The Truth About Us

“She didn’t use Lawson to find her. Think about it. If you had a relative from Auschwitz and you wanted to find out if anyone else you knew survived, how would you do it?”

Kaden’s gaze fixed on the dashboard, as he grew silent, then said, “Some sort of registry? Usually after any sort of tragedy with a lot of deaths, there’s some record of survivors for that sole purpose.”

Abby flashed him an answering smile. “Exactly. So, I’m going to make a call to GG’s friend, Alvarez, at the museum. I don’t know what their normal process is, but he knows me, so I think he’ll give me whatever information I want over the phone.”

“That makes sense. So, I take it your grandfather has one of these tattoos. But how do you plan on getting his number? Are we just going to roll-on by your house during school hours and say, ‘Hey grandpa, let us see the permanent scar you carry from the war? You know, the most excruciating period of your life, so we can dig up some long-lost relatives and you can relive the horror of it all.’”

Abby eyed him as she backed out of the driveway. “If you must know, Mr. Cynical, I already have his number.

“You know his number? How?”

“I have it memorized.”

“You memorized his Auschwitz prisoner number?” Kaden blinked at her in disbelief.

“Yup.” An image of the faded ink on her grandfather’s arm flashed in her head. “When you’re a kid growing up and someone you love has that kind of scar, and you’re told—warned—never to speak of it, not to ask about it or mention it, it kind of sticks with you. You become curious. I spent years gathering whatever scraps of his past over snippets of conversations. It’s like telling someone not to picture a zebra in their head. Once you tell them that, it’s all they can do. And you fill in the gaps however you can—history lessons, pieces of the truth. So, yeah, I memorized that number. I guess it was too hard not to.”

She glanced over at Kaden, who watched her as she drove. His eyes held a faraway look like he was a million miles away. Underneath his carefree façade was another side of him, one she was just getting to know, and she found herself wondering what he was thinking. In the blink of an eye, he turned to his window and the passing highway, the spell broken.

“Kind of like when my mom had cancer,” he said. “I was only eleven, and I was supposed to somehow accept the truth that she was dying but never talk about it. It was the elephant in the room. Always there. Always obvious, but we weren’t allowed to say it, which made you think about it so much more.”

Glancing back at her, his eyes softened. “Sometimes, I wonder if it would’ve been a whole lot easier had we all come out and talked about it. If we had we said out loud, ‘Mom’s dying, we’re going to lose her,’ and defined what that meant to each of us...” He fell silent for a moment, then added, “Maybe my dad would have moved on by now. Maybe he’d be better than he is.”

Abby reached over and placed a hand over his, lending him whatever comfort she had to give in her touch. He stiffened for a moment, then relaxed, angling his body closer as he stared at the passing landscape outside, lost in his thoughts.

After a moment, he interlaced their fingers, like it was no big deal. Like Abby’s heart hadn’t leapt from her chest into her throat. Like the heat from his hand hadn’t interlocked so intimately in hers like it was the most natural thing in the world.

CHAPTER TWELVE

“Crap!” Abigail hung up and glanced across the café table at Kaden as he sipped his coffee.

“That doesn?

??t sound good,” he said.

She groaned, running a hand through her dark hair, frustrated at the information she just received. “Yeah, you could say that,” she said, then slammed the palms of her hands against the table.

Several heads turned, assessing her. Shrinking into her seat, she crossed her arms over her chest. “They have records. Apparently, Mr. Alvarez hooked my grandmother up with someone who helped her so he doesn’t have the information himself. You can perform a search with a number, but you have to submit a form either through the information office of the Auschwitz Memorial Museum or the International Tracing Service of the Red Cross. The Holocaust Museum in Washington where my grandmother volunteered doesn’t have any records and can’t provide me with this information.”

“Then we submit a form,” Kaden said, shrugging.

Abby straightened. “And wait? How long? I want to know now,” she said, pointing to the table. “There has to be a way.” She stared at the scarred table, searching for answers, then wrapped her hands around her coffee cup, needing the warmth of the hot brew to soothe her nerves. “I bet all this stuff was in the safety deposit box. And, of course, we don’t have the key. Who knows what other information was in there. Gosh, this sucks.”

“So, what do we do now? Forget the surviving relative angle and just talk with my dad?” Kaden asked.

“Maybe.” Abigail gritted her teeth before lifting the steaming cup to her mouth. “But there’s one other person I know who probably has answers. And we’re going to get them, but I need to think of a way first.”

“Your grandfather?”

Abby took a sip of coffee, peering at Kaden over her cup. Guilt surfaced on the edges of her thoughts. Maybe it was a mistake to get Kaden involved. The last thing she wanted to do was get him in trouble and what she was contemplating could definitely get them in trouble.

She set her cup down and cleared her throat. “My grandmother’s lawyer.”

“Wait, what?” Kaden scrunched his nose. The gesture softened his face, making him look years younger than his eighteen, rather than the six-foot-two long-legged teenager.

“He’s the one that’s been giving me the letters, and he knows way more than he’s letting on. He has to, but he can’t tell me anything because of stupid client confidentiality.” Abby rolled her eyes.

“Um, those laws are kind of important.”