Motherland by Maria Hummel

says if she had to do it all over, she’d never marry a widower. Always playing second fiddle to a ghost.”
    His stepmother bent to the baby, her red hair curtaining her expression. “She shouldn’t talk that way about her husband,” she said softly. Her shoulders started to shake.
    Hans swallowed. He had never seen her cry, and the sight troubled him.
    “Ach, Liebling . You miss him, don’t you,” Fräulein Müller said after a moment. She swished the sink with her hand, dredging up silverware. The forks and spoons streamed, glinting. “You’d miss him less if you had a housekeeper.”
    Hans shouldered his coat and tiptoed up the steps to the unheated second floor. He always sensed his father’s presence in the silent rooms on the second story, maybe because his stepmother had overtaken the first floor with her cooking, sewing, and baby-tending. Without Marta, the bedrooms and study didn’t get cleaned much, and the dust that layered over the books and unused medical equipment could have touched his father’s skin the last time he was here.
    He hurried into the study and told Ani to wait in the hall.
    “Why?”
    “To keep watch,” Hans said. “Give the Indian signal if you hear anyone coming.”
    He waited until his brother left before kneeling. The plank was stuck hard. His grandfather’s letter opener grated at the wood, the cold metal warming in his hands.
    Always playing second fiddle to a ghost .
    His mother wasn’t a ghost. She was real. She had left them all at the hospital’s entrance, kissing the top of Hans’s head, telling him to watch after Ani. The next time he’d seen her, she’d been boxed in oak.
    Sometimes he imagined going through the hospital doors to find her still in there, waiting for the family to bring her home. Her hair would fan out over the pillow, and her covers would be pulled up high, over her stomach and chest. A nurse would be sitting with her, because his Mutti always made friends, wherever she went.
    The plank sprang loose with a squeal. Dust rose from the hole. The grit caught on his eyelids and in the back of his throat. He tried not to cough.
    Inside lay a single sheet of paper, facedown.
    Frowning, he lifted it, turned it over, and sat back on his heels in the dim light of the lamp.
    It was a charcoal outline of a man, naked, his body splayed over a couch. One leg was propped on the cushions and one dangled off; the man’s penis slumped against his lower thigh. He was not large or muscled, but narrow in the chest. His face was turned away.
    A tiny word was written in the corner: Bloss. Bare . Though there were no clothes on the man, he looked as if he was still hiding himself, as if he had just averted his eyes before the artist could see too much. Hans recognized him. It was his grandfather.
    He dropped the picture and pushed the plank back into place. A dirty taste filled his mouth. He stood quickly. He kicked the carpet back over the plank, shrugged on his coat, and walked down the stairs, passing Ani’s small, thin silhouette.
    “Nothing,” he said without looking at his brother. “Now I have to check on our supplies in the cellar.”
    “Nothing?”
    “Would I lie? Get your coat and you can come with me.”
    While his brother jogged off to the closet, Hans skirted the kitchen where the women were talking and slipped down the dark steps. His stepmother’s voice followed him, and he heard snatches of her words: “so hard to . . . they all need new clothes . . .” He kept the lamp hooded until he was halfway down and then let the smoky yellow light spring over the dirt walls. The lower he went, the more his breath began to slow. Everything in their shelter was his construction. He had made it practical and comfortable for them. He had made it a second home, their real home if the one upstairs was bombed.
    Just before he passed out of earshot, Hans heard Fräulein Müller say, “That older one, he’s in love with you.”
    An invisible hammer slammed into