realize, as he strolled in with too-loose limbs, that he was too inebriated to notice my appearance anyhow.

  “I missed you, baby,” he said, pulling me into his arms and nuzzling my neck.

  When he let me go, I closed the door behind him. “Someone had a good night.”

  “Just a few drinks with the guys, babe,” he said. “Dan was playing all these great hits from the nineties. I couldn’t leave when ‘Crazy for This Girl’ was on.”

  “Evan and Jaron. Indeed, a classic.” I felt stilted and awkward, like I usually did when he came over drunk and I was sober.

  “You know,” Scott said, dramatically waggling an eyebrow, “I think you’d be much more comfortable in fewer clothes.”

  “Is that right?” I managed a smile.

  He tugged at the hem of the oversized T-shirt I was wearing. “So what do you say we get this off you?”

  I smiled, took his hand, and let him lead me toward the bedroom.

  But five minutes later, as his hands were snaking under my shirt, and I could feel him breathing hard as he pressed against me, I abruptly stopped.

  “I can’t,” I said, pulling away and sitting up.

  “What?” He raked a hand through his hair and stared at me with a foggy expression.

  “I can’t do this.”

  “Baby, you’re going to have to give me a little more than that.”

  I didn’t say anything.

  “You drag me out of a bar when I’m having a good time, and now you stop me once you get me all excited?”

  “I’m sorry.”

  “I didn’t think you were such a tease.” He gave me a dark look as he grabbed his T-shirt from the foot of my bed.

  “I’m sorry,” I said again. “I’m not trying to be a tease. I just . . . I can’t do this. You don’t care about me, Scott. I’m just a convenient booty call.”

  “You’re the one who called me,” he muttered to himself as he pulled his shirt back on. It was inside out, but I didn’t bother telling him, since he didn’t bother telling me that I wasn’t a booty call.

  “This is a bad idea, you and me,” I said finally. “It’s not going to work.”

  He shook his head and stood up. “You took the words right out of my mouth.” He walked out of my room without looking back, and a moment later, I heard the front door slam. I waited until he was long gone, and then I got up and locked it behind him.

  As I crawled back into bed alone, I couldn’t quite believe I’d just done that. Scott was safe, convenient, someone who would never want too much from me but could be counted on from time to time to make me feel attractive.

  But that wasn’t enough anymore.

  I wanted what I’d once had with Nick. When you’re young, you think you’ll have a hundred opportunities to find the kind of love that fills you up, the kind of love that sustains you. But the reality is, you’re lucky to find it even once in a lifetime. It’s easy to turn a blind eye to reality, to make up a fairy tale in your head. But once you’ve felt real love, you know deep down when you’re faking it. You know when you’re lying to yourself.

  The walls around me were crumbling, and it was time for the lies to end. I deserved better.

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  * * *

  After spending the next morning working on my assignment for Seventeen and crafting a pitch for an essay about the search for my long-lost grandfather, I left for a visit to Camp Blanding, which was now a National Guard base located between Gainesville and Jacksonville. Seventy years ago, it had housed one of Florida’s two main POW encampments, and it would have been the administrative center for Camp Belle Creek. My grandfather would have made a stop there—possibly for a few months—before being sent farther south to work in the sugarcane fields.

  I’d made a midafternoon appointment with Geoff Brock, the man who ran the base’s small museum. They had a small exhibit on the POW experience and he’d said he might be able to fill in a few blanks for me, but that he didn’t have access to prisoner records. “It may not be worth the drive,” he’d added.

  “No, it’ll be worth it,” I’d said firmly. “I want to understand everything I can about what it was like to be a German POW during World War II.”

  I had two hours in the car to think about things, and as I drove, I kept mentally replaying my conversation with my father. I knew he was making an effort. I knew I was supposed to forgive him. And if I couldn’t find it in my heart to forgive, if not forget, the things he had done to me, how could I ever expect it of Nick?

  Before I could second-guess myself, I picked up my phone to call my father’s cell.

  “Emily?” He answered on the third ring. “Hang on, I’m in a meeting. Let me just step out for a second.”

  “Oh, you went in to work today?” I had expected, especially with his illness, that he’d take at least a day off to recuperate after our whirlwind trip. I had to admit, I’d been worrying that I’d overtaxed him.

  I could hear a door opening and closing, and then my father cleared his throat. “I’m out in the hall now. Yes, I had an important meeting today. I couldn’t miss it.”

  “You should have said something. I could have handled Atlanta and Savannah on my own.”

  “Honey, I’m sure you could have managed just fine, but I’m glad I was there with you. I wanted to be.”

  I felt a rush of warm emotions. “I’m glad you were there too. But how are you feeling? I don’t think you should be pushing yourself like this.”

