Chapter 29

Once the family came out of the Birkners’ house, they pushed Lina back out to the car and got her settled in. Marcus drove the car, and their grandparents rode in the back seat, just as they’d done on the drive to Bremen.  Peter rolled Lina’s empty wheelchair over to the pickup truck, easily hoisted it into the back, and then joined his parents in the truck, stepping lightly up into the cab and taking a seat next to his mother, who was sitting in the middle. 

When they arrived back home, it was already so late – after eleven – that everyone’s sole focus was on helping Lina out of the car and into the house, so that Ethel could get her ready for bed.  They were all dead tired, but, at the same time, each of them was also filled with a strange energy.  It was a mental alertness that was unfamiliar to them, and which made no sense, since Mrs. Birkner had not served any coffee or tea.  They all felt something in their bodies, but the something varied, and the intensity varied from person to person: Marcus barely noticed any physical sensations, but was surprised at his wakefulness. He also perceived a certain clarity regarding his situation, even though he couldn’t yet articulate it. Renate and Ulrich, too, just couldn’t get to sleep, so they lay awake, discussing the evening. 

At one point, Ulrich asked Renate to lay her hand on his arm and tell him whether she could feel the strong vibration he was sensing in his body.

“No,” she replied, after doing as he’d asked. “But maybe that’s because my own hand is tingling.”

“It’s odd, Renate,” he said then. “Mr. Groening was talking about the current – the Heilstrom, he called it, right?”

“Yes, that’s right.”

“Well, that’s what I feel when I’m amongst the trees,” Ulrich told her.  “I know I’ve always said that I feel God out there, feel God in the trees.” He saw Renate nod. “So is that what I’ve felt all these years? The Heilstrom?”

“I can’t say, my dear,” Renate replied, surprised at her own lack of certainty about this, after a lifetime of feeling certainty about everything.

“It felt pretty much the same,” Ulrich went on.  But then he noticed that Renate didn’t seem interested in exploring this fascinating topic.  She looked distracted.  “What is it?” he asked her.

“You know, it was strange,” Renate told him.  “There was a moment, when Mr. Groening was looking at each of us. Remember?” Ulrich nodded, and she went on. “Well, when he looked at me, I suddenly remembered Anna-Liese.”

Ulrich raised himself up on one elbow and looked at his wife with a shocked and concerned expression. “You did?”

Renate nodded. “I could see her face, Ulrich, so clearly. But not her face when she was a baby.” She paused. “Not when she was still alive.”

“How, then?”

“She looked older. Maybe ten? Eleven? But I knew it was her, Ulrich. I recognized her.”

Ulrich said nothing, but drew her to him.

“What can it mean?” Renate asked quietly.

“I don’t know,” Ulrich told her.  “You’re the expert when it comes to that kind of thing,” he said jokingly, although he could tell that this was nothing to make light of.

But Renate went on, as if she hadn’t noticed his tone, and she certainly hadn’t taken it amiss. “It was so, so long ago.  Why did I see her? An older her?”

“I can’t say,” Ulrich replied.  “But how did it make you feel when you saw her?”

Here Renate began crying.  Ulrich started to get worried, but she patted him on the arm. “At first, I felt a bit frightened. I’ve never seen her – that way, seen her face – since she died. I thought maybe she was coming to blame me.”

“No, no,” Ulrich said, seeking to comfort her. “You said it yourself. It was so long ago. If she wanted to blame you, she would have done it years ago.  And besides, she has nothing to blame you for.” He could feel Renate shaking her head.

“That’s not true. What happened was all my fault.” Now the tears poured out of her even more, and Ulrich held her tight as she cried.  The first, faint light was creeping into the sky by the time they finally drifted off to a restless sleep.

* * *

Viktor and Ethel were also too worked up to sleep.  Viktor was consumed with thoughts of the sensations he was feeling in his body.  Back in the Birkners’ house, when Groening came into the room, Viktor begun feeling hot all over. He’d been overly warm even before that, but once Groening began talking, he suddenly felt warmer than he had ever felt in his whole life, as if he was surrounded by a blazing fire. It also felt like flames were scorching him from the inside, especially in his stomach.  The pain from it was intense, right from the start, but he didn’t want to let on to anyone about it, not during the gathering, and especially not afterwards, because Lina was the one who was really suffering. They needed to get her home and into bed as soon as possible.  He was grateful that it was already dark by the time they were driving home, so that Ethel beside him in the truck couldn’t see his clenched jaw, or the way he gripped the steering wheel to keep his attention focused on the road.

But it wasn’t just heat that Viktor felt at the Birkners’ house, or pain in his stomach. Something also happened in his heart, although it was gone now.  If he hadn’t known better, he would have been certain he was having a heart attack. But he did know better. He recognized this pain: It was exactly what he’d felt in the woods the other week. Well, maybe not exactly, since he managed not to double over or scream or cry or vomit right there in the Birkners’ parlor, the way he did in the treehouse. But it was the same kind of pain as then. 

As unhappy as Viktor was to go through that again, he realized that something else about this second experience was familiar to him, too. Lying in bed now, with his stomach still burning inside, he noticed a little well of tenderness inside him, where the pains in his heart had been earlier.  That’s what he had felt after the afternoon in the treehouse: First the terrible dam opened up inside him, and all that pain and sadness came out, and then he suddenly begun to feel alive again.  Just a bit of joy emerged at first, just a bit of tenderness and love for Ethel. That was how it started. And over the next couple of weeks, he noticed that he was feeling more loving toward her. They were falling asleep each night holding hands, or embracing. 

Tonight, at the Birkners’, when Groening looked at him, when the pain in his heart began, and grew, that pain was accompanied – which made no sense to Viktor at all – by the sweetest feeling of love for every member of his family.  Lying in bed with Ethel now, Viktor recalled how he looked at each of them, one by one, as they sat in the parlor listening with rapt attention to Bruno Groening, and how he was overcome by such a wave of gratitude for each of them, and by the strong wish to make everything all right for all of these ones who were so dear to him.

Of course, he didn’t express any of this to Ethel, or ask her what he had asked himself: Could these pains be the Regelungen pains Groening spoke of? He contented himself with drawing his wife closer to him, holding his arm around her shoulder as she rested against his chest.  But he needn’t have worried that Ethel would ask him anything about his own experience that night.  She seemed to be floating on the clouds.  It’s a good thing I’ve got an arm around her! Viktor thought to himself with a smile.  This really was the Ethel of the period of their courtship and early marriage: so joyful and vibrant.  The only thing that tempered her flight into the ether was her concern about Lina.

“Viktor,” Ethel said, “she was never like this – in this much pain, I mean. Not even at the beginning, right after the accident.”

“They gave her some kind of pain medicine then, didn’t they?” he asked, as he gently stroked her blonde curls.

“Yes, in the hospital they did,” she told him. “But before that, right after it happened, before we got her to the hospital, she didn’t seem to be having any pain at all.”

“That happens,” Viktor said, “especially with serious injuries. I don’t know why it is. The brain seems to shut down. It’s as if the person doesn’t even understand that they’ve been terribly injured.”

Ethel realized that he must know this from the war, so she didn’t ask him to explain.  “But,” she did ask, “why would she be having pain now, if she didn’t have it then?  This kind of horrible pain?”

“And in her legs,” Viktor added thoughtfully.

Ethel nodded and raised herself up so that she could see his face. “She felt something in her legs tonight, Viktor.  For the first time in four years.  Surely that must mean something, something good.”

Viktor wrapped his other arm around her and leaned down to kiss the top of her head, so tenderly that he saw tears come to her eyes. 

“I do think it means something,” he said softly.  “Let’s pray to God that it means she’s going to get better.”

*          *          *

Alone in his own room, Peter undressed, and pulled back the bedcovers. Then he sat down and swung his right leg up up onto the bed. He followed with the left and lay down, pulling just the sheet over himself, since the summer night air was still warm.      He had barely closed his eyes – even though he, like the rest of his family, felt too full of energy to sleep – when a thought came into his mind.  He had not noticed it at the time, when they were getting ready to leave the Birkners’ house, or when they arrived back home, but now he realized something.  He’d been the one who helped Lina out of her chair and into the car. Then he’d rolled her chair over to the truck and stowed it there.  After that, he had hopped right up into the front seat of the pickup.  And hopped right down once they got home.  He’d rushed to get Lina’s chair for her, and he’d pulled her up out of the car and into her seat. Then he’d pushed her into the house.  And all – this was the part that gave him pause – without limping, without any pain whatsoever in his mangled right leg.

Peter stopped breathing for a moment or two, and went over all the details in his mind again.  Yes, there really had been no pain. He was sure of it.  Still lying down, he took a deep breath. Then he began slowly bending his right knee and tilting his leg this way and that.  It didn’t hurt.  Next, he sat up in bed, pulled the covers off, and swung first his left, and then his right, leg over the side, until both feet rested on the floor. He did it effortlessly, with no discomfort.  His stomach fluttering now, he stood up and looked down at his right leg, before taking a few steps across the room.  Still no pain. He strode back and forth across the room, faster and faster.  Nothing hurt. 

Next, he lifted his left leg and stood there on his right foot. He hadn’t been able to do that since before the war, because the muscles had been so damaged, and the break a bad one.  That’s what the doctors had said.  But now, he was standing on his “bad” leg. Eager to test what was now possible, he lifted himself up onto his tip toes, and back down again.  It was as if he’d never been wounded. After a few rounds of lifting and lowering himself, Peter suddenly found himself hopping on that right leg, hopping lightly and effortlessly, just the way he’d done as a child. He hopped around the room, his chest bursting with joy.  He had to stop himself from laughing out loud.  He didn’t want to wake anyone.   How? he asked himself in amazement, tears running down his cheeks? How did it happen?

