“Do come,” Becca pleaded. “I need all the moral support I can get. Avril’s on a one-woman seduction campaign, determined to make Sofie Rhodes her new best friend. You know how she gets. And the upside is, I’m sure she’ll have some delicious gossip from it.”

Discomfort sat like a stone in my gut. I always hated those lunches and I knew how that particular one would go. Avril would be all sweetness and light, batting her eyelashes innocently, but there’d be real venom in her words. I didn’t want to feel sympathy for Sofie Rhodes, but by the same token, I knew that Avril would be coming along to that lunch with the sole purpose of betraying her new “friend.”

I thought about my garden. I thought about the bliss and ease I felt being out there, dirt beneath my nails and clean air in my lungs.

“I’m just so busy at the moment,” I told her lightly. “I’ll have to miss it this week.”

28

Sofie

Berlin, Germany
1936

Laura started school in the summer of 1936. On her first day, I walked her to the gate, then went back alone to Adele’s house for morning tea.

I still visited Adele every day, but I no longer told myself that I made those visits for her sake. Now that I felt so alone, I finally realized that Adele was not. She had a network of friends all over the city—strong, independent women like her best friend, Martha, who had also outlived her husband, and her children. Adele was busy with those friends and her garden and her tenants. I’d always somewhat resented having to care for her. Only once Mayim left did I finally realize Adele never needed me at all.

“How did Laura do?” she asked as I let myself in through the back door.

“Not a tear. Not from her, anyway,” I said, setting my hat down on the kitchen table. I’d shed a few myself on the walk home. I couldn’t believe my baby was at school. “She had a terrible night’s sleep, but that was from excitement, not anxiety.”

“That’s our girl,” Adele chuckled, as she poured steaming hot water into a teapot. She turned back to the counter and retrieved a tray. “I made you some bee-sting cake. I thought you might need the treat.”

“Thank you,” I said, surprised. She smiled and cut a piece, flipping it onto a plate for me with the side of the knife. I cut into the cake with a fork and sighed happily as it all but melted onto my tongue. Cake, honey-glazed almond slivers, and pastry cream tasted like pure joy.

“Listen, I’m having a little problem and I was hoping you could help me,” Adele said. I frowned at her unexpectedly somber tone.

“What is it?”