“What’s the matter?” Suzanne said. “Do I sense some waning enthusiasm for our ‘Magical Mystery Tour’?”
“I’ve decided that we’re never really going to learn the truth. We’re just going to hear several different versions of it, depending on who’s doing the telling.”
“Then let’s think of ourselves as the jury. We’ll weigh the evidence and see which version is the most credible.”
“You’re actually enjoying this, aren’t you?”
“Yes,” Suzanne replied, “and if we hurry, we can stop off at your grandfather’s church on the way to Aunt Vera’s house. The desk clerk told me how to get there.”
They had no trouble finding the church Friedrich Schroder had once pastored, but the small white-frame sanctuary that Grace had expected to see was gone, replaced—according to the cornerstone—in 1953 by a large brick building with white pillars. The barn and the gray farmhouse that had served as the parsonage were both gone too, making room for an addition that housed Sunday school classrooms. Her grandfather had been right when he’d predicted the town’s growth—the church no longer stood a mile outside of town but nestled in a subdivision of twenty-year-old ranch-style houses.
When Suzanne explained who they were, the church secretary immediately called the pastor from his study. “So you’re one of Fred Schroder’s grandchildren! I’m honored to meet you. Reverend Schroder is legendary in this community, remembered as a truly godly man. He didn’t exactly found the church, but I understand that he was responsible for helping to make it what it is today . . . but you surely must know all this. You must be proud of him.”
“I never met either of my grandparents,” Grace explained. “My mother moved away from Bremenville before I was born.” She hoped he wouldn’t ask for a reason why. She didn’t know the answer herself.
“I never had the privilege of meeting him, either,” the pastor said. “He died in the early 1940s, I believe, but you might find a couple of old-timers around here who still remember him. He married, buried, baptized, and shepherded this flock for over forty years. I can give you a few names. . . .”
“Please don’t trouble yourself. We’ve taken enough of your time. In fact, we’re on our way to see my mother’s sister Vera—”
“Yes, of course, Vera Schultz. One of our oldest members—and one of my favorite members too.”
They thanked him for his time and went outside to search the cemetery behind the church. Alongside Louise and Friedrich Schroder’s double tombstone was a much older one—their daughter Eva’s, who had died in October of 1918. The graves had been lovingly tended. Pots of tulips and hyacinths bloomed in a rainbow of color.
Grace stared at the date on her grandparents’ grave marker and felt a surge of anger toward her mother. “I was eighteen when they died,” she said aloud. “I grew up never knowing a single blood relative besides Mother, and all that time my grandparents lived just a few hours away!”
Suzanne looked up from where she knelt. She had brought a large pad of drawing paper with her to make rubbings of both grave markers. “You need to ask her why, Mom. She owes you an explanation.”
But as Grace glanced at the thriving church behind her and recalled the pastor’s words of praise for her grandfather, the bigger question in her mind was why Emma had rejected her godly father’s faith.
* * *
The Schultzes’ farm was a short drive down the winding river road from the church. The barn and stone farmhouse looked old but well kept, and Grace imagined that it looked much the same as it did seventy-six years ago when her grandfather went out in the flood to pray for the present-day Schultzes’ great-grandfather. Aunt Vera was waiting for them on her front porch. Grace was barely out of the car when Vera pulled her into her arms as if they’d known each other all their lives.
“Emma’s daughter! Oh, what a thrill it is to finally meet you at last.” She gave them such a warm, tearful welcome that even Suzanne, who was usually brisk and businesslike, succumbed to her warmth and returned her embrace.
When she finished hugging Suzanne, Aunt Vera couldn’t resist embracing Grace once again. “My, you look just like him . . .” she murmured.
“Like my father?”
“Why . . . yes . . .”
“The only photograph I’ve ever seen of Karl Bauer is Mother’s wedding picture,” Grace explained. “I’ve never been able to see a resemblance, myself . . . with his hair and eyes so dark and my hair so fair. Do you have any more pictures of him I could look at?”