In the room kittycorner from Peter’s, Lina lay in her bed, eyes swollen from all her crying, her jaw clenched from the pain that was coursing ruthlessly through her legs. One hand clutched the bedsheet, and in the other she held the tin foil ball Bruno Groening had given her. “Trust and believe.” That’s what he told me. “The divine power helps and heals.” Squeezing the ball tight with her fingers, she began repeating these two sentences, over and over, over and over. When the morning light streamed through the curtains of her bedroom window and Ethel came in to help her get up, Lina was still holding the tin foil ball, and Ethel could tell by her face that she hadn’t slept at all.  Her face was contorted by pain, but when Ethel leaned over to kiss her daughter on the forehead, Lina looked up at her and whispered, in a tired, but determined voice, “Trust and believe, Mama. The divine force helps and heals.”

*          *          *

The next day was Friday, and the family assembled for their usual breakfast of coffee and sweet rolls before Ingrid headed off to school and Marcus to the office in Varel. Despite the excitement of the previous evening – or perhaps because most of them had not slept so much during the night –no one seemed eager to talk about their visit to the Birkners, or Bruno Groening.  They could all see that Lina was in excruciating pain: Her face was pale, and she sat at the table with her eyes closed, except when she was eating.  Her left hand, which lay in her lap, was wrapped around the tin foil ball Groening had given her.

Kristina, who had helped Lina get washed and dressed that morning, looked across the table, hoping to catch her friend’s eye.  In the nearly four years since she and Ingrid had come to live with the Gassmanns, she had seen Lina hostile, bored, angry, lacking in hope, and full of hope.  But until this morning, she had never seen her in pain, as she was now.

“My God, Lina!” Kristina exclaimed when she walked into Lina’s room and saw her friend sitting, staring glassy-eyed at the door – not at Kristina – one hand gripping the wheelchair’s arm, the other folded around the tin foil ball.  Her lips were moving slightly, but Kristina couldn’t hear any sound.  “What is it?” Kristina asked her. “What did you say?”

Now Lina shifted her gaze to Kristina’s face.  It seemed to take her a few seconds to recognize Kristina, who had to repeat her question once more before Lina answered.

“Trust and believe,” she said, so softly that Kristina just barely caught the words. “The divine power helps and heals.”

Not knowing how to respond, Kristina just nodded.

“Mr. Groening told me that last night before he left,” Lina explained, having realized that Kristina wanted an explanation, but hesitated to ask.

“Ahhh.” Kristina stood looking at Lina for a bit before continuing.  She thought about asking whether she was in pain, but that was clear without even talking about it, so she forged ahead, to the heart of the matter. “Lina,” she said, crouching down next to the wheelchair, so she could look up into Lina’s eyes, “what do you think the pain means?”

“Kristina,” Lina said in a tired voice, “this is the first time I’ve felt anything in my legs in almost four years…”

“That has to be a good sign!” Kristina burst in, eager to encourage her friend.

  “That I’m feeling something?” Lina nodded. “I believe that. I do. But I’m also so scared, Kristina.”

Now Kristina saw that tears were forming in Lina’s eyes. She placed her hand on Lina’s, the one holding the ball, and noticed that her own hand began to tingle immediately.

“Why are you scared?”

“What if this is the way it’s going to be, for the rest of my life?”  Lina grabbed Kristina’s arm with her free hand. “What if it keeps on hurting like this, and I still can’t walk?  Or if I am able to walk, but the pain stays?” She looked at Kristina with genuine fear in her eyes.

Kristina stood up and wrapped her arms around Lina.  “No, no, it won’t be like that, Lina!  It can’t!”  Now she felt tears coming to her eyes, too. For she wondered – just for a brief second –  whether Groening could have somehow harmed Lina. What if he is a charlatan after all? But then she forced this thought out of her mind. She didn’t really believe it, anyway, but even if this was the case, mentioning her thought to Lina would only make things worse. So many people have tried to rob her of her hope and faith. I won’t be one of them. I have to trust and believe, too.

“But, Kristina, it might be like that – that I’m doomed to feel this way forever!  And then what will I do? I don’t think I could go on living like that.”

Kristina had nothing to say to this, so she just kept hugging Lina as she cried.

“That’s what I’ve been thinking about, all night long,” Lina said finally. “Here is how it goes for me: First the pain comes – really, it never goes away. It’s there – strong, strong strong. And I get so frightened that it’ll be this way forever.  Then I repeat, Trust and believe. The divine power helps and heals. And the pain quiets down a little. Then it starts up all over again. Again and again, that’s what I’m thinking and feeling, Kristina.” She leaned her head forward so that it rested against Kristina’s shoulder.

“So when you say that, it helps?” Kristina asked. 

Lina nodded.  “I realized that, toward morning, so now I’ve taken to repeating it.  It helps keep the fear out of my mind.  Not totally, but it helps.”

“Trust and believe,” Kristina said, trying out the words aloud. “The divine power helps and heals.” Then she repeated the phrases a few more times. This felt right to her, and the doubts she herself had been struggling with faded away.  “Let’s just keep saying that, all day long, if we have to.”  She took Lina’s hands in hers. 

“They’ll all think I’m crazy,” Lina replied, and she even managed a thin smile.

“Let them!” Kristina told her. “We need to do whatever we have to do to help you make it through this next week, until we take you to see Mr. Groening again.”

“Oh, Kristina,” Lina cried, “but what if we go back and my legs hurt even more?  I really couldn’t stand that.  I couldn’t!”  The look of fear returned to her eyes.

“Trust and believe,” Kristina told her sternly.  “And remember all those people who got healed in Herford.”

Lina looked her in the eye. “What if that was all a lie?” she said softly. “People planted in the audience to pretend they were healed?”

Oh, so that’s occurred to her, too… Kristina stood up and put her hands on her hips. “But what about that man last night, Mr. Handler? You saw with your own eyes how his leg was healed.  You saw the way he walked around the room, how Groening broke his cane!”

“He could have been a plant, too,” Lina whispered, as if simultaneously wanting to confide in Kristina, but also not voice her doubts.

But Kristina shook her head vehemently. Her own mind was clear now. No doubts!   “No, Lina! No!  I won’t believe that, and you shouldn’t, either!” She pointed at the tin foil ball in Lina’s hand. “How could that be fake, whatever it is that makes my hand tingle when I touch it?”

Lina’s mouth opened in surprise. “I’ve been holding it all night. It makes my whole body vibrate, just like I felt at the Birkners’. You feel that, too?”

Kristina nodded. “And it gives me a peaceful feeling, a feeling of being loved. He couldn’t fake that, could he?” Kristina asked.

Lina shook her head. “I feel that, too, despite how much my legs hurt.”

The two of them were silent for a moment. Then Kristina cried, “But Lina – the newspaper clipping!  We both felt something from that.  For me it was a tingling. And happiness. And I felt that last night in the room. You did, too. I know it. You told Mr. Groening.”

“Yes, but…”

“What I’m saying is this: Even if somehow he could put something in the room that could make us feel that way – although who knows how that would be possible – even if he did, how could he put something into a sheet of newspaper? Something that would cause us both to feel that way when we held it, when we looked at his photo?”

Lina considered this, stopping for a moment as a wave of pain flooded through her.  Then she said, “Yes, you have to be right. He couldn’t fake that.”

Kristina saw a bit of light come back into her friend’s eyes.

“All right then,” she told Lina, stern again. “Then we don’t spend a single minute thinking any more about whether it’s all true or not. You just hold that ball and remind yourself of what Mr. Groening told you. We’ll say it together when we’re working or walking. Agreed?”

Lina nodded. Then she added, “You really felt all of that last night, too, Kristina?” she asked quietly.

“I did.  It felt like a wave came up from the floor, into my feet and up through my body.  A wave of energy, I guess I’d call it.  Like the tingling I felt when I held the clipping, but stronger. Wider, I’d say, if that makes any sense.”

“It does.”

Now it was Kristina’s turn to look off across the room, as if she was thinking back to the evening before and trying to regain full awareness of what she’d experienced then.

“And I felt such calm, Lina.  For the first time since the war began, I felt at peace.  It’s as if a load has been lifted off my shoulders. All the worries. I’ve worried so much about Ingrid, about what I’ll do if another war comes. Even about how I can manage to stay here.” She could see that Lina was about to object, to reassure her, but she shook her head. “I know what you want to say, that we are like family now, that we can stay here forever.  But Lina, I have dreams all the time, where I’m rushing to pack things up, waking Ingrid up to drag her out into the night to flee.” She looked at Lina and took her hands again. “But last night, when Mr. Groening was talking to us, I started to feel so light. That wave – it was more of a trickle, really, but it was still there – it flowed through my body, and I had a feeling, that…  No, I knew it. Everything will be okay. Everything is okay. For the first time since the war began, I went to bed last night feeling at ease, and really knowing that we can stay here with you all.”

“That’s so wonderful, Kristina,” Lina told her. “But I’m so sorry.”

“Whatever for?”

“That I never knew you felt that way.  I mean, I knew you were happy to be living here, to have a more normal life again. But I didn’t know you had those dreams, that you were still so worried. I’ve been so consumed with my own state that I never asked about yours. Forgive me.”

“No, no. There’s nothing to forgive. I have to tell you, Lina, I wasn’t fully aware myself of how strong the worry has been, until it lifted last night. I guess I just lived with it.  But even if I had fully realized it, I wouldn’t have said anything.  After all,” she said with a smile, “it’s not the way we are, we Germans, right?”

Lina shook her head, and knew that she didn’t even need to ask Kristina not to share the conversation they’d just had.  And when she happened to open her eyes and look over at Kristina during breakfast, Kristina blinked once at her, and Lina could see her lips silently mouthing Mr. Groening’s phrases, encouraging her.  That was a good thing, too, because in the next moment, Marcus, holding a hard-boiled egg in his left hand, began gesturing toward Lina with his right.

