Theo chartered a private plane out of Tweed New Haven Airport, a Challenger 300 that sat eight. They would arrive at Paris–Le Bourget Airport in less than seven hours.
Semele tried to dissuade him, but Theo insisted on taking care of their travel, explaining it was the quickest way to get there. The flight attendant gave her a glass of cabernet before takeoff, and the wine helped calm her nerves. Semele hadn’t slept in over thirty-six hours and needed to rest. But before she could she needed to know what had happened to Nettie and Liliya after they escaped.
“They went to Austria?” she asked Theo, who was settled into the seat across from her.
“To a displacement camp.” He nodded. “Camps were set up all over Europe. People flooded in from the Nazi concentration camps. Many survivors traveled from camp to camp looking for their families, but Nettie and Liliya didn’t have anyone. They stayed at one camp and pretended to be sisters under a false name, keeping mostly to themselves. They were terrified of being discovered.”
Semele couldn’t begin to imagine. “How long were they there?”
“A year. Things changed when they started helping a group of nuns who ran an orphanage in Vienna. Working at the orphanage was a kind of self-imposed penance. My grandmother told me she and Nettie suffered terrible guilt from leaving the other children behind at Makaryev. It’s something that stayed with them the rest of their lives.”
Theo grew quiet a moment, remembering. “My grandmother never spoke of her time in Russia. I never even knew about our heritage until I translated the manuscript and my grandmother told me her story. That was days before she died.”
Semele hung on to every word. Part of her was jealous that Theo had gotten to hear the story firsthand.
“When the orphanage started planning to open another location in Switzerland, Nettie urged Liliya to go and start a new life there. She moved to Lake Geneva and met my grandfather a year later.”
“And what about my grandmother?” Semele asked, her voice barely audible.
“Nettie stayed in Vienna. The orphanage was right next door to an academy for the blind, where she met your grandfather, Elias.”
Semele’s stomach did a somersault when she heard her grandfather’s name.
“He was a music professor there. He taught the children how to play instruments reading Braille. He was blind too, and an incredibly empathetic teacher.”
Semele began to form a strong picture of Elias in her mind: tall and elegant, even in a simple suit. His hand held a cane with the long, graceful fingers of a pianist, and he carried himself with a quiet countenance.
“Nettie wrote to Liliya that, in many ways, Elias could see more than she could. After they married, they stayed in Vienna and had one child—your mother.” Theo hesitated. “Carina.”
Carina. At last her mother’s name. Semele held her breath, waiting to hear more.
“My grandmother said Nettie let her run wild. When she was a teenager Carina would stay out late or not come home at all. She had a new boyfriend every month.” Theo added, “That is, according to Nettie’s letters.”
Semele raised her eyebrows. At least she knew who to blame for her rebellious streak. If her mother were here she would say it all made sense. “So they were in Vienna all this time?”
“No.” A shadow passed over Theo’s face and he looked away. “Someone pushed Elias in front of a moving train when he was on his way home from the academy one day. They never found out who did it. But Nettie believed his death was connected to her past at Makaryev—that Evanoff had found her. She went into hiding and forced Carina to come with her. Carina was two months pregnant with you, no longer with the boyfriend, and distraught over her father’s death. Nettie told her they were going to the States to get away, to heal. So they came to New York.”
Semele’s hands gripped the armrests. She was glued to every word.
“Carina was an actress in Vienna and had ambitions of being on Broadway. She wanted to stay in New York and pursue that dream, but…” He hesitated. “She died giving birth to you.”
Semele could feel a part of her pain release, like a breath held too long and at last expelled. Her mother hadn’t abandoned her. She had died giving birth.
“I’m sorry,” Theo said softly.
Semele cleared her throat, her voice husky from the emotion swimming inside her, the anguish, the guilt, the relief of knowing the truth. “You found all this out from the letters?”
“Liliya and Nettie wrote to each other for years. The last letter my grandmother received was right after Carina died. Nettie was still in New York.”
“Do you still have them? The letters?” What she wouldn’t give to read one, to see more of her grandmother’s handwriting. She felt an ache for Carina, Elias, and Nettie—the family she would never know.
“I’ve never seen them,” he said. “But we can look.” Theo reached out and took her hand.
Semele looked down as Theo’s hands joined hers. They were a “we.” She knew that now. They had been long before they ever met.