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but”—she lifted her hands—“that was a whole month before Uncle Sam declared war on Germany.”
    I took hold of a round brass post at the foot of the bed. “Some people killed one of the brothers last night.”
    “Oh, Lord.” She cringed. “I wish I could say I’m surprised, but after that story about the Robert Prager lynching—”
    “It wasn’t a mob lynching.” I pressed the bed knob against my stomach and felt words tumble from my mouth. “It was a man and his son. They were drunk and furious about the loss of a family member and killed the Kraut with their own bare hands.”
    May leaned the small of her back against the credenza. “Which of the German brothers was it?”
    “I’m not sure. Why?”
    “The older one has been living in Buchanan for quite a while—since 1912 or so. Hardly even has an accent anymore. But that younger one . . .” She crossed her arms over her chest. “People say he didn’t leave Germany until after the war broke out in Europe.”
    “Do they think he’s like Mr. Weiss?”
    May shrugged. “There are rumors he’s a traitor and a spy. My neighbor somehow knows whose phones are being wiretapped in town, and she said the Schendels have been the main targets of the APL’s investigations, mainly because of the younger brother. Their sofa is comfortable. That’s the most I can say about them.” Her eyes flitted toward the square window behind me. “Do they know precisely who killed him?”
    My heart thumped with such guilt and terror, I feared she heard the organ hammering against the wall of my chest. “I . . . I beg your pardon?”
    “I don’t like the idea of murderers lurking nearby. Do they know who the killers were? Was it the APL?”
    “I—” My lips and chin both shook so much that May must have seen my face twitching and quivering like a frightened rabbit’s.
    “Ivy?” She stepped forward. “Are you all right?”
    My entire head vibrated, and the room blurred and rattled until May looked as though someone were shaking her up like a bottle of ketchup.
    “Ivy? Do you need me to—?”
    “My father and brother—they beat the German to death,” I said, and the next thing I knew, my skull hit the floor.

 
    UNCORRECTED E-PROOF—NOT FOR SALE
    HarperCollins Publishers
    ....................................
    Chapter 4
    E ven though the words of German writers should have been banned from my brain, I remembered that Goethe once said of honesty, “Truth is a torch, but a terrific one; therefore we all try to reach it with closed eyes, lest we should be scorched.”
    Oh, boy, was he right.
    Spitting out the truth about my family in front of May Dover—pushing out all that ugliness in one blunt go with my eyes open wide—burned, blinded, stunned, and crippled me for the better part of the day. May revived me with smelling salts and dragged me onto the foamy sea of white ruffles on the attic’s bed, which clogged my nose with tickling dust. She even went so far as to remove my shoes and prop my feet up on a satin pillow. Despite such fineries, I remained a mute and useless slug of a tenant, unable to sit up and apologize for the crime I’d just confessed.
    “Feeling better?” she asked at dusk, when sunlight stopped boring a fiery hole into my brain and shadows yawned across the attic floor. The homey aroma of vegetable soup—a scent that reminded me of my mother—entered the room along with May’s footsteps, and I opened my eyes to the sight of her carrying a tray with a spoon, a glass of water, and a steaming bowl of a dark broth. She bent her legs into a slow and graceful lunge and set the small supper on a leather traveling trunk beside the bed. A gold key shimmered beside the tray.
    I shifted onto my side, toward her and the soup. “Didn’t you hear what I said before I collapsed on your floor?”
    May perched herself on the edge of the bed and smoothed out her dark skirt. “Yes. I heard.”
    “About my father and brother?”
    “Yes. You