“I know we don’t talk about things in this family,” he began sarcastically, “but don’t we have to talk about this?”

“What precisely do you mean?” Viktor asked in a flat tone. He had hoped they would be able to get through breakfast, at least, without this conversation.

Marcus tapped the arm of Lina’s wheelchair with the egg, to crack i. “This!  The fact that she is still using this!”

“First of all,” Ethel told him sharply, “you’re talking about your sister, who has a name. Lina.”

Marcus raised his hands in his familiar gesture of mock surrender, then put the egg back down on his plate and directed a challenging gaze at his mother. “And second of all?”

Ethel stared him down.  “Second of all, why do we have to talk about it at all? Mr. Groening asked us all to come back next week, and –“

Shaking his head, Marcus brought his hands to his forehead and ran them back, smoothing his hair. “That charlatan?” he said with a smirk, looking around the table.

“Don’t say that,” Lina told him softly.

“Why not? Let’s call a spade a spade, for once, in this family!”

“Marcus, please!” Renate asked, even reaching toward him. But he just looked at her hand as it approached him and kept talking.

“I agreed with this insane plan to humor you all,” he said.  “But now it’s clear that the experiment has failed. Why can’t we just admit it and get on with our lives?” They all heard the bitterness that had crept into his tone.

“No, Marcus,” Viktor replied, an edge to his voice now, too. “You agreed because there was something in it for you if Lina was healed. You’d be able to stay at your job. Remember?”

Marcus knew that his father was trying to embarrass him, but he wasn’t going to go down that road. “But now the whole thing is irrelevant, because Lina’s never getting out of that chair. She’s stuck there.  All because that fake, Groening, took you all in. And I’ll be stuck here on the homestead for the rest of my life, too.”

At this point, Ulrich and Viktor rose to their feet in unison. But before they could speak, Peter suddenly stood up, too. He’d been sitting at the opposite end of the table from Marcus, on the other side, next to Viktor, and no one had noticed that his shoulders and face went tense when Marcus began his tirade.  The last thing anyone expected was for Peter to get involved in a dispute, even verbally, and much less, physically.  So, all eyes turned to him, and they all fell silent.

“Groening is not a fake,” Peter said in a soft, but strong voice. 

“Peter,” Lina told him, “you don’t have to protect me. I know it looks bad –“

“I’m not protecting you,” Peter replied.  “Well, I am, I guess, but what I’m saying is that I know Groening is on the up and up.”

Marcus guffawed, and they all looked back to him. “Right.  And just how do you know that?” He shook his head, picked the boiled egg up again, which he’d peeled in the meantime, and shoved it into his mouth whole.

“There was that Mr. Handler last night,” Renate put in. “The one whose leg was healed.  We all saw it!”

Marcus shook his head again and spoke with his full mouth, but they all understood. “A plant.  Handler never had an injury in his life.”

“And the woman behind me,” Kristina boldly reminded him.  “Her pain went away.”

Marcus rolled his eyes. “So she said.  I can’t believe you were all taken in by him.”

“But thousands were healed in Herford,” Lina said, and then, silently, kept repeating in her mind, Trust and believe. The divine power helps and heals.

Marcus was about to offer a retort, when everyone noticed that Peter was now standing near the corner of the table, between Ethel and Ulrich, in the middle of the kitchen floor.

“And not just in Herford,” Peter said.

“What’s that supposed to mean?” Marcus asked, not even turning to look at his brother.

“This,” Peter replied simply.  Then he slowly lifted his left leg and stood there, balancing on his right leg, the one everyone knew was his “bad” leg.  At first no one grasped the significance of this posture. It was only when Peter began hopping on his right leg that it slowly dawned on them.  Ethel started out by wondering why Peter was jumping up and down like a schoolboy, but ended by springing from her seat and grabbing him by the elbow. Even so, she couldn’t get any words out. Nor could any of the rest of them.  Marcus finally deigned to turn his head, and when he saw what Peter was doing, his mouth fell open. Bits of hard-boiled egg dropped out and onto his shirt.

Peter stopped hopping and proceeded to walk the length of the kitchen, from the back door to the fireplace. His gait was as smooth as it had been before the war. 

Ingrid was the first to speak. “Mama,” she said, leaning over to Kristina, “Can I hop, too?” Kristina looked at her, as if she hadn’t even heard her daughter, and then shook her head.

“Peter?” Lina asked finally. “What –“

But he put up his hand and said to them all, “That’s not all.  Look at this.”  He walked through the doorway into the addition to the house. Although only Renate could see what was happening from her seat, all of them could hear that Peter was climbing the stairs to the second floor.  They could hear the sound of his footfalls on the wooden steps, moving steadily and evenly up, and then back down again.

When he reentered the kitchen, his face flushed and his eyes shining, with a broad smile on his face, everyone was speechless for a long moment, even Marcus.  Then Viktor and Ulrich, who had remained standing following Marcus’ earlier remarks, both made their way over to him.  A moment later, everyone was standing around him, except for Marcus, who remained seated on principle, and Lina, who had backed her wheelchair up and rolled over next to Peter. 

“You see, Marcus,” Peter said to his brother, speaking strongly and clearly now, “Groening really can heal. How could he have faked this?”

  A chorus of voices asked him to explain how and when it had happened, and he told them the whole story of when he had realized he was healed, and of his nighttime gymnastics.

“You should have awakened us,” Renate said.  “Our room is right across from yours.”

“You should have told us all!” Ulrich added, realizing too late, from the awkward look on Peter’s face, and from the way Lina had bent her head down, why it was that Peter had kept the news to himself.

In the silence that followed her grandfather’s words, Lina raised her head back up. She reached over and took Peter’s hand in hers.

“I understand why you didn’t wake the whole household,” she told him tenderly. “You’re always trying to protect me.  But you should have told us right away.”

Peter, who was experiencing a mixture of elation at his own healing and despair at the knowledge of how his success would affect his dear sister, leaned down and hugged her tightly around the shoulders.  At this gesture of loving affection, she began to cry, but then hastened to reassure them all.

“No, it’s all right. I am so happy for you, Peter.  It’s a miracle!”

Kristina, who was standing behind Lina’s chair now and also next to Marcus’ chair, spoke up. “But not just that.” They all turned to look at her. “Don’t you see? It proves that Mr. Groening isn’t a fake.”

Renate nodded. “Yes, it certainly does. The living proof is right before us!” She wrapped an arm around Peter’s waist and hugged him to her.

“And if Peter has been healed,” Kristina went on, more outspoken in this moment than she had been in her four years with this family, “then Lina can be, too.”

“Yes, yes!” Ethel affirmed. “She will be healed, too.”

“We’ll see Mr. Groening again next week,” Renate added. “You just have to hold out until then, Lina, dear.”

At this point, Ingrid, who saw no reason why she shouldn’t have some fun, if a miracle had just occurred, wedged her way between Renate and Peter and took Peter’s hand.

“Uncle Peter,” she said, “let’s hop, together!” 

This brought a laugh from everyone, even from Marcus.  Although he had remained seated during the flurry of activity and excitement around Peter, scowling, as if he was furious at having been proved wrong, now he pushed back his chair. He stood up and slipped an arm around Kristina’s waist. She turned and gave him a questioning glance, surprised that he would show her this affection in front of his family. She was also taken aback by the change she saw in him. Two minutes earlier, he had been filled with vitriol, but now his eyes were bright, his smile genuine.

“Hop to your heart’s content, Brother!” he called out to Peter, raising his right arm in an expansive, celebratory gesture.

Everyone turned to look at him, wary that his remark was but another sarcastic attack. But the change in his demeanor struck them all, too.

“Now that you’re back on your feet, soon you’ll be back in the forest, too.  Which means I’ll be staying in Varel for good!”

At this, the family members fell into an awkward silence. Marcus seemed not to understand why.  He felt Kristina slip out of his embrace. 

“Ingrid, come on,” she said a bit curtly, “let’s get you off to school.”

Even Ulrich sounded gruff when he said to Marcus, “Don’t you have a car to get back to your boss?”

Lina, without a word to anyone, slowly turned her chair. Rolling through the kitchen door that Kristina held open for her after she and Ingrid had gone out, she pushed herself down the ramp and into the yard, over to where the path led into the forest.  There she sat, squeezing the tin foil ball in her right hand, and soundlessly repeating Groening’s phrase over and over again.

It wasn’t long before Peter came out of the house, too. But instead of heading into the workshop as he usually did following breakfast, he strode over to where Lina was sitting and crouched down beside her, resting on his knees.

“Lina, I’m so sorry,” he said quietly, laying his hand on her arm.

When she turned to him, he saw not the blame he had feared he’d find in her eyes, but love.  Certainly, he could see the pain on her face, too, but he realized now that he was not the cause of it.

“Peter,” she asked quietly, “why are you apologizing? You have nothing to be sorry for!”

“But I do,” he told her. “For getting healed while you’re still in this damned chair!” 

“How could that be your fault?”

Peter shrugged. “I don’t know… Believe me, Lina, last night at the Birkners’, I wasn’t thinking of myself at all!  The whole time, I was just thinking of you and asking Mr. Groening for you to be healed.  I didn’t stop doing that – not for a single second!” 

“Peter,” Lina said firmly, “it’s not your fault that I wasn’t healed last night!”

“But then whose fault is it?” Peter replied, almost angry now. “Damn it, Lina! It should have been you, not me!”

Lina shook her head. “Don’t talk like that, Peter.  I’m really, truly, so happy that you got healed.”

“If I could trade places with you, you know I would,” Peter told her, grasping her arm more firmly now.

