Stolen Secrets by L.B. Schulman

Author:L.B. Schulman
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Boyds Mills Press
Published: 2017-10-18T04:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER

SIXTEEN

AT EIGHT ON SATURDAY MORNING, VICKIE FINISHED her shift. The front door slammed, which was her way of letting me know it was my turn. I pulled up on my elbows, listening for Oma. Whew, she’d slept through Vickie’s wakeup call. I dropped my head back onto my pillow. I should get up to make breakfast—Oma liked her eggs soft-boiled—but I couldn’t pry myself from bed.

My phone rang, startling me. I rolled onto my side and squinted at a familiar number on the screen. “Hello?” I croaked into the receiver.

Franklin D. said, “I figured you were up.”

“Sort of. Isn’t eight kind of early to call?”

“Twelve minutes after eight,” he clarified.

“I hope you’re not worried about the debate. We did fine, considering we didn’t have much time to practice. That was my fault. Sorry.”

“No, it’s not that. I need to talk to you.”

I pulled back up to a sitting position and leaned against the headboard. “I’m listening.”

“Actually, I’m in the area. Like on your porch. I didn’t want to ring the doorbell in case your grandma was still sleeping.”

On the porch? Geez. I ran my fingers through my hair. “I’ll be right out.”

The door wasn’t even fully open when Franklin D. blurted out, “Online translators are modern torture devices, so I asked around. Turns out my uncle’s mechanic speaks Dutch. I was going to see if you want me to ask him to interpret the journal …” He shifted from foot to foot like it was cold out. It looked to me to be a gorgeous October morning. The sun, peeking over the apartment buildings, promised T-shirt temps.

He followed me into the living room so we wouldn’t wake Oma. “I was able to figure out a few words on my own,” he told me. “About two-thirds down the page on one of the entries, it said, ‘De meisjes van Frank.’ I’m butchering the Dutch, but—”

“What does it mean?” In the shadowed light, the old room felt like a fragment of the past being kept on life support. I parted the drapes to let the sunlight in, even though Vickie would close them as soon as she got the chance.

“According to the dictionary, ‘Frank girls.’”

I turned around to stare at him. “Frank girls?” For all I knew, there were many Franks at Bergen-Belsen. But girls? Frank girls couldn’t be nearly so common. “You think it means Anne and her sister, Margot? They died right before Bergen-Belsen was liberated.” It was clear from his expression that Franklin D. had already made the connection. His point slammed into me full velocity. “You think that Oma knew them? That she actually wrote about them in her diary?”

“If this mentions Anne Frank, it could be an important document. Like historically important,” he said. “As in, the entire world may be wholly interested.”

“Are they mentioned in more entries?”

Franklin D. shrugged. “Can’t tell. Whoever wrote this used first initials instead of names, probably to protect people’s identities in case the pages were found. But there are some that start with an A, and a few with an M, I believe.

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