Bluebird

Also by Sharon Cameron

The Light in Hidden Places

The Forgetting

The Knowing

Rook

The Dar k Unwinding

A Spar k Unseen
Bluebird

SHARON
CAMERON

Scholastic Press
New York
  Copyright © 2021 by Sharon Cameron

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This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are e­ ither
the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any
resemblance to ­actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or
locales is entirely coincidental.

Library of Congress Cataloging-­in-­Publication Data available

ISBN 978-1-338-35596-3

10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1  21 22 23 24 25

Printed in the U.S.A. 23

First edition, October 2021

Book design by Abby Dening

  For the seekers of justice
and t­ hose that help them find it
 CHAPTER ONE
— August 1946 —

I T IS A LAND WITHOUT RUBBLE .

Eva leans over the top rail of the ship, gazing across the leaden sea.
And ­there are no piles of charred stone. No smoking pits or chunks
of broken concrete. Just walls. A city of them. Whole and strong-­
looking, rising brick by solid brick. Beautiful, unbombed buildings
floating in a bank of gray and sooty fog.
This is a new world now. That’s what ­they’d told her. The old
world is ash. Burnt like paper in the fire winds of Berlin.
Sometimes, Eva thinks, ­people tell you lies.
­There’s supposed to be a statue, but she ­can’t find it in the mist.
Up onto the first rung of the rail and Eva leans out again, hands
­free, knees braced against the metal, hooked in place by her shoe
heels. She can see the tops of heads and hats on the lower deck, w ­ ater
churning into foam far below them. And the city spreads, bigger,
closer, anchored to the moving horizon.
She closes her eyes. Lets the wind snatch her hair. Slap her cheeks.
It’s like driving fast with the win­dows down. Like diving off a cliff.
It feels a ­little like flying.
When she opens her eyes again, the city is lost to the fog bank and
an island has taken its place. She can see ­children down ­there, playing
in the haze, jumping up and down on a seawall built to keep them

– 1 –
 from falling into the harbor. The c­hildren are fascinating. ­These
­children ­don’t know about unexploded grenades. Or teetering walls
that collapse when climbed. And no one ­here is ­going to shoot them
for their shoes.
­She’d forgotten ­there could be c­ hildren like that.
The barest brush of a moth wing, and Brigit is beside her. Eva steps
down quickly to the deck and takes Brigit’s hand. Brigit smiles at the
­children. A smile that lights the fog. And then the second mate hurries
past and she cringes. Shrinks into herself. The mate touches his cap, like
he has a hundred times, disappearing catlike down a ladder, and Eva
puts her arm through Brigit’s arm. Tightens her grip on Brigit’s hand.
Brigit is not like the c­ hildren. She w­ ill never be like the c­ hildren
again.
Sharp heels come clicking across the deck.
“Eva! Brigit!” says Miss Schaffer. “What are you ­doing up ­here?
Where are your hats? Where are your bags?”
“Our suitcases are in the cabin, Miss Schaffer,” Eva replies.
Her En­glish is careful. Correct. But she d ­ oesn’t understand Miss
Schaffer’s use of the word bag. The suitcases they w ­ ere given do not
even resemble a sack. It’s hard to know what Brigit understands,
­because Brigit does not speak. But she must have learned a ­little
En­glish, ­because Eva sees her hand dart suddenly to her head, as if
surprised not to find a hat t­ here.
“Well, hurry, please,” Miss Schaffer fusses. She has a clipboard
clutched to her chest, a badge with an eight-­pointed black-­and-­red
starburst sewn onto her sleeve. “We ­couldn’t have you greeting
Amer­i­ca with bare heads. It would be indecent.”
Indecent, Eva thinks. The opposite of decent, which means “nice.”
Civilized. ­She’d known many indecent ­people in her life, and most of
them had been wearing their hats.