“I know you would, dear Peter,” Lina said, her voice as full of love as her eyes, even though her whole body seemed to be tensing with pain now.  “But I wouldn’t want you to.”

“Why not?  You should want that. I was the one who crippled you in the first place. It should be me who’s in that chair, not you!”

She pulled her arm from his grasp and, taking hold of the wheelchair’s wheels, turned herself so that she was facing him.

“How can you say that, Peter?” she said, leaning forward and taking his face in her hands. “It wasn’t your fault I got hurt.  I don’t blame you!”

“But I still blame myself,” he said. 

“Please, we’ve been over that! It wasn’t your fault! And besides,” Lina went on, “did you see the look on Marcus’ face this morning when you got up and started hopping around? Good God, Peter, you proved him wrong!  In front of everyone!” Here Lina began to smile as she remembered the scene.

Peter smiled back at her and nodded his head. “I have to admit that it did feel good to get the better of him, for once.”

“It’s not just that,” Lina told him. “Seeing you this way – the new you! – gives me hope, just like Mama and Grandma and Kristina said.  Hope that I can be healed, too.”

“I believe it, too!” Peter said earnestly.

“But you don’t know how many doubts kept rushing into my head last night, Peter.”

“Because of your pain?”

Lina nodded.  “And because I felt like a failure, somehow.”

“Why a failure?”

“Because that Mr. Handler got healed, and the woman behind Kristina, too.  And all I got was pain. The thought kept coming into my brain that I did something wrong, and that’s why I wasn’t healed, too.”

“Oh, God, Lina,” Peter cried, grasping her hands that were still cupping his face, “And then I come in this morning and announce that I got healed, too. I’m so sorry!”

“Stop that!” Lina told him sharply.  “You are my hope, don’t you understand? Now I can watch you walk, as if nothing ever happened to you in the war, and that reminds me that Mr. Groening is not a fake, not a charlatan.  You are living proof of that for me.”

As Peter listened to her speak, he noticed that his left cheek was feeling very warm beneath Lina’s palm, and that she was holding something against his cheek. Reaching up and taking her hand, he saw the tin foil ball that Groening had given her the night before.

“It felt so warm where it was touching my cheek!” he told her, leaning over and looking at it with curiosity.  “Is it just tin foil?”

She grasped it between her thumb and forefinger. “I think so.  But I feel heat when I hold it, too. And tingling. The way I felt it in the room last night.” She held it out to him. “Here, hold it yourself.”

Peter hesitated at first. “But Groening gave it to you,” he said.  But when Lina moved it toward him once more, he opened his hand so that she could lay it onto his palm. He felt the warmth again, and then a slight tingling appeared, first in his hand and then up through his entire arm.

“Did you feel that at the Birkners’?” Lina asked him.

“I’m not sure,” he told her.  “I don’t really recall feeling anything then. I was concentrating on watching Groening and watching you, too, to see if anything was changing. So, maybe I just wasn’t paying attention to what I was feeling, even when he asked us to do that.  But I feel it now, holding this.”  He closed his eyes and sat crouched there like that for a few moments, taking in the sensations that were flowing not just in his arm now, but through other parts of his body, too.  When he looked back up at Lina’s face, their eyes met, and Peter felt a great joy.  He could see that she felt the same way.

“You know what this is?” he asked her, indicating the ball.

  “Besides just a tin foil ball, you mean?”

Peter nodded, and Lina shook her head.  Then he leaned forward,

“It’s a fairy rune,” he said, a conspiratorial smile on his face.

Lina laughed now, a sweet, tinkling laugh that reminded Peter of their mother’s. “How did I not realize that?” she asked him, opening her eyes wide and then winking at him.

“I don’t know!” Peter replied. “It’s obvious!” He was so happy to see her smiling. “And do you know what this means?  This part here?” He pointed to a series of small wrinkles on the ball’s surface that did, in fact, resemble tiny versions of their old fairy runes’ letters.

Lina leaned over to scrutinize the wrinkle-letters, eager to play along.  She looked back up at Peter.

“No, I don’t.” She couldn’t wait to hear what he’d say.

“Hope,” Peter replied, with an impish grin, holding his sister’s eyes with his own. “Just the same as on our runes.”  He handed the ball back to Lina, who brought it up close to her eyes and examined it.

“You’re absolutely right,” she told him, taking his hand in hers now. “How did I not realize that, either?”  And when she began to cry, a frown came to Peter’s face. He was about to apologize for upsetting her, but she shook her head. “Mr. Groening knows us well, doesn’t he? To give me a fairy rune?”

“And thank goodness I was here to interpret it for you!” Peter said, smiling again now.

Lina nodded. “Yes, thank God.”

Peter lowered himself down until he was sitting on the ground, with his knees bent. He wrapped his arms around his knees and clasped his hands together, marveling at how comfortable he felt.  Lina, who had seen her brother struggle over the past four years to find a position in which he could comfortably sit or stand, was struck by how at ease he looked.

“So,” she asked him, almost gingerly, “your leg doesn’t hurt anymore?”

Peter shook his head. “It isn’t just that I can move it normally again. There’s not the least bit of pain.”  He didn’t want to go into it in detail, fearing that Lina might feel discouraged.  But she forged ahead.

“How did you realize you’d been healed, anyway?” she asked, and Peter could tell she was truly curious.  So he told her once more the story of what had happened when he’d gotten into bed the night before.  She smiled as he told her how he’d been hopping all over his bedroom.

“I can’t believe I didn’t hear you!” she said. “Or Grandma and Grandpa.  They’re just a stone’s throw away from your room.”

“But their hearing isn’t as good as yours,” he replied, and they both laughed.

For a few minutes, they both directed their gaze into the forest, which was coming alive in the early morning light, innumerable insects and spider webs visible in the thin rays of sunshine that made their way to the spaces between the trees.

“It’s so beautiful, isn’t it?” Lina asked, her voice calm.

“The forest? Yes.”

“Even though I haven’t been able to go in there,” Lina went on, “just sitting here these four years has helped me a lot.”  She looked over at Peter.  “Even from here I can feel God. Not as much as when I was amongst the trees, of course.  But I can still feel Him.”

Peter nodded.  Then his mouth opened, as if a thought had just come to him, and he jumped – easily! – to his feet.  He stood so that his back was to Lina, right in front of her chair.  Then he crouched down once more and bent his arms so that his hands stretched back toward Lina.

“Lean forward and put your arms around my neck,” he said to her. “Can you do that?”

“I… I don’t know,” she said, perplexed as to what he intended. “I can try.  But why?”

He turned and looked back over his shoulder at her. 

“Remember back after the accident, when I said I wished I could carry you to the treehouse?”

“Yes, but…”

“Well, now I can carry you.”

“But, no, Peter!” Lina cried.  “You’re not strong enough!”

He turned around again. “I don’t believe that, Lina!  I’m healed!  I am strong enough.  Do you doubt that Groening healed me entirely?”

This gave Lina pause.  She didn’t want to doubt that, because then she might start doubting that she could be completely healed, too…

“All right,” she said, finally. “Let’s try it. But if you get too tired –“

“Don’t even say that!” Peter told her.  “Just lean forward and put your hands around my neck.  I’ll reach back and hold onto you under your knees. And with any luck, I’ll be able to tip you forward and walk that way.”

“A piggy back ride,” Lina said, her voice growing light again.

“That’s right,” Peter told her. “Just like when you were a little girl.”

And that is exactly what they did.  It took a couple tries for Peter to lean forward the right amount so that he could both get Lina squarely onto his back and slip his arms beneath her knees without them getting caught on her skirts. But then, suddenly, there they were, moving slowly, but surely along the path that led into the forest. 

Lina was still holding the tin foil ball in her right hand, which made it harder for her to hold onto Peter, but he didn’t mind having it press against his collarbone. Quite the opposite, really: It helped him feel stronger, somehow. Since coming back from the war, he’d never hauled this much weight around, so he was surprised at how easy it was for him to carry Lina through the woods. It felt to him like Bruno Groening was walking along the path with them, helping him carry Lina, helping her hold onto him.

When they got to the old beech tree, Peter was all set to try to climb the ladder with Lina on his back, but she wouldn’t hear of it.

“That ladder may hold one of us, but it’ll never hold us both,” she told him, laughing. “Just lower me down here, and I’ll lean against the trunk.”

And so it was that Lina and Peter came to be sitting at the foot of the beech tree that had played such an important role in their parents’ lives.

“Remember how Mama would tell how she and Uncle Hans used to play up there when they were little?” Lina asked, leaning her head back to look up at the logs that formed the floor of the treehouse.

Peter nodded. “They played Hansel and Gretel, right?”

“I know she said they played that when they went out in the woods and built little lean-tos to play in, but probably they did it up there, too. It’d be easy to pretend that was a witch’s house, don’t you think?”

“I do!” Peter looked up, too, and reached out a hand to take hold of the rope ladder.  “Why do you think you and I never played Hansel and Gretel?” he asked as he absentmindedly swung the ladder to and fro.

Lina shrugged and stared off into the woods, noticing how happy she felt being out amongst her dear trees again, after such a long absence. Then a thought came into her mind.  More of a memory, really, of their childhood.

“Maybe it was because we didn’t need to make up a witch.  We had a real, live terrifying creature right at home.”

Peter turned and saw that she was looking at him.  She held his gaze and then slipped her arm through his.

“You mean Marcus?” Peter asked her finally.

“Mmhmm.”  She looked away. “God, I’m sorry to say that.”

“But it was true, Lina. And you’re right. We didn’t need to invent a witch.  We needed to escape one.”

They both sat silent for several minutes, each taking in the freshness of the morning air, listening to the insects that flew around them, and delighting in the smell of the earth beneath them. 
            “You’re right,” Lina told him at last.  “This – not just the treehouse, but the whole forest, our fairy runes, all of it – it was our sanctuary, wasn’t it?”

