“Ava.” Her grandpa’s voice trembled as he said her name.
“Yes?” She paused, glancing over at him.
“I need to clear something up. I feel like I have a Sherman tank parked on my chest, and I’d like to tell you something. It’s…about Chenogne.” He clasped his hands on his lap. “I want to tell you what happened. What really happened.” His voice shook, and he placed a hand on hers. His skin looked tissue paper–thin.
“Are you sure?”
He nodded.
“Thank you. I do want to hear, but you need to know something first. It’s my fault. Their asking you about that today was because of something I did,” she confessed. “I asked a friend to look up information for me, and somehow it spread from there. It’s not what I planned. I was trying to figure out what was bothering you so much. I should have waited until you were ready to tell me.” As she said those words, she thought of Dennis. He had told her to wait, to give it time. She was sorry now that she hadn’t listened.
“Oh, Ava.” He sighed. “If I hadn’t been so secretive, then you wouldn’t have had to ask for help. It’s just hard.” His voice caught in his throat, and then he cleared it. “The only other people I told were your grandmother and Paul. I knew Grandma had loved me, and Paul has stuck with me. I just have to trust that you’ll continue to love me too. I trust that you’ll understand I was a kid who didn’t know what to do other than to do as I was ordered.”
“Of course. I know that.” She eased her foot off the gas pedal as she maneuvered a turn.
He let out a soft groan. “We had only been on the outskirts of Chenogne, which is not far from Bastogne, for twenty-four hours. Our commanders knew what they were doing. They put the right troops and weapons in the right places at the right time, and we started gaining ground. We scared the Germans; they didn’t know what hit them.” He paused and then shook his head as if trying to shake out a memory. “Many of the Germans surrendered.”
Ava bit her lip. She’d made the wrong conclusion after hearing Jill’s story. She also realized she never did receive that e-mail from the librarian as Jill had promised.
It was the Germans who were the prisoners-of-war
—
the POWs.
“I saw a white flag waving from a stone house,” her grandfather continued. “I shouted to the German soldiers and called them out. I expected a dozen maybe. They were walking like they were half-dead, beaten down. I think in the end there were sixty of them. I don’t know why they were surrendering to me. I was just one guy. Later, I realized they probably felt safe—” Emotion caught in his throat.
Tears filled Ava’s eyes, and she quickly wiped them away, focusing on the road. She wanted to tell him to stop. She didn’t want to hear him say the words. Still, she couldn’t stop him. She had to know for herself.
“A sergeant showed up. He said to take them over the hill. I knew what was going to happen. We had orders, you know. After the Malmédy Massacre—when the Germans had killed many of our American soldiers who’d surrendered—we were told to take no prisoners. We were to do to them what they had done to our guys.”
“So what did you do?” The words escaped her as a heavy breath.
“I turned them over to some other guys from my unit. Not long afterward I heard the gunfire.”
“Oh, Grandpa.” Ava took his hand in hers and squeezed. “I’m so sorry you had to go through that. I’m so sorry that you had to live with that memory all these years.”
His shoulders shook.
“I can still remember their faces. I can still see them, Ava. Those German soldiers trusted me,” he whispered.
“I still love you,” she said. “I know now…and I love you.” She viewed the dark countryside passing by outside the car window, realizing the war had changed everything. The countries she’d driven through, the men who still remembered. Their children and grandchildren—at least the ones who chose to listen.
“A few hours after that, we headed to the Bastogne-Marche highway. I couldn’t feel bad any longer. I had a job to do. But as we moved down the road, I saw them—dark forms lying in the snow. It’s the image that I wake to nearly every morning. It only goes away with prayer. Some things only change with prayer.”
“Does God help you to forget?” Ava asked.
“No.” Grandpa Jack shook his head. “He reminds me I’m forgiven—for big things and small things. He tells me to look ahead, not back. He reminds me of heaven, where there will be no more tears.” He sighed.
“Have you read the letter yet, Ava? The last one?”
“No, not yet, but I want to.”