– 2 –
 Miss Schaffer dis­appears down the stairwell, and the second mate
comes back up the ladder. And now that Miss Schaffer ­isn’t near, he
gives an extra smile to Eva. A sly one. ­Because she let him kiss her.
And put his hands on her blouse. For aspirin. When Brigit was sick
and the doctor said o­ thers ­were sicker.
“Fair is fair.” That’s what the second mate had said.
And then Brigit has a foot up on the rail, her body pitching for-
ward, over and down to the lower decks. Eva grabs a handful of skirt
and yanks her back again.
You have to be quick with Brigit.
“No,” Eva whispers, taking her hand again, patting her arm. “Not
that way.”
She never should have let Brigit see her up on the rail.
The second mate shakes his head, disgusted. But Brigit was only
trying to see the c­ hildren. It’s Eva who would have jumped. Or let
herself fall.
The second mate ­doesn’t know it was Eva who put the dead rat in
his laundry bag.
Fair is fair.
“Kommen Sie mit,” Eva whispers. Her German is only for Brigit
now. She leads her away from the rail, away from the mate, down two
flights of stairs into the electric-­yellow light of belowdecks. Around
the corner, and Eva opens a small wooden door.
Their hats are side by side on a narrow bed in the narrow cabin
they have shared across a wilderness of sea ­water. Eva hates the cabin.
The walls are too close. But she can turn the lock whenever she
wants, and this, she loves. The other passengers love it, too. The other
passengers are afraid of Brigit.
They prob­ably should be.
Eva turns the lock now and sits Brigit on the only chair.

– 3 –
 She straightens Brigit’s blouse—­not as white as it had once been,
but crisply ironed—­pulling the buttonholes downward where they
want to gap across her bust. Then she pins on Brigit’s hat. It’s an ugly
hat, black-­coffee brown and without shape, but Brigit makes it beau-
tiful. She blinks two clear blue eyes, while Eva turns to the mirror.
Eva’s hair is wild and the color of Brigit’s hat. ­She’d pinned it up the
night before, like her ­mother used to make her do. To tame the curls.
Anything tame is gone now. Lost to the sea wind.
Her m­ other is gone now, too. Burnt up with the past.
Eva squashes her own hat on her head and then smooths her skirt,
feeling for the papers she has sewn inside the lining. Safe. She stands
up Brigit and checks her skirt. The papers are safe ­there, too. She can
feel them. ­Will anyone ­else be able to feel them? How thoroughly
­will they be searched? What if the plan ­doesn’t work?
The man said it would work.
She knows the man tells lies.
Eva turns to the basin, playing with the w ­ ater like she’s washing
her hands. Brigit cannot be allowed to see fear.
So she breathes. And breathes. And pretends to wash her hands.
Then Eva dries her hands and gives Brigit her suitcase, wrapping
each of Brigit’s fin­gers around the h ­ andle. She smiles when she
­doesn’t want to.
“Time to go,” she says. “Stay with me, yes?”
Brigit blinks.
Eva picks up her purse and her suitcase, and they step out of their
small, safe cabin for the last time, up the metal stairs, and out into the
smell of a harbor. Flags snap along the halyards, the anchor motor
buzzing the boards beneath her feet. Brigit cringes. The lower deck
is swarming now—­refugees and war brides and bits and pieces of
families, hanging over the rails, yelling and crying, waving their

– 4 –
arms and their handkerchiefs. The docking point is in sight and it is
also swarming, p­ eople cheering and crying and waving their arms
and their handkerchiefs.
­There is no one down t­ here waving for her.
Eva turns Brigit quickly t­ oward the bulkhead, getting her back to
the noise and the crowd, pulling down her hat brim to make a ­little
tent around her face. Brigit holds out her hand like she’s been taught,
and Eva gets two buttons from her purse and puts them in Brigit’s
palm. Brigit smiles, touching the buttons, distracted, and then Miss
Schaffer comes, clicking on her heels.
“­There you are! Eva Gerst and Brigit Heidelmann.” She ticks two
boxes on her list. “You have your papers?”
Eva holds up two sets of papers, the ones she w ­ ill allow Miss
Schaffer to see. The ones she ­will not allow her to see are rustling in
their skirts. Miss Schaffer nods, and moves on down the line she is
forming. ­There are thirty-­eight in their group, from toddlers to
grandparents, Polish, French, Ukrainian, Latvian, and Hungarian.
Eva and Brigit are the only Germans. B ­ ecause Germans are the
­enemy.
But they all have new suitcases. The lucky ones. Coming to Amer­
i­ca. Leaving hell like a dream ­behind them.
Or bringing it with them.
“Show the man at the desk your papers,” Miss Schaffer shouts at
her line. The noise of the cheering is deafening. “Nothing to be afraid
of! Just answer the questions truthfully, and ­there ­won’t be a ­thing to
worry about . . .”
Only Eva ­will not be answering truthfully. And Brigit ­will not be
answering at all.
The movement of the ship slows to nothing, the flags hang limp,
and the deck boards go still beneath Eva’s feet.