Peter nodded.  “It really was.” He swung the rope ladder again.  “I don’t think I ever told you the feeling that came over me every time we climbed up the ladder and then pulled it up behind us.”

“No, I don’t recall you ever telling me that. What was it?”

“It felt like such a relief. I knew we were safe up there. Safe from him.  That he wouldn’t be able to get us if we just scrambled up there and hauled up the ladder.”

“I did notice that you always seemed to run the last little bit to the treehouse, that you always hurried me to climb up. I just thought it was part of a game. Sometimes we pretended wolves were chasing us. Remember?”

“I do.”

“But it wasn’t a game you were playing, was it? You really were scared.”

Peter nodded.  “I was. For myself. But more for you. You were so defenseless.”

“But you were the one he took everything out on. I don’t think I was ever really in danger. I was so scared of him, but I don’t think he would ever have hurt me, not really.”

Peter’s face grew stern now. “I would have killed him if he had.”  He looked at Lina, extracted his arm from hers and wrapped it around her shoulder. “I mean, really. I told him so. That if he ever laid a hand on you, I would kill him in his sleep.”

Lina stared at him, her eyes wide and her mouth open in shock. “You did?”

“Yeah.  I don’t know why he believed me, but he did.  Maybe because he sensed I really would do it. And I would have.”  He tightened his arm around her shoulders and pulled her toward him.

“My God, Peter,” Lina said quietly. “I never knew that. Never had any idea.”

“You couldn’t see how truly monstrous he was, Lina.  I saw it, even before you were born. The things he said and did. The anger in him.”

“I saw that, the anger. And felt it.  He didn’t have to actually do anything to me.  I felt that he wanted to. But he took it out on you, instead.  But why didn’t you fight back when he attacked you?”

“I didn’t believe I had any choice.  Doesn’t make much sense, does it? It was like an unspoken bargain I made with him. As if we both understood that his hatred had to expressed somehow – that he just couldn’t hold it inside him – and that someone had to bear the brunt of it.  And that if it wasn’t going to be you – which I told him I would not allow to happen – then it would be me.”  Peter said this in such a matter-of-fact tone that Lina didn’t know quite how to respond. 

“You make it sound like just divvying up the chores or something,” she said softly. “It’s horrific, Peter.”

“I guess it was,” he replied.  “But it was worth it.  Every second of it.”

“But why didn’t you tell Papa?” Lina cried. “Surely he wouldn’t have let it go on?”

“Marcus also made it clear to me that if he got punished, then you would be the one who’d suffer.  So, as much as I could, I kept quiet. Sometimes I just couldn’t. If the bruises were too big, and so on.”

“But Peter,” Lina said, crying now, “I wasn’t worth you going through that!  There’s no way I could be worth that!”

“Lina, you were always worth it.  You’re my sister.  We’ve always been a team, haven’t we? From the time you were little.”

“It’s true,” Lina replied. “Especially when we came out here. It was as if no one else existed, and especially not Marcus. We really were safe here. With each other, and with the forest.” She paused and reached up to touch his hand.  “I’ve loved you more than anyone in the family, Peter.  Something about you – I have always felt so close to you.”

She felt him nod.

“I’ve always felt that, too,” he said.  “Like there was – is – some invisible connection between us.”

“Yes,” Lina told him. “It’s as if I can sense you, somehow.  I can’t explain it. As a spirit, maybe?  It doesn’t make any sense, but that’s the only way I can put it.”

“I understand.  I have always felt that way, too. From the time you were born.”

“Really?”

“Yes. I’d stand by your cradle, and I’d look at you, and when our eyes met, it was like somehow we’d known each other already for a lifetime. And now we were together in one family again.  I couldn’t get enough of looking into your eyes when you were a baby.  To see in you someone I recognized, and who recognized me, too.”

“I don’t remember that, of course – that recognition, I mean – but I do recall you standing by my cradle a lot, and just being with me.”

Peter laughed.  “It was funny.  Mama would chide me for it. She thought I was trying to avoid doing my chores, so she’d chase me out of the room.  She didn’t realize that I just loved you!”

Lina smiled at this story.  “I knew that you loved me!  I felt that so strongly, Peter.  I never thought of it as some kind of connection from another lifetime.  But the ties were there, even so. When you went off to the war, I thought I’d die.  You felt so far away, and I couldn’t feel your presence in the same way as when you were home.”

Peter just nodded in affirmation that he had experienced the same thing.

“And then you came home, wounded,” Lina went on, “and I was beside myself with worry.  I kept thinking that if I had been there, it never would have happened.”

“Me getting wounded?” Peter asked in surprise.

“Yes.  That sounds silly, doesn’t it?  How could I think I could have prevented it? What could I possibly have done to keep you safe? Nothing!”

“Maybe not in the way you’re talking about. But knowing that you were at home and still loving me – you and the rest of the family, too – that helped so much. It gave me the will to survive, and to not be captured, that day when I was shot. It was thinking of you all here – and especially of you – that got me back to my unit. I’ll still never understand how I managed to run on that injured leg.”

“God must have protected you. Don’t you think?” Lina asked him.

“I do.”

They were both looking off into the trees again.  Lina noticed that the pain in her legs had quieted down.  In fact, she couldn’t detect any discomfort at all in them at the moment. 

“Are you in pain now?” Peter asked, as if reading her thoughts.

She shook her head. “Not really. Just a few aches. I don’t know why that should be.”  Then she laughed. “Why am I looking for a reason? I should just be happy about it!”

“Are you?” Peter asked, his tone serious. “Happy, I mean?”

“Yes, I am,” she told him.  “I am.  But what makes me happier is that your leg is healed.”

“Why’s that?”

“I don’t know, to be honest,” Lina told him. Once more, she took hold of his hand that was lying on her shoulder. It was a minute before she spoke again.  “As strange as that sounds, I think I feel relieved.”

“Relieved? Because if Bruno Groening healed me, then he can heal you, too?”

“No, that’s not it.”

“What, then?”

She paused again, as she tried to work it out in her mind. “I just now realized that I have felt responsible for you getting wounded in the war.”

Peter leaned forward now and turned to face her. “But Lina, that’s insane!  You weren’t even there!”

“Exactly,” she told him. “I’m not saying it makes sense.  I’m just telling you what I have felt, deep inside me, ever since you came back from the war, with your leg mangled.”

“You’re right! It makes no sense!” He hugged her. “As you are always telling me, it was not your fault!” He smiled, trying to shift her out of this odd frame of mind.

“Yes, and that’s the other thing. Me getting hurt was not your fault. It was mine!  I can see it now.”

Now Peter removed his arm from around her shoulders and took both her hands in his.  “That is simply impossible, Lina,” he told her sternly. “I won’t listen to you talk like that.”

“No, but do listen!” she said to him, equally sternly. “Remember how no one could understand how the accident happened?”

“I understood it,” Peter said petulantly. “I gave the horses the signal to move, and they did, and the wood rolled out onto you.”

“Do you actually remember giving them the signal?” Lina questioned him.

“No. But I must have done it.  There’s no other explanation,” he insisted.

“Yes there is,” Lina told him.

“Well, I’d like to hear it, if there is one, after all this time!”

  “I gave them the signal,” Lina told him softly.

He just stared at her.  Before he could object, she continued.

“Those horses know me as well as they know you,” she said. “And I banged on the side rail of the wagon, just the way I always did when I was letting them know we were done putting in a load and they could start off.”

“But I don’t remember hearing it,” Peter said.
            “And I don’t remember giving it,” Lina replied.

Peter gave her a confused look.

“Or, rather, I should say, I didn’t recall giving them the signal, not until last night.”

“At the Birkners’?” Peter asked her.

“Yes.  We were sitting there, and Mr. Groening was talking. And all of a sudden, a picture flashed into my mind. It was like a newsreel, except that it was in color.  I saw myself, from a distance, well, not from a big distance. But I was standing there behind the wagon, and the back railings weren’t up. And then, very methodically, I reached out and rapped my palm against the side of the wagon. Twice.  Very firmly.  And they started off.  And the wood fell.”

“Is that all you saw?” Peter asked, clearly shaken.

“Yes.  It didn’t make sense to me at the time. It was only last night, when I was lying there awake and in pain in the darkness, when the vision came back to me again, that I understood. It was all my fault. I made the mistake that day, not you.”

Peter leaned over and put his head in his hands.  Lina watched as he began to shake his head back and forth.  “No, no, Lina!” he cried. “That can’t be what happened.”

“But I’m telling you, it is,” she insisted, calmly, her voice full of love.  “That’s why I’ve always been able to tell you you weren’t to blame – because you weren’t! Even if I didn’t remember what I’d done until last night.”

“It doesn’t make sense, though,” Peter told her, looking at her now with eyes full of tears. “You loaded the wagon and worked with those horses for years, just like you said. And you never did that before – giving the signal before everything was ready.”

“And yet, I did it that day.  And what’s more,” Lina said, “it looks like I did it deliberately.”

“What does that mean?” Peter asked, his brows knitted. “I can’t make sense of any of this.”

“I mean, when I saw the newsreel, or whatever you want to call it, in my head, I could see it all very clearly. I looked at the wood, oh, and I didn’t tell you this part: I noticed that the back rails were not up – I know that, because I saw myself look over to the other side of the wagon, where they were lying on the ground. And then I paused and then, I consciously raised my hand and gave the signal.  It was quite deliberate, Peter, not an offhand, absentminded action.”

“But why would you do that deliberately?” Peter nearly shouted, slapping his knees with his open hands.  “Why??”

“I don’t know,” Lina told him simply. “And I never remembered it after the accident.  Why didn’t I remember doing it? And why did I do it? God, I wish I had remembered. It would have saved you feeling like you were to blame these past four years. Peter, I’m so sorry!”

