Legacy of Silence Read Online Free PDF

we didn’t have something important to tell you. Or, I should say, to ask you. Caroline, shall I do it, or will you?”
    They looked so tired, she thought. This isn’t the way it should be. There should be laughter, congratulations and a bottle of champagne, as it’s described in all the books. Walter’s family would come for a gala dinner to get acquainted.…
    “I think we can guess,” her father said.
    “I hope you have no objection to me,” replied Walter.
    “To you? No. In these last few months you’ve become a friend. It’s all the unknowns in this situation that trouble me and my wife.”
    “Then the thing to do is to clear up the unknowns.”
    “Sit down, please, and begin, if you can.”
    And so Walter, deliberate and decisive, laid out the facts as carefully as though he were writing a chart for a study. Caroline, holding Peter close on her lap, watched their faces; Walter’s with the earnest lines on his forehead, Mama’s dismayed, as without words she observed her husband’s reaction, and Father’s, whose lack of any expression at all actually showed how stunned he was.
    “That’s how it is,” Walter concluded. “The whole story.”
    There was a moment during which no one said anything. Then Father asked slowly, “And what place does our daughter have in such a family? Surely you see that—”
    “No place. She will have no place in it, nor will I. I will be a part of your family instead, if you will have me. I want to go with you to America and wait to marry Caroline there, so as not to complicate the visa that is being prepared for her.”
    The two men regarded each other, measuring each other more astutely than either probably had until this moment.
    “It is predictable, Walter, that you will be called to the army soon.”
    “Quite right. My father is a decorated veteran of the last war, and with his connections has already made plans to place me in an officers’ corps.”
    “In that case, how do you expect to get out of the country?”
    “I’m told by people who ought to know that we have some months’ leeway. I’ll find an errand in Switzerland and go there very soon. I have money inherited from my grandfather, and I plan to bank it there temporarily.”
    “You can’t get currency out now.”
    “Y
ou
can’t, that’s true. But I can. There are ways.”
    “So you have it all thought out. What do you think, Eva?”
    “Well, you know what I have been thinking, that Caroline is too young. Yet now all of a sudden I’m remembering how, when we wanted to marry, people found all those obstacles that really weren’t there.”
    “There was no war coming, Eva. We had just gotten over one.”
    “All the more reason to act quickly now,” Walter said. “And if there should be no war, and possibly better minds will prevent it, who knows, why then—”
    “Then we shall be in America, anyway,” Caroline shouted. Jumping up, she kissed her parents, and there, right before them, kissed Walter, too, and laughed and cried.
    By late afternoon, everything had been talked over and decided. Caroline was to leave for Switzerland as soon as her visa was received. There she would waitfor her parents at the home of a Swiss doctor, a friend from Father’s days in medical school. Lore, as a “normal” citizen, would make one or two trips back and forth with jewelry, as already planned. And Walter, another “normal” citizen, would take a few weeks’ vacation in Switzerland.
    “My friends have a house on the edge of a lake, not far from Geneva,” Father said in conclusion. “It’s a beautiful part of the world, a fine start for a long, happy life.”

TWO
    I t was dark, after a long day’s travel, when Caroline and Lore arrived at the Schmidts’ house and Caroline laid her head down in the strange bed. For a long time, she was aware of a hurried heartbeat. The future, in spite of all that had been said and all the measured, careful plans that had been made, was only an enormous,