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  PRAISE FOR

  Margot

  “[A] marvelously wrought ‘what-if’ story of the survival of Anne Frank’s sister and her hidden identity in a new country. Psychologically subtle, satisfyingly suspenseful, and sensitively written.”

  —Margaret George, New York Times bestselling author of Elizabeth I: The Novel

  “This beautifully told sister narrative is more than an intriguing what-if. It’s a meditation on the nature of survivor guilt and the legacy of invisible wounds. Margot takes on big questions in an intimate story, and carefully considers whether it is possible to survive—and thrive—after unspeakable horror. A moving, affecting novel.”

  —Diana Abu-Jaber, author of Crescent and Birds of Paradise

  “In this novel, a compassionate imagining of what might have happened had Anne Frank’s sister, Margot, survived, Jillian Cantor provides more than a wistful what-if. She gives us a tour of the emotional nether land so often occupied by those who have survived the unimaginable and an example of extreme sibling competition—and love.”

  —Jenna Blum, New York Times bestselling author of Those Who Save Us and The Stormchasers

  “Cantor brilliantly channels Anne Frank’s sister, Margot, who survives the Holocaust horrors to hide yet again, in America, trying to forget the terrible secret that brought her here. A haunting meditation on who we really are versus who we wish we had been, regret, loss, and how we love in the face of sorrow. Glowing as a rare jewel, Margot is about discovering the truths of our lives, no matter what the cost.”

  —Caroline Leavitt, New York Times bestselling author of Pictures of You and Is This Tomorrow

  “Using historical facts and people we know and love, Cantor fills in the lost details of their lives with her imagination, and reaps a beautiful and redeeming new conclusion for a terrible chapter in history. Immediate and realistic, Margot brings Anne Frank and her sister to new life, while giving one of them a chance at a better future. The novel not only feels like a prayer for Margot and Anne, but for the many voiceless men and women whose memory deserves recognition.”

  —Erika Robuck, author of Call Me Zelda and Hemingway’s Girl

  “This is a haunting book—emotionally raw, beautifully written, and so close to the bone that it’s jarring to remember, when you come to the end, that Margot Frank isn’t really alive and well and waiting somewhere in Philadelphia to answer all your questions. Even knowing this was a work of fiction, I was still moved to tears at seeing Margot finally get the happy ending we all wish she’d had.”

  —Gwen Cooper, New York Times bestselling author of Homer’s Odyssey and Love Saves the Day

  “The kind of story that will leave you breathless, both because of its ambitious subject matter and its deeply arresting storytelling. Cantor has created a stunning reimagining of Anne Frank’s sister, her journey to America, and the complex terrain that became her womanhood. Part love story, part family mystery, this singular, bold, and elegantly paced story is rich with historical imagery, but the ingenious plot is all Cantor’s. Margot is the sort of book that remains with you long after the final page.”

  —Ilie Ruby, author of The Salt God’s Daughter and The Language of Trees

  “Breathes life into a character we know only from her sister’s famous diary. Margot offers us the other teenaged girl who lived in hiding for two years in that annex. It honors the memory of a shadow, of a ghost, and boldly explores how icons are made and what is lost in this process. Margot examines history versus story and how we cling to the fictions we tell ourselves.”

  —T. Greenwood, author of Two Rivers, Grace, and Bodies of Water

  Margot

  JILLIAN CANTOR

  RIVERHEAD BOOKS

  New York

  RIVERHEAD BOOKS

  Published by the Penguin Group

  Penguin Group (USA)

  375 Hudson Street, New York, New York 10014, USA

  USA | Canada | UK | Ireland | Australia | New Zealand | India | South Africa | China

  Penguin Books Ltd., Registered Offices: 80 Strand, London WC2R 0RL, England

  For more information about the Penguin Group, visit penguin.com.

  Copyright © 2013 by Jillian Cantor

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, scanned, or distributed in any printed or electronic form without permission. Please do not participate in or encourage piracy of copyrighted materials in violation of the author’s rights. Purchase only authorized editions.

  eBook ISBN: 978-1-101-59492-6

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  Cantor, Jillian.

  Margot / Jillian Cantor.—First Riverhead trade paperback edition.

  p. cm.

  ISBN 978-1-59448-643-2

  1. Holocaust survivors—Fiction. 2. Jewish refugees—Fiction. 3. Holocaust,

  Jewish (1939–1945)—Fiction. 4. Sisters—Fiction. 5. Frank, Anne, 1929–1945—Fiction.

  6. Psychological fiction. I. Title.

  PS3603.A587C37 2013

  813'.6—dc23

  2013004959

  First Riverhead trade paperback edition: September 2013

  Book design by Kristin del Rosario

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are 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.

  While the author has made every effort to provide accurate telephone numbers and Internet addresses at the time of publication, neither the author nor the publisher is responsible for errors, or for changes that occur after publication. Further, the publisher does not have any control over and does not assume any responsibility for author or third-party websites or their content.

  Contents

  Praise

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Dedication

  Epigraph

  PREFACE

  CHAPTER ONE

  CHAPTER TWO

  CHAPTER THREE

  CHAPTER FOUR

  CHAPTER FIVE

  CHAPTER SIX

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  CHAPTER NINE

  CHAPTER TEN

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

  CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

  CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

  CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

  CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE

  CHAPTER THIRTY

  CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE

  CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO

  CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE

  CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR

  CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE

  CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX

  CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN

  CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT

  CHAPTER THIRTY-NINE

  CHAPTER FORTY

  CHAPTER FORTY-ONE

  CHAPTER FORTY-TWO

  CHAPTER FORTY-THREE

  CHAPTER FORTY-FOUR

  CHAPTER FORTY-FIVE

  CHAPTER FORTY-SIX

  CHAPTER FORTY-SEVEN

  CHAPTER FORTY-EIGHT

  CHAPTER FORTY-NINE

  CHAPTER FIFTY

  CHAPTER FIFTY-ONE

  CHAPTER FIFT
Y-TWO

  CHAPTER FIFTY-THREE

  EPILOGUE

  Author’s Note

  Acknowledgments

  About the Author

  For my parents

  And let us not forget Margot, who kept her own diary, which was never found.

