“Please help us,” I said. “Jürgen’s been shot.” I was dry-eyed and my voice sounded stiff, almost emotionless. My hands, over Jürgen’s at his abdomen, were quickly becoming numb. I could hear my pulse in my ears—thud, thud, thud. It felt surreal, like I was watching a film.

Jürgen was still panting, but color was rapidly draining from his face. He was losing too much blood. My thoughts were muddled, but one suddenly seemed clear.

I had to keep him calm. I had to reassure him.

“You are going to be fine,” I said quietly, staring into his eyes.

“Love…you. The children,” he panted.

“Save your breath now and tell me later,” I said.

It felt like the ambulance took hours to arrive. I was vaguely aware of Klaus in the yard with us, but it sounded as though he was speaking from a distance as he told me that Claudia took our children to their house to keep them safe. Other neighbors were peering over the fences at us, but when I tried to look at them, my vision swam. I stopped trying after a while, and simply focused on Jürgen.

“You’re okay, my love,” I told him. Maybe I was dreaming. Maybe that was why it was so hard to speak and to concentrate. “Everything is going to be fine.”

The sun was on the horizon when I finally heard sirens in the distance.

Jürgen fell unconscious then, his eyes panicked as his lids fluttered closed, his hands growing limp beneath mine.

That was when the panic my shock had held at bay came rushing in at me.

44

Lizzie

Huntsville, Alabama
1950

Just about everything seemed a little broken when I woke up that Saturday morning.

Cal was trying to carry on as if nothing were wrong, but he seemed tender almost, as if I’d bruised him badly. I still had no idea what to do about it. And Henry had been so late home the previous night I started to suspect he wasn’t really “working late,” as he’d claimed all week. Calvin and I agreed to sit him down for a discussion over dinner, and I still wasn’t sure what we were going to say to him.

I had a lot to worry about with the two men in my life, and whenever I was worried, I was drawn to my garden. That was why I was up with the sun that Saturday morning, hoping to clear out the unwanted plants from a few of my garden beds before the sun grew too hot.

I was pulling on my boots when I heard the explosion in the distance—not so close that I felt I needed to run for cover, but close enough that it startled me. It was probably just a car backfiring—some laborer, leaving for an early shift to beat the heat. Nothing to be concerned about.