ATHOTS Chapter Eight

"Sweetheart..." Isaac whispered in the darkness and Rachel moved slightly, half-asleep and too tired to answer. His lips brushed against her forehead and his heart twisted with anguish. 

Cruel men enjoy cruel jokes. The Nazis who took the Obermann family spread their story wildly throughout the country, written with a twisted, sneering kind of amusement... they had been made an example of. The report in the newspapers that a couple of "schmutzig Juden" had been found hiding in the house thus sealed the legacy of the Obermanns forever as true enemies of the Fatherland.

But then... what man in his right mind would want to be considered a friend of the "Fatherland"?

Isaac had seen the papers that evening... and he had kept his eyes from Rachel, knowing that she would see the truth written there. But he must tell her... and he had lain awake in the dark for hours... wondering how.

"Rachel, my shefela..." he whispered again and Rachel murmured sleepily.

The blankets rustled as Isaac sat bolt upright in the darkness. The slightest noise seemed so loud in the silence of that tiny attic where they were hidden. He bent over his wife, smoothing tangled dark locks from her face as he silently cried out to God for help...

She was woken by a falling tear. Her eyes fluttered open and she peered up at him in the darkness. And she knew... somehow she understood, even before he spoke.

"Choneni Elohim..." she whispered, and Isaac gathered her to his heart.

"You must be brave, my shefela," he spoke brokenly, and hated his feeble words. They seemed to fall so flat.

"God... is... silent..." Rachel told him, and she shook like a leaf in the wind.

"But He still hears," Isaac almost forced the words out. He knew them, he believed them... but they were so hard to believe. 

Isaac told her all he knew then, and she was brave...

But inside... she was shattered.

Maybe the sun would never shine again...

God is our refuge and strength, a very present help in trouble. Therefore will not we fear, though the earth be removed, and though the mountains be carried into the midst of the sea; though the waters thereof roar and be troubled, though the mountains shake with the swelling thereof...