“No, Lina, no!” he cried, rising to his feet. “I can’t accept this.  I’m the one who made the mistake, not you.  And what does this have to do with you feeling guilty about my wounded leg? Is everything suddenly your fault now?”

“I have no idea, Peter,” she told him, suddenly sounding tired. “I’m just telling you the way it feels to me, and what I experienced last night.”

As Peter was standing before her, Lina caught sight of someone coming toward them through the forest.  Seeing Lina looking at something behind him, Peter turned and saw their father gradually making his way through the dry leaves and small branches that lay in his path.

It was odd for them to see Viktor from such a distance.  Usually they saw him from across the table or across the yard, but not from fifty yards away. There seemed to Lina to be something lighter about his gait than before, and at the same time, stronger. Her father had always seemed strong to her, but in a deeply-rooted way.  Now he was moving through the trees in a confident, but also fluid, way, and he swayed a bit as he walked, the way the trees around him swayed when the wind came through the forest.  If Lina squinted a bit, he resembled the pines he was walking amongst, his arms out a bit from his sides, angled down toward the forest floor. Then, realizing that Peter and Lina had seen them, he raised both arms in greeting, and suddenly, he was an aspen, his hands waving at them the way the aspen leaves always waved at him.

“Mama and Grandma were starting to worry about you two,” he said cheerfully when he’d gotten close enough for them to be able to hear him.  “But I saw you set off along the path, and I figured this was where you were headed. I told them I’d come look for you.”

“I’m sorry they were worried,” Lina told him.  “It was just a whim.”

“I wanted to bring her here,” Peter explained.  He leaned over and patted the trunk of the beech tree. “She’s missed this old friend so much.”

Viktor nodded and took a seat in front of Lina, then motioned for Peter to sit back down, too. Now that Peter could see their father clearly, he, too, noticed that something was different about him.  The cheerfulness was new.  His smile looked relaxed.

Viktor leaned over and touched Lina’s foot affectionately. “How are you feeling?”

“It’s strange, Papa, but since I’ve been out here, my legs have almost entirely stopped hurting. Just some little aches now.”

A broad smile came to Viktor’s face. “Really? Lina, that’s wonderful! There’s something about this forest, isn’t there?” he asked, looking up to take in the treehouse and the spreading branches of the beech tree.  “You two, you’ve known it all your lives. You know that you feel something special here – heaven, that’s what your grandfather calls it. I didn’t believe it at first.  Didn’t know what he meant. I was never any place like this until I came here, back in ’21.”

“Aren’t there forests in Schweiburg?” Lina asked. “I don’t recall seeing so many trees when we were living there, but then again, I was little.”

“And we weren’t there for so long,” Peter added.  “But mostly, there was the water, what with the coast being so close.”

Viktor nodded.  “That’s right. I grew up with the coast, but the water never really called to me.  Nature in general didn’t.  Not until I came here and started working with your grandpa.”

“Why do you think that was, Papa?” Lina asked.

Viktor reached down and picked up a handful of leaves in varying stages of dryness and decomposition.  Then he closed his eyes and took in a deep breath.  Watching him, Peter and Lina naturally did the same. 

“This smells as good to me as Mama’s rabbit stew,” Viktor said after he’d let his breath out, and they all laughed. “But it really is like your grandpa says.  You feel God out here.  I know you feel it, don’t you?”

Peter and Lina both nodded.

“That’s why I brought her here,” Peter said. “I could tell she needed to feel that.”

“We all do, Son,” Viktor replied, his tone softer than they’d ever heard it, tender even. “This forest – it saved me, back then.  Being out with these trees and taking in God’s divine energy.  I felt like I could stand among them and take in their strength.”

“But then why did we move to Schweiburg?” Lina asked.

Peter looked at his father intently. Lina saw the look and realized that Peter, since he was four years older, must remember that time more than she did.

But Viktor deflected the question.  “That is another story, for another day.  Not a happy story. And so, not for today. Because today is a happy day. Right?”

“Yes!” Lina chimed in. “Peter was able to carry me all the way out here, Papa.  It really is a miracle.”

Viktor nodded.  Then he took hold of the toe of Lina’s shoe and gave it a playful shake. “And soon, no one will need to carry you to the treehouse.”

“Peter was all set to try to haul me up there when we got there, but I wouldn’t let him,” Lina said.

“Probably just as well,” Peter said with a chuckle. “That would have been quite a sight for you, Papa, if we tried it and the ladder gave out, and you came upon us both lying on the ground in a heap!”

Viktor smiled, and then recalled his first visit to the treehouse with Ethel.

“The first time Mama brought me here,” he began, leaning back on his elbows and crossing his legs out in front of him, “I was worried about that ladder, too.”  He glanced up at it. “It’d been lying up in the treehouse for who knows how many years.  Could have been rotted through.”

“But it wasn’t, right?” Lina said.  She hadn’t heard this story since she was little.

“Nope.  I climbed up on that branch there,” Viktor told them, pointing to the branch in question. “Then I managed to lean over and grab hold of the rope, up there, right where it’s tied to the floor.  Of course, I was doing my best to impress Mama with my strength and daring.” He winked at Peter, as if sharing a secret, man to man.

“And did you?” Lina asked.

“Of course!” Viktor told her with a laugh. “Or, in any case, at least I didn’t fall down, and the ladder didn’t collapse.  I considered that a success.”

“But how did you manage to make her the ring in secret?” Peter asked.

Viktor winked at him again. “That information’s classified.” He tipped his head in Lina’s direction. “But don’t worry, I’ll share it with you when you need it, Son.”

“And when you find out,” Lina said, “you’ll tell me, right?”

“I don’t think you have clearance,” Peter told her sternly, and they all laughed. 

“Feels good to laugh, here in the heart of the forest,” Viktor said.  “Especially right here. At this treehouse, where Mama and Uncle Hans played, and Mama and I fell in love, where the two of you played.  Where your children will play, too, God willing.”

This heartfelt sharing of feelings and wishes left all three of them feeling tears rush to their eyes, but Lina was the only one who let them flow. Peter hastily got to his feet and tugged on the ladder.

“But I say we replace the ladder before then. If I’m going to ask a girl to marry me up there, I don’t want to risk making a fool of myself by falling through a rotten rope.”

“Agreed,” Viktor said, leaning forward and brushing the dead leaf fragments off his shirtsleeves. “But now, I think we’d best get on back to the house.  Otherwise, Mama and Grandma are likely to mount a search party themselves. And you know what that means, don’t you?”

Peter and Lina shook their heads.

“Dinner will be late!” Viktor said with a laugh. “And we don’t want that.”

Lina and Peter laughed at this, and in Lina’s voice he heard her mother, twenty-eight years earlier, standing at the foot of this very tree, back in the days before things needed to be made right.

They decided that Viktor would carry Lina out through the forest. It was a good thing he had come out to find them, because Peter now realized he would have had a hard time getting Lina situated on his back again, since she was sitting on the ground.  But father and son managed to first lift Lina up beneath her shoulders until she was leaning more or less upright against the beech trunk. Then Viktor was able to crouch down before her, and, with Peter’s help, Lina leaned onto her father’s strong back and wrapped her arms around his neck. 

Viktor straightened up and gave a little hop to settle Lina into a more comfortable position, and then began walking.  He felt that she was holding something in her hand that was pressing against his neck, but it wasn’t bothersome. In fact, he began to feel more energetic. He was sensing not just the divine energy of the forest now. There was also a tingling that reminded him of what he’d felt at the Birkners’ the evening before. But he didn’t give it any real thought. Instead, he focused his attention on how good it was to be helping Lina.  He was glad for the conversation they’d had, too. It reminded him of the early years, when he and the kids would play together.  Too bad Marcus wasn’t here with us today.  Although he knew, deep inside, that if his oldest son had been there, things would have played out differently.

Little by little, Viktor told himself as he walked toward the end of the path and the bright sunshine that awaited them there. Step by step.  Soon it’ll all be good again.

*          *          *

After the foray to the treehouse, Lina noticed that although the pain in her legs eased when she was among the trees, it gradually increased again once Viktor had carried her back to the yard and then into the house.  At first, Lina grew frightened when her legs began to ache once more.  That evening, on her walk with Kristina, she expressed her worry.

“Kristina,” she told her friend, even before they rolled out onto the main road, “why do they hurt again?  I felt so light and happy by the treehouse.  And now… What did I do wrong?” Her long braid was wrapped around her wrist, the end tucked into her left hand, while her right held her tin foil ball.

Kristina heard the fear creeping into Lina’s voice, and although she had no real answer to Lina’s question, she knew that she couldn’t give into the doubt that was knocking at the door of her own mind. Trust and believe, she told herself. And then some words came.

“Maybe you should ask what you did right.”

“What do you mean?” Lina asked her.

“Well,” Kristina continued, allowing the sense inside her to form into words, “you felt better in the woods. That’s true, isn’t it?”

Lina nodded.

“Maybe that was the right thing.  You did a right thing.”

“Going into the woods? That was the right thing, you’re saying?”

“I don’t know. I just have a feeling that this is the way to look at it.”

Lina fell silent, and they walked, by which we should understand that Kristina pushed her in the wheelchair, as she’d done nearly every day for the past four years. Kristina rolled the chair along, and Lina held the tin foil ball in her hand, alternately squeezing it lightly and bringing it up to her face so that she could inspect the so-called writing she and Peter had detected on it.

“To our usual spot?” Kristina asked as they neared the spot where they could see the fallen log where they would often sit and discuss the day’s events.

“No,” Lina said, in a tone whose lightness surprised Kristina, given the fear she’d detected just minutes earlier. 

“Where, then?”

“I mean, go to the log, but then on along the path there. Even just a little ways.”