  My father chuckled. “Thanks, Dr. Emerson. But I’m feeling okay. Don’t worry.” I could hear someone talking in the background, and my father asked me to hold on. When he returned, he sounded less warm than he had a moment before. “I’m sorry, Emily, but I’m going to have to let you go. Something came up that I need to handle immediately. Was there something you needed?”

  “Oh. No. I’m just headed up to Jacksonville to talk to someone about German POWs, and I figured I’d tell you.” I felt strangely let down.

  “Well, that sounds good.” He already sounded distracted. “Good luck. I’ll talk to you later, then.” And with that, he was gone, leaving me with the reminder that work would always come before me. It was pathetic that it still stung after all these years.

  * * *

  At just past three thirty, I pulled through the guard gate and into the parking lot of the Camp Blanding Museum. The long brick building was surrounded by a handful of mid-twentieth-century tanks and small airplanes, all of which were set up for display. Inside, I found Geoff, a middle-aged man with a buzz cut and deep-set green eyes, waiting for me in the entryway. “Ah, you must be Emily,” he said. “Right on time. Come in!”

  He ushered me into the museum, where there was a large collec
tion of old weapons as well as a model of what the barracks at the camp would have looked like in the 1940s. Most of the museum, I realized, was dedicated to telling the story of what life was like at Camp Blanding during World War II. And most of the camp had been geared toward the training of young military recruits; the POW camp was just a small portion of what had gone on here.

  “Feel free to look around as much as you’d like,” Geoff said as we walked toward the back of the building. I glimpsed black-and-white photos of soldiers training in fields flanked by palm trees. “But I know you’re here specifically to inquire about our German guests in the 1940s. Would you prefer I just jump into a bit of that history, in the interest of time?”

  “Sure,” I said, secretly grateful that I wouldn’t have to feign interest in a bunch of seventy-year-old guns.

  “Well, I suppose I should begin by telling you that before the bulk of the German soldiers got here, Camp Blanding served as a holding camp for a small number of German nationals who had been living in Latin America.”

  I gave him a confused look. “They were part of the military?”

  “No. Just normal German civilians who had immigrated to Latin America. It’s a sort of strange part of our history here, but the truth is, the first prisoners at Camp Blanding really shouldn’t have been in prison at all. They were brought here without being convicted of anything, simply for being German. The government was afraid that there could be Nazi spies among them.”

  I stared in disbelief. “Our government interned German civilians?”

  “Of course everyone was treated very humanely—eventually, in fact, they were moved to special facilities in other states that were exclusively for civilians—but yes, it was a crazy time, and there were some crazy things happening.

  “In any case, the first military prisoners arrived in the fall of 1942,” he continued. “They were naval boys from German U-boats at first, but by mid-1943, Camp Blanding was taking in German soldiers too. Actually, we were one of the only camps in the country to house men from the German navy, and when the army boys started coming, they were housed in completely separate barracks. You can see what the camp looked like here.”

  He gestured to a black-and-white photo on the wall, and I leaned in to look. Wooden barracks stood in neat rows, surrounded by raised sidewalks and grassy fields. Another photo showed soldiers marching down a wide road between rows of barracks. “Of course many of the soldiers who passed through were sent out to satellite camps,” Geoff continued. “There was a huge labor shortage during World War II, because so many of our young men were off fighting in Europe and in the Pacific theater. So these young Germans who were suddenly in our country turned out to be very useful. There were more than a dozen locations in Florida that took prisoners from Blanding into smaller camps in the area.”

  “Like Camp Belle Creek, down by Lake Okeechobee.”

  Geoff nodded. “Exactly. There were camps nearby in Clewiston and Belle Glade too. Between the sugarcane industry, the citrus industry, and the upkeep of the dike that had just been built around Lake Okeechobee, there was plenty down there to keep them busy. But they were in metro areas too. For example, where do you live?”

  “Orlando.”

  He smiled. “Well, if you’d been here in the 1940s, you could have seen small prison camps right in your city, as well as nearby in Winter Haven and Leesburg. Most of the prisoners in your area worked in the citrus industry.”

  I shook my head. “How did I never know about any of this?”

  “Many people don’t nowadays. Back in the forties, people in the communities near the camps were aware that there were Germans here, of course. But there wasn’t a ton of newspaper coverage, which I think had something to do with the government not wanting people to panic about having enemy soldiers on our soil. Plus, most of the camps were in largely rural areas, so lots of people in big cities probably had no idea any of this was going on because their daily lives weren’t affected.”

  “So what was life like for the prisoners?” I asked. “And would it have been the same here as it was in the satellite camps?”

  “The population of the satellite camps was much smaller, of course, so everything would have operated on a much smaller scale. But you might be interested to know that most of the camps operated like small, self-contained societies. Yes, there were guards, but for the most part, the prisoners largely governed themselves. People with higher ranks in the German army were still in charge, in many cases, and there was a lot of pride that came with behaving right.”