“When you do, it will help you to understand. God showed me many things through the war, and He’s still showing me. Like today.” He looked over at her. “Today I learned we don’t need to be afraid of sharing our whole selves with those we love.”
* * * * *
Ava glanced at the sparse boarding area, wishing there was a place to lie down. Airports would make a killing if they offered reclining chairs for rent by the hour. She’d give fifty dollars for the chance to lie down and shut her eyes.
Next to her, Grandpa Jack slept. He sat up straight except for his chin, which rested on his chest. His eyes were closed, and if she listened closely, Ava could hear the smallest snore. He no doubt was weary from all that had happened at the camp this morning, and from their drive down to Vienna.
She thought about pulling out her computer, but she didn’t have enough brainpower for that. Instead, she pulled out her phone. She considered calling Dennis, but she didn’t want to hear the anger in his voice. No, she wanted to forget about today and just hold on to the memories of yesterday. Yesterday—their day at Passau.
Before they’d left, she’d gone to Dennis and Grand-Paul’s room. No one had answered the door, so she’d written a note instead and slid it under the door.
A part of her hoped that Dennis would call her when he found the note, but another part of her wondered if another fifteen years would pass before she heard from Dennis again. She hoped not. Despite their last fight, she missed him already. She smiled, thinking of how he’d kissed her.
She thought about Jay too, but only heaviness filled her chest. Warm heat rose up her neck. She should never have responded to his text. It was dumb to get flustered by his phone call. Why had she been so stupid? Even if Jay tried to make up for the broken engagement, she knew now he wasn’t the type of man she wanted to spend her life with. What she loved about Dennis was his relationship with God, his care for the less fortunate, and his dedication to Grand-Paul and Grandpa Jack. It saddened her to know that her work had hurt the older men. That Dennis’s fears had played out. It hurt even more to consider what he thought of her.
She let out a heavy sigh and sent up a silent prayer. If she couldn’t have Dennis, she prayed God would continue to change her, to teach her to be more patient, to care for others more than herself, to believe God could make wonderful things happen when we allowed Him to and didn’t force our own way.
Ava pulled out the letters from her grandfather. She read the first two and couldn’t help but feel sorry for him. They were angry letters, telling his parents about his friends who had been killed. They were statements declaring there could be no loving God if He allowed such violence to happen. They were dated in February—not long after Chenogne, and during his battles through Germany.
She folded them and put them into their envelopes and then pulled out the last one.
May 15, 1945
Dear Mom and Dad
,
Today I was delivering bread to the camp, and an old man—one of the prisoners—approached to talk to me. He knew English well and told me he used to be a professor at the Germany university, but since he was Jewish, this is where he ended up. The whole time we talked, he told me he would be returning to find his family. He and his wife had sent their children to live with family in Canada, and he knew they were safe. He hoped his wife was safe too. The thing that amazed me about this man—who was thin and covered with sores—was that he didn’t talk about the past. Many of the prisoners tell us all the horrible things the Nazis did, but not this man.
Mom, I asked him about this, and his answer made me think. He told me he was free. He’d been liberated from the darkness. He told me the gates had been opened. He also prayed for me. He said I was chosen by God to be one of the liberators.
I have thought about those words over and over. Chosen? I’d volunteered to fight. I was placed in my division, but I didn’t feel chosen for anything. Also, if I was chosen for this, did that mean I was chosen for the battlefield too?
I’m not sure if I wanted to be chosen, but being able to open those gates has made all the battles worth it. I think my friends who died would think so too. Their deaths made freedom possible.
“Miss, we’re ready to leave now.” The airport attendant’s words interrupted her reading. “If you and your grandfather would follow me—”
“Yes, just one moment please.”
Ava gathered her things, but not before she read the last paragraph in her grandfather’s letter.
Like the man I spoke to, we all have a chance to focus on the future over the pain of the past. It’s a lesson that might take me a lifetime to learn, but one that’s worth knowing. Also, most of the time, being chosen means accepting the pain with the joy and knowing the joy is greater because the pain was there.
Love,
Jack
Ava swallowed her emotion as she rose. She put the letters away and then helped her grandfather to the plane, finding it hard to believe the trip was over. Finding it hard to believe they were leaving Europe. They were leaving this place, but they carried so much home with them. So much.