They had never done this before, since the path was overgrown with grass and small bushes and blocked by fallen branches.  The family didn’t use it now, and Lina had never wanted to ask Kristina to go to the effort of clearing a space or maneuvering the heavy wheelchair along. But now, she thought it might be worth a try.  An experiment.

Kristina understood what Lina had in mind, and she eagerly set about removing the smaller debris from the path.  Lina watched as twigs, larger branches, and pine cones flew into the underbrush where Kristina tossed them along the sides of the path, along with clumps of the taller grasses.  After about ten minutes of this, Kristina straightened up, turned to Lina, then rubbed her hands together vigorously to shake off the dirt. Then she pushed aside tendrils of the wavy, brown hair that had come free of her braid and fallen into her eyes.

“Ready?” she asked, wiping her hands on her apron.  When Lina nodded, Kristina got behind the wheelchair and rolled it over to where they could now see a space that looked slightly navigable. 

The sky was still light out by the road, but even just a small distance inside the forest, the shadows were already deepening, and the sounds of the evening bugs louder.  They managed to move to the end point of where Kristina had removed the obstacles, about twenty feet in, without much trouble, although Kristina did find it harder to push the chair here than out along the grass or the road. The two young women didn’t converse.  Kristina was silently leaning against the chair, to move it forward, and Lina was softly repeating, Trust and believe. The divine power helps and heals.  From her position behind the wheelchair, Kristina couldn’t see the path, but she kept pushing anyway.

At some point, she noticed that the grass was taller beneath the wheels and her shoes.  Then she bumped over a small branch in the path. In the next moment, she felt the left wheel dip sharply and then come to an abrupt halt.  Kristina’s legs somehow kept moving, though, and she found herself leaning forward over the back of the wheelchair, which had stopped short.  And as she herself was resting with her stomach against the back of Lina’s seat, she saw that Lina, too,  had continued moving: She was toppling out of the chair, a surprised, “Oh!” escaping from her lips.  Kristina managed to catch hold of Lina’s shoulder as she tipped, but with the chair between them, she couldn’t break Lina’s fall.  She watched in surprise and horror as her friend half slid, half pitched, forward and onto the ground. She came to rest on her stomach. 

“My God, Lina!” Kristina cried, rushing to Lina. “Are you hurt?”

Lina remembered the day not many weeks earlier, when she had tried to stand up and had similarly found herself sprawled in front of her wheelchair.  This time at least I made it further into the forest!  she thought to herself.  “Yes,” I think I’m all right,” she said aloud.

  “The wheel must have gone into a rut, “Kristina told her, inspecting the wheel. “Lina, I’m so sorry!”

“It’s all right,” Lina told her.  “I really thing I’m okay. But there’s no way you’ll be able to get me back into this chair on your own.  Go back to the house for help.”

Kristina turned this way and that, biting her lip. Her eyes grew wide, and suddenly she sounded very agitated.  “But I can’t!” she cried. “I can’t leave you here!  There’s no telling who could come by.  It’s not safe!” She was beginning to cry.  Lina reached out and tugged on Kristina’s skirt.

“Kristina,” she said calmly, “Look at me. We need help. I’ll be all right here while you go get someone.”

Kristina grabbed her long braid in both hands and began picking at the end of it, still biting her lip. “I don’t know, Lina…  I don’t think it’s safe for you here alone.”

“I’m telling you. I know this forest. This is our forest.  No one will hurt me here.  Just go. Now. Run!”

Somehow this got through to Kristina, and she did run.  She raced back to the where the path opened out onto the grass, and then she sped off down the road, calling out for help.  As she came to the drive that led to the homestead, she saw Marcus walking across the yard. She shouted to him to follow her.

“Lina… she fell… in the forest,” she explained breathlessly as they both ran.

When they reached the path once again, Kristina led Marcus along the trail the wheelchair had made. Lina was lying only about twenty feet into the woods, but Kristina fell to her side as if she’d been miles away, deep in the wilderness.

“Lina, dear one, are you all right?” she asked in a frenzied voice, her cheeks streaked with tears.

“Yes, yes, I’m fine,” Lina told her, and then grimaced in embarrassment when she saw Marcus. But for once, he didn’t seem annoyed.  He sat down beside her and helped her sit up, taking care to ask her whether anything hurt. Once he determined that she really did seem not to have hurt herself, aside from a deep scrape on her left hand, which she’d used to break her fall, he inspected the wheelchair. 

“It just went into a hole,” he announced. Then, giving the handles a quick jerk, he pulled it backwards and freed the stuck wheel.  “Seems all right,” he added, after rolling the chair back and forth a bit. “I don’t think the rim got bent. Let’s get you up and back into it, Lina.” 

While Kristina steadied the wheelchair, Marcus somehow – Kristina was amazed at how strong he evidently was – slipped his arms under Lina’s, tipped her up and onto his chest, and then gently lowered her down to her seat. 

On the short walk back to the homestead, Marcus pushed the chair, while Kristina walked alongside them in a daze, one hand picking at the end of her braid, the other gripping Marcus’ elbow tightly.

“I really am fine,” Lina told them all when Marcus rolled her into the kitchen and explained what had happened. Indeed, she looked calm.

“How about your legs?” Ethel asked, a concerned look on her face.

“Well,” Lina told her, even smiling now, “I still can’t walk, but they’re hardly hurting again at all, just like when Peter and I were at the treehouse this morning. And you may not believe it, but when I was lying there on the ground just now, before Kristina came back with Marcus, I felt so peaceful. As if God was right there with me, taking care of me.  As if He had wrapped a blanket of love around me to keep me safe.”

This seemed to allay everyone’s concern, except for Kristina’s.  She looked so dazed that Renate insisted on making her a cup of tea.  Ingrid, who had been in their room in the workshop, reading before bed, came in now, since she’d heard the commotion in the yard. 

“Is there a party?” she asked brightly, holding her book in one hand and scanning their faces. It never happened that the whole family gathered like this in the evening, but their expressions didn’t look like party faces. Before anyone could explain, Kristina caught sight of her daughter and, leaping up from her chair, rushed to the door and took Ingrid in her arms.

“You’re all right, too, aren’t you?” she cried, leaning back to look her over, before hugging her once more.

“I’m fine, Mama, just fine,” Ingrid told her, a bit of annoyance in her tone.

“Kristina,” Renate said to her gently, “why don’t you take Ingrid out and get her settled in for bed, and I’ll bring your tea out to you?”

Kristina nodded tensely, muttered her thanks, and left the kitchen, clutching Ingrid as if for dear life.

In the kitchen, no one knew what to say.  This was exactly the kind of display of emotion that made this family feel awkward.  It was as if they had accidentally witnessed some intimate moment that none of them was ever meant to see.  Ethel made a point of examining Lina’s arms and face for scratches and bruises.  Renate was getting tea ready to put into a small pot for Kristina. She paused, as if considering whether to speak, and then turned to face everyone.

“There was one night, during those first few months after Kristina and Ingrid came to us.  I had a feeling in the middle of the night. I don’t know why, but I got up and came out into the kitchen here. I looked out toward the workshop and saw a light burning in their room. I just had the sense that something was wrong.  So I went out there.  The door to their room was wide open, and when I walked in, there was Kristina, with her suitcase open on the bed. She was in a frenzy, grabbing any of their things she could lay her hands on, and stuffing them in the suitcase, willy nilly.”  She paused to check the tea kettle, which had not yet boiled.

“I asked her what she was doing, and she looked at me with these wild, terrified eyes.  Kind of like tonight, but worse.  And she said, ‘We have to leave. It’s not safe here in the woods for Ingrid.  The men took that other girl.  They’re coming back for her. I have to get her somewhere safe.’”

A small cry of sorrow escaped Lina’s mouth, and she brought a hand to her face and covered her mouth.  

“My God, Mama,” Ethel said to Renate, “and you never told me. Or any of us.” She looked to each of the others in the room, and they all shook their heads. They hadn’t known, either.

The teakettle had come to a boil now, and Renate slowly poured a stream of the hot water into the waiting pot. “It wasn’t mine to tell,” she said with a sigh.

“There are so many stories of the war,” Ulrich said softly.  “And just because Kristina wasn’t on the battlefield doesn’t mean she didn’t suffer.”

“Her husband was killed on the Eastern Front,” Lina said.  Apparently they all knew this much, at least.

“How she and that little girl ever made it to Danzig from where they were, I don’t think I even want to know,” Ulrich told them, shaking his head.

“And then those months in Bergen-Belsen,” Renate added. “It’s horrible.”

“Bergen-Belsen?” Viktor asked sharply. “They were there?”

Ethel looked at him in surprise. Surely he knew that… But then she remembered that Kristina and Ingrid had already been here for a little while when Viktor was decommissioned and came home.  Maybe she hadn’t told him the details of how they’d come to be there, or maybe she had, and he just didn’t remember. That wouldn’t be surprising.

“Yes,” Ethel told him, “but not for long. Somehow they were sent there, to the Polish camp – as displaced persons, you know – even though they weren’t Polish. Maybe because they’d come through Poland. I don’t know.  But it was a hideous place – that’s what she said.”

Viktor just nodded.

“Thank God they made it here,” Peter said quietly.

“Marcus,” Renate said at that point, indicating a small wooden tray that now held the teapot and a cup, “you take the tea out to her, will you? She’ll like that.  Ethel and I will get Lina cleaned up for the night.”