  I shook my head. It all sounded so strange. “And were many of them Nazis?”

  “Frankly, most of the prisoners were just young men who got caught up in something they didn’t really believe in. You didn’t have a choice about whether or not you went to war if you were a young male in Germany. A lot of the prisoners here were actually relieved to not be fighting anymore. Many of them even became so enamored with American life that they applied for visas after the war and eventually immigrated here.”

  My heartbeat picked up, and I thought of Peter Dahler. “I know you said you don’t have prisoner records, but would you happen to know if Ralph Gaertner was ever imprisoned in one of Camp Blanding’s satellite camps?”

  Geoff’s eyebrows rose. “Ralph Gaertner? The painter?”

  I nodded.

  “Oh, no, I’m sure I would have heard of it if we’d had a prisoner who went on to become so well known.”

  “Oh.” My heart sank a little. “And I’m guessing that the name Peter Dahler doesn’t ring a bell either? Or a prisoner with the last name Maus?”

  “No, but again, I don’t have access to most of the records. That said, I might be able to give you something better. There’s a man named Werner Vogt who lives in a retirement home down in Boca Raton. He’s a great supporter of the museum; he was a prisoner at Camp Blanding during the war, and if my memory is correct, I believe he was also in Belle Creek for a brief time. If you’re right about this Peter Dahler being imprisoned there, he might remember him. Would you like his address?”

  I nodded, smiling. This could be the best lead I’d had so far. “Do you have a number for him too?”

  He shook his head. “He’s in his nineties, and his hearing loss is pretty severe. He doesn’t speak on the phone anymore, but you can either write him a letter, or you can just take a chance and show up at his door. He loves having visitors, and since he doesn’t drive and he doesn’t have any family nearby, you’re practically guaranteed to find him at home.”

  I took the address he’d jotted down. “Thank you so much. I’ll try him tomorrow.”

  Geoff nodded. “Great. Good luck, then. Tell him I sent you.”

  As I walked back out into the sunshine, a strange sense of peace settled over me. It was possible that my grandfather had once been in this very same place, had once looked up and seen these same trees, this same view of the Florida sky. Was he still out there somewhere? It was impossible to know, but for the first time since my search had begun, I really believed I might be on a path that would lead to him. Werner Vogt must have known him. And if that was the case, then perhaps I was only a day away from finally understanding the mysteries of my family’s past.

  * * *

  I had just gotten home from Camp Blanding that night and was loading the dishwasher when my cell phone rang. I dried my hands and glanced at the caller ID, my heart skipping a little as I noticed the unfamiliar number with a 404 area code. Atlanta. I held my breath for a ring, but as I exhaled, I forced myself to stay calm. It was most likely a telemarketer, or perhaps a call from the gallery we’d visited in Atlanta a couple days earlier.

  When I answered, I was greeted with silence at first. “Hello?” I said again.

  I heard a masculine throat clearing, followed by a voice I knew well. “Hey, Emily,” Nick said, just the way he used to. It was enough to bring tears to my eyes.

  I dropped the dish towel I’d been holding and leaned hard against the kitche
n counter. “Nick?”

  “Yeah.” He was quiet for a second, and I closed my eyes, trying to soak it all in. I couldn’t believe he was on the other end of the line, after all these years. “Look, Emily, I’m sorry I asked you to leave,” he finally said. “I needed some time to digest what you’d said.”

  “Nick, you don’t owe me an apology. Not at all. I’m the one who should be apologizing, a million times over.”

  “I know. But I also have the feeling that you’ve been beating yourself up about this for years.” He still sounded distant and detached, but there was a warmth to his voice that hadn’t been there a few days ago.

  “Yeah,” I said. “But that doesn’t make it okay.”

  “No, it doesn’t.” Nick took a deep breath. “I want to know everything, Emily. Will you tell me about her? About Catherine?”

  And so I did. I told him about how she’d been a healthy seven pounds and three ounces, despite arriving three weeks early. How her eyes and the shape of her mouth had made her look just like Nick, how her narrow nose had reminded me of my mother, how she had even looked a little like my dad in her facial expressions when she tried to look around. I told him about those first few minutes of holding her, how her skin was so soft and pale, her fingers and toes so tiny. And I told him about the emptiness I’d felt, the complete certainty that I’d made a mistake, after the nurse came to take her away. “Every day since then, Nick, I’ve wondered about her and worried about her. She’s in every moment of my life. I never knew I could love someone like that.”

  He didn’t say anything for a long time, but I could still hear him breathing. He was still there, still with me. I knew he was processing my words. “She really looked like me?”

  “So much,” I whispered.

  “Why didn’t you tell me, Em?”