Ava just wished that she and Dennis had worked things out, but after reading that last letter, she knew she couldn’t give up on love so quickly. She had to hope. If she didn’t, what would she have?
It would take adjusting her focus. Looking to God, trusting Him, and then looking to those He wanted her to love for life, imperfections included.
Chapter Thirty
“Ava, aren’t you off the plane yet? Todd wants to know your response to the video he e-mailed you. He’s thinking of having—what was his name? Yeah,
that
guy here. Seriously, it’s so sweet. Call me.”
What in the world is she talking about?
Ava sighed as she listened to the message from Jill, getting into a rental car.
Grandpa Jack sat in the passenger seat and his eyes stared out the window as if confused to be seeing Seattle instead of Germany or Austria outside the window. She wondered if he was already missing Paul like she was. Dennis too.
Ava hadn’t been able to bear the thought of her grandfather going back to California and her to Seattle, so she’d talked him into coming up and staying with her a few weeks while the media fanfare faded. She knew it was only a matter of time before the media tracked him down, and she didn’t want him to have to deal with all the hoopla by himself. At least when the hounds finally tracked him to Seattle, she’d be there to fend them off. Though he had worried about the state of his lawn when he returned to the trailer park, he’d reluctantly agreed.
When she called her mom from the Amsterdam airport, where they had a connecting flight, she also told her mom that Grandpa Jack should have someone around to make sure he was doing well physically. What Ava hadn’t told her mom was that she wasn’t ready for them to go their separate ways just yet.
Outside it was dark, and the bright lights of Seattle filled the horizon. It was beautiful, but it didn’t seem right. Something was missing. Even with her grandfather here, there was still a big hole that she knew only Dennis and Grand-Paul could fill.
There was one more message, and Ava clicked to listen.
“Ava, you’re not ignoring my calls, are you?” It was Jill’s voice again. “I heard that you were getting home early. I know you won’t have time to rest, but do you think you can make it to the studio by ten o’clock? Todd needs you here, and he says that whatever you do, don’t watch the video that’s in your e-mail in-box. He says if you do, you’ll be fired, and he’ll get the word out to every studio in the world not to hire you.”
She shook her head, still not understanding, and then she turned to her grandfather.
“You tired?”
“A little.”
She glanced at her watch. “I have to go to the studio in the morning. Do you want to come?”
“Maybe not. I think I might have to take after my granddaughter and sleep in.”
* * * * *
Less than six hours after she’d made it home, Ava strode down the long hall of Studio 28. Then she turned and opened the studio door.
“There you are.” Jill rushed to her and opened wide her arms. “Are you ready?”
“Ready for what? I’m not even sure what this is about.”
“Well, there’s a video, you see, and it gave us an idea for a, uh, future segment. We don’t want everything set up at first. We just want you to react.”
“React to what?”
Jill placed a hand on her hip. “You’ll see. You just have to trust me. And don’t worry; this is taped. It’s not live. If you don’t like it, we won’t use it.”
The door opened and Todd approached with a smile. “Ava, the video segments from Europe were fantastic. I don’t know why you’re producing. You’re a star in the making. Now get up there onstage and sit. Laurie has something she needs to talk to you about.”
Ava did as she was told. Then the wardrobe coordinator came up and touched up her makeup for the camera. A smile filled the woman’s face.
“Ready?” Laurie brushed her dark curly hair over her shoulder.
Ava shrugged. “I’m not really certain what this is about.”
Laurie nodded and smiled toward the camera and the new cameraman Ava had yet to meet.
“Today we have a special guest with us on
Mornings with Laurie
. You all know Ava Ellington from her trip across Europe with her grandfather. And many of you may be tuning in because you caught the reunion of Ava’s grandfather with a woman he saved in the war as a small child. But what you don’t know—what I recently found out—is that there was much more to this reunion story than meets the eye. You see, while Grandpa Jack was being reunited with the old battle-sights, Ava was spending time with someone from her past. Watch this.”