            Marcus was, for once, happy to do as his grandmother asked.  He’d never seen Kristina so upset. It had shocked him a little, since she generally acted so meekly, keeping her emotions inside even more than the rest of them – or at least more than he did.  Her unassuming way of moving through the world and the way she deferred to him in their conversations made it difficult for him to determine with any certainty where he stood with her.  That had changed with their recent declaration of love for each other, of course.  Aside from that one time, though, she seemed never to tell him what was on her mind. This frustrated him, because he saw the way she and Lina laughed with each other. That must mean they were telling each other their secrets.  Had she told Lina about her flight through Danzig? About her fears for Ingrid’s safety?  Or other thoughts and feelings she had kept from him? Tonight, though – tonight she had shown him more of herself. The way she called out to me for help, and the way she clung to my elbow as we walked back to the house – she’s opening up to m, Marcus concluded.  She does need me, he thought to himself as he approached the side door with the tray that held the teapot and cup. Balancing the tray on one hand, he opened the door with the other.

Inside, the workshop was dark, and Marcus saw that the door to Kristina and Ingrid’s room was shut. But a dim thread of light spread out beneath the door. Flipping on a light in the workshop, Marcus set the tray down on one of the workbenches across the room and gave a light knock on Kristina’s door. It was the first time he’d ever done this – come to her room after Ingrid’s bedtime – and he felt a mixture of apprehension and excitement.

“Kristina,” he said softly, but loudly enough that she’d surely hear him, “Renate sent me out with the tea for you.”

For a long half a minute he heard nothing, but then the door opened slowly, and Kristina slipped out.

“Ingrid’s just getting to sleep,” she told him softly, and then turned to close the door quietly behind her. 

They were standing close together there, with Kristina’s back nearly touching the door, and Marcus just a few inches in front of her. Standing like this, the difference in their heights was striking. Marcus, tall and lanky like Viktor, towered over Kristina, so that she had to tip her head back to look up at his face.  He thought about kissing her right there, but then held back. It didn’t seem right, somehow, with Ingrid just on the other side of the door.

“I put the tea over here,” he said instead, gesturing to the workbench against the wall. “Come on, I’ll pour it for you.” He held out his hand to her.

She grasped his hand and followed him across the room. Walking with him, she squeezed his hand, seeking some explanation of where the physical strength he’d displayed earlier came from. He looked at her and smiled, then brought her hand up and kissed it. They took seats on two of the tall stools next to the workbench.

As he poured the tea for her and stirred some sugar into it, she was studying him, as if for the first time.  He really did resemble his father – especially in his build and in those cornflower blue eyes – but his hair was dark, like hers, not sandy like Peter’s.  Viktor didn’t look strong, either, she mused, but she’d seen him move logs like they were nothing. Marcus must have that same kind of strength.  She found that comforting.

“Thank you for saving Lina tonight,” she told him as she accepted the cup of tea he held out to her. He could see that tears were welling up in her eyes as she spoke.

He laughed lightly. “I didn’t save her.  I just picked her up off the ground.” But inwardly, he was pleased she had put it that way.

“Well, I do say you saved her,” Kristina insisted, smiling now, too, although the tears still seemed prepared to fall at a moment’s notice.  “Who knows what might have happened there in the woods, with her being helpless, and it getting so dark.”

Marcus leaned forward. “The wolves don’t come out until much later,” he said, in a mock serious tone.

“Don’t tease,” Kristina told him, only half-kidding. 

He could see that she genuinely was a bit hurt by his joke, and as he watched her take a sip of the tea, for the first time in his entire life, he felt a twinge of regret at causing someone else distress.  As she moved the teacup away from her lips, he took it from her, set it down, and wrapped his hands around hers. He was sitting facing her now, his legs bent to the side, so that her knees touched the outside of his thigh.

“Forgive me, my dear Kristina,” he said earnestly. “I was just trying to cheer you up.”

She sighed deeply and nodded, and now two preliminary tears did escape onto her cheeks.  She looked down. “Ingrid and I had some terrible nights in the woods. During our flight.” Marcus squeezed her hands, but didn’t say anything. He hoped she’d tell him more, and after a minute of silence, she did.

“I don’t know where it was… Somewhere before we got to Danzig, at least.  We would camp anywhere we could.  Sometimes there was a farmhouse with a barn.  And once or twice, a family even took us into their house, but that was only once or twice.” She looked up to see whether he was listening, and when he nodded to show her he was, she looked down again.

“So, groups of us often slept out in the woods.  I tended to think we were safer, Ingrid and I, if there were more of us.  There was something quite frightening about sleeping just the two of us in the woods, not knowing what each sound meant, whether it was a person or an animal…”

“If you’re not used to being in the woods at night,” Marcus said, “it really is frightening.” Not that he remembered ever being scared out in the woods, but he thought this might encourage her.

“It is!” she said, sighing again. “One night, there were, I don’t know, perhaps twenty of us, all camped out in one area. Five or six small groups of us.  No camp fires or anything. We just all huddled in our own little spots, but not right next to each other.” She paused, trying to find the best words to express what she’d experienced. “You see, some of those people I’d seen now and again in the weeks before that.  We were all heading in the same direction, and so you recognize faces. But at the same time, we all kept to ourselves.”

“But why not get to know people?” Marcus asked, his question quite sincere. He knew nothing about what these refugees had gone through, but he found that he very much wanted to understand what Kristina and Ingrid had experienced.

“Because you never knew what they might do,” Kristina said quietly.  “None of us had enough food or clothing, and it was cold by then.  So some people would steal what little the others had.  Kill them for it sometimes, even.”

Marcus squeezed her hands to show encouragement, and he felt a tenderness welling up inside him as she told her story. “Kristina, did anyone ever attack you?”

She didn’t answer him directly. “That one night, I heard a woman a ways off from me scream, not very loudly, and then her screams were muffled. And then they stopped. And in the morning, at dawn, when we all left, I saw that a woman was still lying over by a pine tree.  I wondered why she hadn’t gotten up to leave – because everyone would get on the road as early as possible. I did ask one of the other travelers, a woman about my age, one I’d seen before, whether she’d heard the screams during the night, and whether that woman under the pine tree was all right.”

“And what did she say?”

“She just asked me under her breath whether I had a knife with me.  I told her I did, and she said, ‘Be prepared to use it. And don’t sleep a wink at night when it’s like this.’ She told me then that a week earlier, when she and her husband and their two girls were spending the night in the woods, two men who were drunk – Lord knows where they got the liquor –dragged away a young girl – someone else’s daughter –  during the night.” She looked up at Marcus. “I don’t want to tell you what they did to her. But she was barely alive when they found her the next morning. And crying that she wished they had just killed her.”

Now Marcus released Kristina’s hands and wrapped his arms around her. “If that had been Ingrid,” he found himself saying, his voice full of quiet anger, “I would have killed those men with my bare hands.”

Kristina’s head was leaning against his chest now.  She kept on talking, but very softly, and he couldn’t hear her so very clearly. But he didn’t want to ask her to repeat herself, so he just leaned his head against hers and strained to catch what she was saying.

“I did have a knife,” she was telling him.  “I was so terrified after that night, Marcus. I spent each night with that knife in one hand, and my other hand on Ingrid next to me.  When I just couldn’t stay awake, I’d lean on top of her and doze that way, so that I’d wake up if anyone tried to take her from me. But how can you really sleep that way? I don’t think I slept more than a few minutes each night the whole rest of our flight, until we got onto the boat. Even there, though, it wasn’t so safe.”

“And in the refugee camp?” Marcus prompted softly, gently rubbing her back as she spoke.

“I slept there,” she said. “There we women did come to know each other a bit, and we took shifts, sleeping and watching each other’s children. We did feel safer there, because the men were separate from the women, of course, but even so, you never know… We still didn’t have enough food, or blankets. And my God, it had been a concentration camp before we got there. How can you rest knowing that?”

Marcus listened silently. He noticed that, as Kristina spoke, his anger faded, and he felt love welling up inside him, for her, and for Ingrid, too.  And sadness that they had gone through all they had.  This feeling of sadness at others’ suffering was new to him, but as Kristina leaned against his chest, he felt more connected to her in his heart than he had ever felt to another human being. He was struck by this feeling of connection to her, by the sense that their hearts were beating as one. His whole life, he had rejected this kind of phrase as ridiculous romanticism, but now that they were leaning together like this, and love was flowing so strongly in him, he marveled at what he was feeling, amazed that it was even possible to feel this way.

Kristina had stopped talking by now, and the two of them sat perched on the stools like that, as if holding each other up, in silence, for several minutes.  Marcus was the first to speak. 

“You don’t ever have to worry again, Kristina,” he whispered into her ear. “Do you hear me?” he asked, stroking her hair.

He felt her nod. “I will take care of you. You and Ingrid.  Make sure you’re safe.  Do you hear?”  Again, she nodded.

Then he felt the love well up in his chest even more strongly, and a thought came to him.  He leaned back and moved her gently backwards, too, so that she was sitting far enough away that he could see her eyes. 

“Will you let me take care of the two of you?” he asked, in a voice so tender that he didn’t even recognize it as his own. “So that you’ll never feel abandoned or in danger?”

Kristina nodded once more.  She wiped her eyes with her arm, and looked at him with her chestnut brown eyes.

“What I mean,” he said then, “is this… Will you marry me, Kristina?”

She stared at him so long with her lips parted, but without speaking, that Marcus began to fear that he had badly misjudged the situation.  He was about to try to recover from his mistake, when she nodded once more, first just slightly, and then more forcefully, until, finally, she threw her arms around his neck and looked him directly in the eye.

“Yes, Marcus,” she said, the smile he had been waiting for spreading across her face now. “Yes! I will!”

They kissed then, their first kisses as an engaged couple, and Kristina had to tell Marcus over and over again that her tears were different now.  These were tears of happiness, tears of joy. Of relief. She didn’t voice these last two words, though.  Perhaps she didn’t fully hear them herself, in either her head or her heart, but they were certainly there in her soul. As Marcus held his fiancée, and her head rested once more against his chest, they both felt her body relax, as the strain of so many years began to loosen its grip on her being.