Aunt Vera’s cheeks flushed rosy pink. “Goodness! I don’t know . . . Come inside and we can look.” As Grace followed her into the house, she felt the irrational urge to cling tightly to Aunt Vera’s hand, as if unwilling to lose sight of the first blood relative she’d ever met aside from her mother.
The farmhouse kitchen was as bright and sunny as Vera herself. It looked as though it had been decorated in the 1940s—with white metal cupboards, speckled gray counter tops, yellow walls, red polka dot curtains—and hadn’t been remodeled since. Aunt Vera poured coffee into mismatched mugs, and they sat in red vinyl chairs around a porcelain-topped table to drink it.
“My sister Emma was sunshine and laughter and song,” Aunt Vera said. “Everyone loved Emma. But, oh, that girl could get into mischief! It was like she just couldn’t help herself.”
Grace smiled. “You’ll be happy to know she hasn’t changed.”
Aunt Vera laughed. “Good. I’m glad. Oh, what grand fun she was!”
Grace studied Aunt Vera as she talked and saw the resemblance to Emma in her gestures and in the shape of her nose and jaw. Vera was seventy-four, and so round and jolly and white-haired she might have been a stand-in for Santa Claus’s wife. She had lived in this farmhouse since she’d married Robert Schultz, and now she shared it with her son Bob Jr. and her daughter-in-law Marilyn. Grace’s cousin-in-law was in her late forties, with short cotton-candy hair that was dyed a startling shade of tangerine—a mute testimony against do-it-yourself hair care products. Her makeup looked as though it had been applied with a tablespoon. Marilyn puttered sullenly around the kitchen as Aunt Vera talked, eyeing Grace and Suzanne as if they’d come to contest someone’s will.
“Emma used to call our escapades ‘adventures’,” Aunt Vera was saying. “‘Hey, Vera, do you feel like going on an adventure today?’ she would ask. I remember one time we went on a joyride in Karl’s car. Emma had never driven a car before in her life, but she just climbed behind the wheel and took off. Every time she changed gears the transmission sounded like a meat grinder. Poor Karl had his hands full with that girl!”
“What was Karl Bauer like?” Suzanne asked.
“Karl? I always liked Karl. I was only thirteen when they married, but he would bring me penny candy sticks from the store when he came courting Emma. And after they were married, he always treated me to a free lemon phosphate or an ice cream sundae whenever I went into his pharmacy. He was a friendly, outgoing man, always taking time to joke with his customers or inquire about their health. At the time, I was only vaguely aware that Emma was unhappy.”
“Why did she break so completely with your family?” Suzanne asked. “It seems odd that after the divorce Grandma Emma never came back to Bremenville to visit and never brought Mom back.”
“What did she tell you the reason was?” Aunt Vera asked carefully.
“She wouldn’t give me any reason at all,” Grace said. “That’s what’s so frustrating. I’d love to get to the bottom of it if I can so that you and Mother can be reunited someday.”
Vera seemed to consider her words before replying. “I believe Emma had an argument with Papa. Of course, no one would tell me the truth about what was going on, but I gathered that Papa wanted her to return to Karl and she refused. I think she stayed away after the divorce because she was afraid the disgrace of it would hurt our family. Respectable Christian women simply didn’t run off on their husbands—especially not a pastor’s daughter. Papa was so de
vastated by the whole mess that he resigned from the pulpit.”
“Did my mother know about that?” Grace asked.
Aunt Vera shrugged. “I don’t know. Of course in the end, the congregation refused to accept his resignation. They begged him to stay, so he did. But losing Emma grieved him as much as losing Eva had. Afterward Papa drew even closer to God and closer to his congregation. It was as if his own suffering helped him better understand their suffering. I remember him reading the Scriptures one Sunday, and he nearly broke down and wept right in front of everyone.” Vera stared sadly into space.
“Do you remember what the Scripture was?” Suzanne asked softly.
“Oh yes. I’ve never forgotten.” She paused, and for a moment it seemed as if she might weep too. “It was the verse in John where the woman had been caught in adultery and Jesus said, ‘Let he who is without sin cast the first stone.’”