– 5 –
 Amer­i­ca.
They wait a long time. Brigit gets bored with her buttons. Eva
adds a blue one, held back for this purpose. The gulls wheel and
squawk. And at last their line moves down the gangway, ­people
carry­ing trunks and cases, tagged bundles propped on their heads.
Eva takes away the buttons and holds tight to Brigit’s hand. One step.
Two steps. The dock comes closer, closer, the crowd calling out
names, the babble of so much En­glish wild and strange in Eva’s ears.
The man in front of them is crying with happiness.
So much hope. But hope ­isn’t what Eva came for.
She’s come for justice.
Their feet land together on solid ground. American ground.
And suddenly, Amer­i­ca is enormous.
A beam of sunlight finds a crack in the clouds, coloring the ship,
the ­faces. Eva sees the statue now, on its own island across the ­water,
arm held high to the sun. Brigit raises her chin. She has always loved
the light. Her smile is beatific. Angelic.
“Welcome to Amer­i­ca,” says a man. A young man, pausing on his
way to somewhere. Men always pause for Brigit. He has a short hair-
cut, a duffel bag on his shoulder, and a uniform. Army.
So he has been to hell, too.
Brigit cringes and Eva steps a l­ ittle in front of her. The young man
in the uniform ­doesn’t notice. He tosses something shiny into the air.
Eva drops her suitcase to catch it. A ­little candy, wrapped in gold
foil, glittering like a gem. Brigit stops shivering, distracted. She knows
something sweet when she sees it. She smiles u ­ ntil she dimples.
“Thank you,” Eva says, and at the sound of her voice, the young
man’s face goes hard. Like gun metal.
“Kraut,” he says. And spits on her shoe.

– 6 –
 CHAPTER TWO
— February 1945 —

I T ’ S A ROAD WITHOUT CARS .

Long, straight, stretching empty through the pastureland to the
hazy horizon. Lying just beyond the crest of the hill. Just beyond
the reach of her steering wheel.
This is what she came for.
Inge stomps the gas, the car surges, and the tires leave the earth.
It feels like flying. Like falling.
Then the car crashes down again, bouncing the girls into the roof.
Annemarie squeals.
“Inge! You’ll get us killed!” But she is laughing with the glory of
it. The daring of it.
Inge is nothing if not daring. She hits the gas again, jerking the
wheel a ­little too hard around an ice-­rimmed puddle. The car skids,
throwing them sideways, then rights itself. Mud splatters the
win­dows.
“Your ­father ­will see all this dirt!” Annemarie protests.
“Papa is a pussycat,” says Inge. “And anyway, he’s away.” He’s
always away.
“Then your ­mother ­will see!”
This threat is more serious. “I’ll pay Kurt to clean it,” Inge says,
picking up enough speed to make Annemarie squeal again.

