“Yep.” I narrowed my eyes at him. “Unless someone helps me.”

He threw back his head and laughed.

“You’re crazy, sis.”

Henry went back to plowing with Dad that afternoon. Mother came down and helped me for a while, but she had her own jobs to do, so didn’t stay long.

And for three long days, mostly on my own, I scooped and dug and smoothed mud all over the dried field in a thin layer, so it was no longer a danger to the cattle. With no alternative, the cows finally figured out they needed to use the trough.

We sold the cows a few months later anyway, when their ribs started to show through their skin. The price of fodder had gone up so fast we couldn’t justify the cost to keep them. By then, the market was flooded with skinny cows just like them, so we sold those girls for a pittance.

The pond was soon a huge, dried crater in the field—twice the depth it was once, ready to store a heap more water than it ever had before.

I was a realist who loved my land and my life enough that when a moment called for it, I thought nothing of working until my hands were red-raw if it meant turning a problem into an opportunity.

That was the kind of girl I was, once upon a time.

3

Sofie

Huntsville, Alabama
1950

Right up until they tumbled into bed just after sunset, Gisela was clingy with Jürgen and Felix was terrified of him. It was going to take time for us to reconnect as a family. As I took a shower to freshen up, I reminded myself that, surreal as it was, we were in America to stay, and one thing we had plenty of was time.

Freshly bathed and in clean nightclothes, I joined Jürgen at the dining room table. The house contained only essential furniture, plus a lonely bunch of flowers on the dining room table that Jürgen purchased to “warm the place up” for me.

He opened a bottle of wine and was reading some paperwork as he waited. Had he noticed the strands of silver at my hairline, just as I noticed that his hair was thinning a little at the crown? Jürgen closed the folder and pushed the documents away as I sat beside him, then poured two glasses of the wine.

“Right up until today, when I saw you on the bus, I was terrified you’d change your mind.”

“I did have second thoughts. Constantly,” I admitted, accepting a glass. “Berlin is a mess, but it’s home.”

“Why did you decide to join me?”