The word adultery flew at Grace like a hot potato, suddenly tossed into her lap. She wanted to fling it far away, before it had time to scorch her heart, but it was too late.
Aunt Vera sighed. “Of course, there were so many horrible rumors flying around town about Emma that I suppose if I heard about them, Papa and the rest of the church must have heard them too.”
Suzanne sat forward in her chair. “What kind of rumors?”
“I won’t say,” Aunt Vera said with a quick shake of her head. “It isn’t Christian to repeat gossip and rumors. Especially concerning my own sister.”
“Aunt Vera, the rumors are fifty years old,” Suzanne said. “Besides, we already saw the divorce papers. We know that Karl claimed marital infidelity as the reason for the divorce. He must have been the one spreading the rumors.”
“Oh no, you have it all wrong. Karl would never do a thing like that, in spite of how much Emma hurt him when she left. He respected Papa too much to do such a thing. The Bauers were old family friends, you know. I don’t know where the rumors started, but they didn’t come from Karl.”
“Then why did the divorce papers say . . .”
“Well, he had to put something, didn’t he?” Aunt Vera was indignant. “They wouldn’t grant divorces for any old reason like they do nowadays.”
Grace glanced at Suzanne, but she wouldn’t meet her gaze. She drew a deep breath and plunged into the conversation. “My mother told me she left my father because she was pregnant with me and he didn’t want a baby. Do you know anything about that? Can you think of a reason why he wouldn’t have wanted me?”
Vera took a moment to refill their coffee cups before answering. “I didn’t even know Emma was wearing her apron high until Mama and I went to see her at Christmastime. That visit was one of the few secrets my mama ever kept from Papa. He had forbidden us to contact Emma, hoping that being cut off from everyone would bring her to her senses and back to Karl. But we took the train into the city to go Christmas shopping, and of course Mama went to see Emma. I was shocked when I saw that she was in a family way. I remember thinking, surely now she’ll go back to Karl. But she didn’t.”
“Do you know if my father ever saw me when I was a baby?”
“Karl? I don’t know. He’s the one who gave us Emma’s address and paid our train fare, so he obviously knew where she lived.”
“Was that the last time you saw my mother? That Christmas?” Grace asked.
“No, she came home when Papa died.”
“I don’t remember that at all,” Grace murmured.
“You were away at nursing school. Emma came alone. She was distraught because she and Papa had never reconciled. I remember how she wept and wept, saying she was sorry she had arrived too late.”
“What did your father die from?” Sue asked.
“A heart attack, but it was really God’s mercy that he died. It was 1943, you see, and right in the middle of the Second World War. He was a pacifist all his life, and the news of all the injustice and brutality killed him. He would read the reports of what was happening in Germany—he and Mama still had relatives there—and he just couldn’t bear the news. But God took him home before he could learn the full truth about Hitler’s atrocities. It would have broken his heart. He was seventy-four.”
“But Emma wasn’t feuding with her mother,” Grace said. “Why didn’t she come home after her father died? Why didn’t she bring me home?”
“Emma promised that she would, but then Mama died four months after Papa. The last time I saw Emma was at Mama’s funeral.”
“What did she die from?”
“That was God’s mercy too. He allowed her to go home with her husband. Before she died I remember asking, ‘How are you, Mama?’ and her eyes filled with tears and she said, ‘How do you think I am with my Friedrich in the grave?’ She loved him deeply. And he loved her.”
They all fell silent for a moment. Suzanne seemed to have run out of questions. Grace remembered her own two objectives and searched for a way to frame her next question.
“Aunt Vera, can you tell me anything at all that will help me understand why my mother left Karl and never went back?”
“No, I’m afraid I can’t help you. Emma and Karl are the only ones who really know what went on between the two of them, and he’s been dead for ten years now. Lung cancer. After that, Karl’s wife sold the drugstore. It’s an ice cream parlor and—”
“Wait a minute,” Suzanne said. “His wife? You mean Karl remarried?”