– 7 –
 S­ he’d confess to stealing Papa’s car and driving it to Berlin before
­she’d let Mama find out Annemarie had been in the passenger seat.
Mama says Annemarie is of the lower classes. Just ­because she lives
on a farm that Mama’s papa used to own. But the head of their club,
Frau Koch, says t­ here is no caste or class in the new Germany. That
all German blood is valuable. That c­ hildren should not listen to their
parents, ­because their parents are old. Youth is the ­future. The youth
­will rule Germany.
And anyway, Mama is only jealous ­because Annemarie is tall,
blond, and perfect, and Inge is not.
Inge pushes the hair from her eyes. Mama is ridicu­lous.
­There could never be a better Nazi than Annemarie.
Inge takes a hard turn into a wooded lane, zipping down the nar-
row track. Then she puts both feet on the brake, skidding ruts into
the mud, slamming Annemarie forward and then back into the seat
cushion. ­They’re hidden from the main road, beside the shaded path
leading to Annemarie’s farm.
“­You’re a terror,” says Annemarie. But she’s still laughing. Then
she looks hard at Inge. “Are you sitting on a book?”
Inge pulls her skirt down over An Examination of Racial
Degeneracy, the thickest, most comfortable-­looking book ­she’d been
able to pull from Papa’s shelf. She’s sixteen to Annemarie’s almost
eigh­teen, but Inge still ­can’t see over the steering wheel. Not without
help.
Annemarie rolls her eyes. “Why do I let you talk me into ­these
­things?”
“­Because it’s fun. And you know what e­ lse is fun? Getting kissed.”
Annemarie leans forward, her face serious. “Inge! Who have you
been kissing?”
“Kurt. Yesterday. In the toolshed.”

– 8 –
 “Kurt? You ­shouldn’t have! What would Frau Koch say?”
“That he was of good German stock. But ­really, Annemarie, why
would I tell Frau Koch?”
“But what about Rolf?”
Inge strengthens her grip on the steering wheel. “What about
him?”
“It’s just that . . .” Annemarie looks upset. “­You’re so lucky. Rolf
has a perfect pedigree. Inge, you ­didn’t . . .”
“Of course not! No babies. Not like you in a year or so.”
Annemarie pushes Inge’s arm, giggling, and Inge laughs, even
though she ­isn’t sure it’s funny. Last week, a­ fter their club meeting,
Annemarie had whispered that ­she’d de­cided to be like Frieda
Hoffmann. When Frieda Hoffmann turned eigh­teen, ­she’d told her
­mother she was taking a course in Hamburg, when ­really ­she’d gone
to a lovely mansion in Berlin to meet an SS officer to have a baby
with.
A baby for Hitler, Frau Koch says, a good German baby, is the
greatest gift a girl can give to her Führer.
Just not, maybe, with your ­mother’s chauffeur in a toolshed.
“You ­ haven’t said anything, have you?” Annemarie asks.
Annemarie might have to tell her ­mother she’s taking a course, too.
Inge gives her protest some drama. “I would never!” But
Annemarie still looks unhappy, so she adds, “And I ­won’t let Kurt
kiss me again, e­ ither. If that makes you feel better.”
“You ­shouldn’t. It’s so unfair to Rolf. Rolf is a hero.”
Inge examines her skirt hem. She’s been hearing about heroes at
least once a week since she was thirteen. The brave young soldiers
winning glorious victories for Germany, defeating the Communist
aggressors and all their allies. She’s sewn shirts for them—­with the
other girls from their club, on their social nights—­written cards,

– 9 –
packed hundreds of boxes of candies and cigarettes to send to the
front. Rolf is winning the war that w ­ ill begin a thousand years of
German rule. A pi­lot, from the perfect ­family. He’s also ten years
older, a friend of her f­ ather’s, and has a gap between his front teeth.
Kurt w ­ ill have to join the army soon, now that he’s old enough.
Annemarie sighs. “Your ­father is the nicest man in the world and
­you’re ­going to break his heart. Go home and be good and I’ll see you
at the meeting.” She opens her car door. “And d ­on’t get into
trou­ble!”
“Me? I never get . . .”
And then a rumble comes fast across the sky, shaking the air. A
plane, so low their hair flies with the rush of its wind. The birds take
flight, the evergreens creaking and thrashing overhead, but the
branches are too thick to see more than the plane’s passing shadow.
“Luftwaffe,” says Annemarie. “­Going to fight the Communists.”
“To victory,” Inge whispers automatically. She ­doesn’t mention
that the engine h ­ adn’t sounded German.
She ­will turn on the radio when she gets home, no ­matter what
Mama says.
Annemarie waves and hurries away down the path, glancing fur-
tively at the sky while Inge backs up the lane. The drive home ­isn’t
any fun now. It’s just a drive.
Tall, formal hedges grow along one side of the road, trimmed
around open iron gates. Inge turns smoothly between them, into a
long, sloping driveway, leaves the car in gear, and cuts the engine. She
knows exactly how far she can coast. The car glides past the stable,
the tennis courts, the ­little copse of trees where the nuthatches live,
swinging into its spot in the garage b­ ehind the ­house with barely a
sound.
Kurt is ­there, waxing the hood of her ­mother’s Mercedes. He

