Addison

Epilogue

In 1953, Rhea Brandt returned to France.

Paris looked inviting after the war. For Rhea, it was truly like stepping into the past, and on the boat she had cried the entire way. Klaus did not need know what she had experienced during her time in the SOE. Nor would he ever know about the people she had grown to love.

After the encounter with Schwarzkopf and the green-eyed Nazi, they had been able to flee in the night. With her documentation, they were accepted into the borders of England. Soon after that, came the liberation of France. Then, in 1945, the war was won.

The Soviet Union and the United States took over Germany. Rhea was thankful they had managed to escape, but they had to be careful concerning Klaus's involvement with the Nazi Party. He was no war criminal, but the British would have destroyed them if they had known. Bombs had fallen, cities had crumbled, and lives had been lost.

The memories dawned on Rhea as she lingered at the doorway. She wasn't even certain if this was the right address. Abruptly, she rapped her knuckles on the wood a few times.

A long-faced youth opened it. He stared at her without comment.

"Bonjour," the French phrase sounded rusty with disuse. "I'm looking for a girl named Ingrid?"

The boy's eyebrows met in the centre with suspicion. "Where you from?"

"I'm an old friend."

"I'm sorry. I don't let strangers in." He started to close the door.

"Wait!" Rhea exclaimed. She prevented him from closing it in her face. "Tell her that it's Addison."

"Addison?"

A voice had broken out from behind him. The youth was knocked from the way, and a fair young woman stepped into view. Emerging from behind him, Rhea could envision her with the straggles of hair, and the grey face. It was Ingrid – and she was now twenty years old.

Soundlessly, she embraced Rhea into a tight hug. The Jewish girl was the exact same height as her now.

Pulling away, Ingrid was trembling. "I never thought I would see you again, Addison."

"I know," Rhea had a flash of the officers pushing her into the automobile. "I never forgot about you. It was too risky to come back so soon."

"Come and have some tea!" Ingrid led her over the threshold. The adolescent boy looked like someone had slapped him in the face. The small house was orderly, with books everywhere and the smell of lemons. Rhea was cautious. Ingrid ran into the kitchen, talking in rapid French with some other voices she could not distinguish.

"You're the woman who saved her from starvation, aren't you?"

The boy was leaning matter-of-factly against the wall. "I'm her brother, Charles. My mother and father adopted Ingrid after the fall of the Third Reich. She never shut up about the people who saved her from the Germans. But she never knew what happened to them."

"Well," Rhea was tentative. "That's why I'm here."

The tea was the quality kind. They sat in the kitchen, with a china teapot and a biscuit each. Rhea had endured the thank-yous and hugs from Mr. and Mrs. Dubois. They had been Ingrid's surrogate parents for the past eight years – her real ones, they discovered, had perished at Auschwitz in 1939.

Ingrid told her this without any distress. Clearly, she had been given time to process the war. Rhea remembered the children in her German classroom, who too, had been used to a brainwashed society. A society that was now abolished, and without the genocide that tore families apart.