“Yes, he married a widow woman with a little boy. The boy later died when he was in his teens. Drowned in the river in a boating accident. A terrible tragedy.” Her gaze grew unfocused as she stared into the past. Suzanne’s next question brought her back.
“Does his wife still live around here?”
“No, I believe she moved down by Harrisburg, where her youngest son lives.”
“Karl Bauer had other children?” Grace asked in astonishment. For some reason, she’d always imagined her father as a child-hater, living alone all these years, as she and her mother had.
“Karl and his wife had two sons—well, three counting the boy who drowned. It was a shame that neither of them wanted the drugstore, though. Leo Bauer works for the phone company in Harrisburg, but Paul Bauer still lives here in town. He’s the principal of our grade school, in fact.”
Grace slumped in her chair. “I can’t believe it. I have brothers?”
* * *
Later, as they drove away from Aunt Vera’s house, Grace still struggled to absorb all that she had learned. “It seems almost miraculous to finally meet my relatives!” she said. “I spent my entire life with only a mother. Other kids had sisters and brothers, aunts and uncles, cousins and grandparents, but I had no one—until today.”
Aunt Vera had shown her photographs of her relatives—ancient ones of Friedrich and Louise and their families in Germany, Aunt Vera’s children and grandchildren and great-grandchildren, pictures of Aunt Sophie Mueller and her family. But they’d found none of Karl Bauer.
“I still can’t believe I have brothers,” Grace murmured.
“Which means I have uncles,” Suzanne added.
“Do you suppose my mother didn’t know about them, or she just didn’t want me to know?”
Suzanne looked at her watch. “It’s only three o’clock. Let’s go to the elementary school.”
“Oh, Sue, I couldn’t.”
“Why not? Isn’t this what we came here for? To find your family? You can ask Paul Bauer about your father, find out what he was really like.”
“If I didn’t know he existed, chances are he doesn’t know anything about me, either. It’s hardly fair to waltz into this man’s life and say, ‘Hello, I’m your long-lost sister.’ What if he never knew about Karl’s first wife?”
“In a small town like this? That’s highly unlikely.”
“I really don’t think we should bother him. I already regret opening this Pandora’s box even a crack. . . .”
They had paused at a stop sign, and Suzanne smacked the steering wheel with her f
ist. “You know, all this family secrecy garbage is really frying me! I want to meet Paul Bauer. Are you coming with me, or shall I drop you off at the motel?”
“I knew this trip was a mistake.”
“Mom, why are you so afraid of the truth? Would you rather live with a lie?”
The word adultery floated, unwelcome, through Grace’s mind again. “I’m fifty-five years old. I’d much rather live with what I’ve always known as the truth.”
“But I’m dying of curiosity. We can’t come this close to finding your father and turn back now. Let’s just drive over to the school and look for his son, all right? If it isn’t meant to be, then he’ll be home sick with the flu or something. If he is there . . .” She shrugged.
Grace met her daughter’s gaze. “Yes, Suzanne . . .? If he is there?”
“Then let’s meet him.”
It was a short drive to the one-story brick school building. It perched like an island on a sea of grass, separated from the cramped middle-class neighborhood of aging bungalows by a wide swath of green. Just as Suzanne and Grace pulled into the parking lot, hundreds of kids flooded out of the doors, squealing and shoving as they ran to board a long line of yellow school buses. Grace watched the pandemonium with a sick feeling, remembering her own daily walks home from school, enduring the taunts and jeers of her classmates. “Where’s your father, Grace?” “How come he doesn’t live with you?” Nearly fifty years later, she was still trying to answer that question.
They waited until the last bus pulled away, until the flag was lowered and folded for the night. Except for a few stragglers with bulging backpacks, the school grounds were quiet once again.
“Do you want to wait in the car, Mom?”
Grace shook her head, smiling faintly. “I always wanted a baby brother. I used to beg my mother endlessly for one. She rarely lost her temper, but that was a surefire way to make her do it.”