– 10 –
 watches her park, sees the mud, and shakes his head, a shock of light
brown hair showing beneath his cap. It’s his fault, anyway, Inge
thinks. He s­ houldn’t have taught her how to drive.
But this means Mama is home.
Inge hops out and picks up the book she’s been sitting on. It smells
vaguely of Papa’s pipe. “Back already?” she asks. As if it d ­ oesn’t
­matter.
“I left her at the front,” Kurt replies.
Then Mama ­won’t have seen that the car was gone. Inge wants to
wilt with relief. Annemarie might be the bigger secret, but what
Mama would say if she knew Inge could drive is more than should be
­imagined.
“Did she have Erich and Adolf with her?”
“And Helga.”
Helga is the nanny. The new one. She w ­ on’t last long.
“And Herr Gundersen is ­here for violin,” Kurt goes on. He leans
into his work, buffing out the wax, sweating interestingly with the
effort. He nods at her f­ ather’s car.
“You’ll have to pay me to wash that,” he says. His tone is sly. A
­little wicked.
Inge holds the heavy book tight to her chest. Papa always says that
no one does anything for nothing, and that this is fair. If someone
does something for her, she has to do something for them. But “pay”
might mean something dif­fer­ent to Kurt. And she is not Annemarie.
Kurt straightens. “Honey cakes. Two of them. Out of the oven.”
Inge grins over the book, suddenly happy again. Kurt winks, and
she tucks her hair b­ ehind her ear.
One more visit to the toolshed c­ ouldn’t r­ eally hurt anything.
Still smiling, Inge slips out of the garage, across the garden,
through the back door, and into the kitchen. Frau Kruger waves a

– 11 –
hand at her from b­ ehind a cloud of steam, and then Inge is on the
staircase, the one meant for the servants. She pauses. The screech of a
badly played violin is coming from the parlor, which would be Adolf;
Erich is actually getting quite good. ­She’d been good. Very good. At
the piano. But Mama had s­topped her lessons. Her teacher, Mama
said, focused far too much on foreign composers. That nonsensical
romanticism is bad for a mind like Inge’s. Now she has to practice
“Clair de Lune” when Mama i­sn’t home.
The violin starts up again. Inge hugs the book tight and runs up
the steps, placing her feet exactly where the creaks are not, putting
one eye to the crack of the door to check the upper corridor. When
no one is ­there, she slides out, over the thick, ­silent carpet, and into
her ­father’s study.
Inge breathes in the stale tobacco, but the smell is nearly gone now.
Wanting Papa home is selfish, b­ ecause his work is impor­tant. Vital to
Germany. Vital to the war. Even the Führer thinks so. But she wants
him home, anyway.
­There’s a hole in the row of books on the shelf ­behind the desk,
where Racial Degeneracy belongs. Inge gets on her tiptoes and pushes
it back into place, between Rudin’s Heredity and Racial Hygiene in the
National State and Permission to Destroy Life That Is Unworthy of Life.
Her fin­gers go still on the last one.
Papa says that emotion must never enter into judgment. Emotion
makes correct choices difficult, and that is weakness. “And who ­will
you be?” Papa would say, ruffling her hair. “One of the weak or one
of the strong? Tell me what you think, my Vögelchen.”
Strong, ­she’d told him. S­ he’d be one of the strong.
Inge’s fin­gers touch the gold letters of the book spine. “I am Inge
von Emmerich,” she whispers. “I belong to Papa, Mama, Germany,
and the Führer. They love me, and I love them.” Like Papa taught

