Nightingale by Susan May Warren Page B

watched our movements and waited for my graduation as a part of their purposes. Most definitely, none of my family joined the Nazi party, which in the end, became our demise. It’s an event I still cannot bear to recollect without wanting to wail. Esther, in truth, if I had the means, I would have secreted us all on an early transport out of Germany, back to Iowa, and would have gladly joined up with the GIs against the tyranny of Hitler.
    To be pressed into a life where every breath is as if you are inhaling poisonous gasses…this is what it is like to betray yourself. Every day I served the fuhrer, the poison crept through me, until I felt charred, even hollow inside. But, I had also taken an oath to save lives and this I did. The night I sat beside your friend Linus, talking to him of home, I somehow found myself again.
    Then, like a gift I met you. You were the pieces oflight that sprinkled from the heavens into my dark life. I breathed again fresh air with your every letter. Every note from you reminded me of the life I saw again on my landscape. Indeed, I dream that this war will end, and that I will be released into the freedoms I fought against. Stupidly, I even began to wonder if I might persuade you to wait outside these rickety gates. Clearly the hallucinations of a man easily detoured from his realities.
    Now I find myself suffocating, once again, poison in my throat.
    Esther, can you possibly forgive me? I can offer you nothing but my deepest respect for your kindness. And while I would understand if you returned this letter without opening it, my hope is that you have read it, and that you might see more of me than you did.
    That you might, in fact, forebear to offer me a second chance.
    You were more lovely than my feeble imagination, yet even now, the image of your pain makes me ache.
    Please, Esther.
    Peter

    Esther had turned into her sister, Hedy. No, she’d never be as beautiful as Hedy, with her blond hair, those siren lips, the voice and moves that could turn a man—too many men—to butter.
    No, she had none of the qualities that might draw men to her—but somehow, she managed to lure men—the wrong men. Or perhaps Esther had simply—always been—the wrong woman.
    What kind of woman gave her heart away for a smile across the dance floor, for a few sugar words scripted on paper? What kind of woman allowed herself to be cajoled into the backseat of a car, who handed herself over without a moment’s pause?
    Are you sure?
    She’d barely spoken, but she remembered nodding in the soft folds of the back seat.
    And no one had forced her onto that bus to Fort McCoy, had they?
    She sat on the roof of the hospital, Peter’s letter folded in her hand under the glitter of night, the stars cruel in their scrutiny. A thousand eyes to watch her read his words, over and over, although she’d long ago memorized them.
    Never did I intend to hurt you.
    I know now what a cruel, desperate sap I was to continue to write to you.
    Please, Esther, can you forgive me?
    Please, Esther.
    She bit the inside of her lip. Is this what Hedy’s boyfriend, the Greek shyster who had stolen her from her family, whispered to her when he soured her from Iowa farm girl into a floozy, singing in the gin joints of Chicago?
Please, Hedy.
    Clearly, yes, she’d turned out just like her sister. Possessed the same foolish heart, so easily bartered for words of affection.
    Please, Esther.
    No. She folded the letter in half, then again.
    No, she would not hear his desperation. Would not imagine him standing next to the gate in the hot sun, waiting for her to return.
    Would not hear his voice, a wretched echo in her head.
Esther!
    No.
    She ripped the letter into tiny squares and tossed it out into the wind. It scattered into the sky, melting into the stars, lost on the breeze. Good-bye, Peter Hess.
    She took a breath of cool, summer air, tinged with pine, the tang of cut grass. She missed the