– 12 –
 her. Twenty times when she opens her eyes in the morning, and
twenty times at night, just before she sleeps. Or whenever she is . . . ​
uncertain.
Lately, she has been more uncertain. Lately, she’s been thinking
thoughts she s­ houldn’t.
Then she remembers the airplane.
Inge turns to Papa’s desk, pushes aside a stack of files, and reaches
for the radio. The knob clicks and the dial wakes up, the yellow glow
brightening like a slowly opening eye. The study is alive again, hum-
ming with soft, garbled words coming clearer as the radio warms.
­There’s no need to tune it. ­There’s only one broadcasting station
allowed. And then she sees the edge of a folder, sticking out from the
bottom of the stack.
It has her name on it.
Why would Papa have a file with her name on it?
“Inge.”
Inge steps instantly away from the desk, hands g­ oing guilty b­ ehind
her back. Mama is standing in the doorway.
“What are you ­doing?” Mama asks. Her blond hair has faded to
silver gray, pulled back into a bun that is smooth, sleek as steel. Like
her voice. Not a syllable out of place.
Mama crosses quickly to the desk, her heels soundless on the car-
pet, and turns the radio knob u ­ ntil it clicks. The warm glow fades
and the room is cold and dead again. Mama looks down on her. Then
she pulls back a hand and slaps Inge’s face.
Inge’s head snaps to one side. Her cheek is on fire, but she d ­ oesn’t
cry. German girls ­don’t do that. Mama is waiting, watching, to see if
she ­will.
She w­ on’t.
Inge closes her eyes.

– 13 –
 Mama hits her again.
I am Inge von Emmerich. I belong to Papa, Mama, Germany, and the
Führer. They love me, and I love them. I am Inge . . .
Only, this time she sings it in her head. To the tune of “Clair de
Lune.”
“Go to your room, please, Inge,” says Mama. “And put a clip in
your hair.”
Inge slides around her ­mother and leaves the study. She can hear
the violin downstairs. It’s Erich now, playing Stravinsky, and it’s
beautiful. Even though Rus­sian m ­ usic is much worse than French.
Or that’s what Frau Koch says. Inge walks without hurrying down
the corridor, head up.
I am Inge von Emmerich . . .
Cold light filters through the lace curtains at the win­dow, making
the blue satin spread on her bed look shiny and slick. Inge sits at her
dressing t­ able, knees perched beneath its ruffled cover, ignoring the
barrette Mama told her to use. She picks up a brush, twining her
short, dark hair around her fin­gers, trying to tame a curl. Mama had
tried to lighten her hair when she was l­ittle, having the maid comb
lemon juice through it and sending her to sit in the sun ­until her skin
burned. It h ­ adn’t worked. Her hair had gotten darker, anyway.
She d
­ oesn’t want to look in the mirror. She d­ oesn’t want to look at
the red slap mark on her cheek.
Mama ­ really is jealous of Annemarie. ­ Because Annemarie’s
­mother won the medal for bearing c­ hildren and she did not. B ­ ecause
Inge is supposed to be better than Annemarie and she ­isn’t.
­Because ­music is something that Inge is good at and Mama is not.
­These are thoughts Inge is not supposed to have.
She feels a twinge of pain in her m
­ iddle.
So she goes to the win­dow and pulls back the lace curtain instead,

– 14 –
where the nuthatches nest in the oak tree. Papa had given her a nut-
hatch once. Soft and sweet, summer-­sky blue with blushes of orange.
­Because Papa loves her.
Rolf says he loves her. In his letters. That her eyes sparkle like the
sky. But i­sn’t it strange that his letters are lies. Her eyes d
­ on’t sparkle.
They ­aren’t even blue. And to her knowledge, she’s never actually
smiled at him. Especially like a sunrise.
Maybe Papa told Rolf to say ­those ­things. Maybe Papa told him
to write ­those letters. And what had happened to that ­little bird?
She ­can’t remember.
­These are also thoughts Inge is not allowed to have. They
hurt. They make her sick. She drops the curtain and thinks them,
anyway.
About a jealous m ­ other. French composers. Hair she s­houldn’t
have. Violets in a field, bunched in her hands. A file hidden beneath
the other folders. A file with her name on it. And Inge thinks of a
word. One word before the click of the knob. One clear word before
Mama took the voice of the radio away.
Amer­i­ca.

– 15 –
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