  —MIEP GIES

  I want to go on living even after my death.

  —ANNE FRANK

  I should begin with the simplest of truths: I am alive.

  You might wonder how this is possibly the simplest of truths, when you have thought me dead—when the entire world has thought me dead—for so very long. But this, I promise you, is really quite simple in light of all the rest of it. I breathe, and sometimes I eat and sometimes I sleep. But every morning, again, when I wake up, I find myself still breathing. Simple. Really, it is nothing more than science.

  I can already picture you shaking your head. It is not simple at all, you are saying to yourself. Maybe your face is turning an angry red, and you are yelling that the Red Cross lists said I was dead. Maybe you are wondering where I have been, why I haven’t found you yet. I’ve come this far. Why not just stay hidden forever?

  But a person cannot really stay hidden forever. We both know that now, don’t we?

  The truth is, I have wanted to find you for a long time, but I have been afraid. Afraid of what you might think if I told you everything. Afraid of what you’ve become since I’ve seen you last. Afraid, even, of what you might think of what—and who—I’ve become. I am not a girl anymore. Neither am I a Jew. And I have done things that I can’t understand or explain, even to myself.

  But I promise you this, I am alive. There are simple truths about me. I live in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, United States of America, where I am a legal secretary by the name of Margie Franklin. . . .

  CHAPTER ONE

  THE THIRD DAY OF APRIL 1959 SEEMS, AT FIRST, JUST LIKE any other Friday of my American life. I sit at my secretary’s desk in the law office of Rosenstein, Greenberg and Moscowitz, typing out Joshua’s schedule for the following week, gnawing carefully on an apple.

  The office is quiet this afternoon, except for the sounds of the girls’ fingers tapping against the typewriter keys and the hum of Shelby’s radio coming from the desk across from me. Nearly all the lawyers have already left for the weekend, including my boss, Joshua Rosenstein, who has gone to Margate with his father, Ezra, who is Shelby’s boss. Ezra Rosenstein is one of the partners in the law firm, so perhaps it is no surprise that he owns both a boat and a house by the ocean in New Jersey, which he and Joshua visit nearly every weekend, especially in the spring and summer.

  By this particular Friday, I—Margie Franklin—have been a resident of Philadelphia for nearly six years. I have been Joshua’s secretary for three of those years, which means I have spent somewhere around 150 Friday afternoons like this one, typing at my desk, eating my apple, listening to Shelby’s music.

  This Friday, the Platters—Shelby’s favorite—pour softly from her radio, crooning about how the smoke gets in their eyes, which is a song that always makes me think of Peter, even from the very first time I heard it, when I was with Shelby at Sullivan’s Bar last month.

  “We’re leaving early today,” Shelby announces to me just after she has devoured a ham sandwich she bought from the cart downstairs. “You’re too thin,” she had proclaimed in between bites. “Have half of my ham.” She’d tried to force it across the desk.

  “No thanks,” I’d told her, pulling the apple from my satchel and then saying, “I don’t really like ham.”

  “You’re an odd duck, Margie.” She’d shaken her head, but she’d smiled as she’d said it, so I knew she was saying it all in fun, that she had no idea why I would never bring myself to eat pork. And besides, that conversation, we’d already had it thousands of times. Or at least 150. Shelby often eats ham sandwiches, tries to offer me half, and insists I leave early with her when the Rosensteins are away.

  Now Shelby switches off her radio and taps an unlit cigarette on the side of her metal desk. “You are going to leave early with me, aren’t you, Margie?”

  I shrug, though I know that she will pester me until I agree to do it. It’s almost too warm today for my thin navy sweater, which I wear wrapped around my plaid dress, and I already feel the sweat building in pools under my arms, even in the office, but I resist the urge to fan myself with a file folder or even push up the sleeves.

  “Good girl.” Shelby laughs. “And one of these days, I may even get you to try one of these.” She tosses the unlit cigarette in my direction, and then pulls a fresh one from her pack, teasing it between her lips.

  “No thanks,” I say, pushing it gently back across the desk. We have played this game many times before, and I know Shelby does not honestly expect me to smoke it. Many girls in the office smoke, but I do not. I still cannot stand what it reminds me of: another time, another place, one which I never wish to go back to in my mind. But these are things I’d never even dream of telling Shelby.

  Just past three, Shelby hangs on to my arm as we walk out of the office building and onto the sidewalk. The street is still fairly empty, as most people in the offices around us are still working, and the midafternoon sun glints off the low glass windows of the buildings on Market Street.

  Shelby wears a short-sleeved white cotton blouse and full green skirt today, because it is April and the sun is warm enough to be without a sweater. But I still have my navy sweater on. I wear a sweater always, no matter what the temperature, so the dark ink on my forearm remains hidden, unseen.

  “Any plans this weekend?” Shelby asks me, as if she doesn’t know the answer, the same answer I give her every weekend.

  “Studying,” I tell her.

  “Oh, good grief, Margie. All work and no play.”

  “Joshua thinks I’ll make an excellent paralegal,” I tell her. Joshua is tall, with an oval face and curly hair the color of warm chestnuts. Sometimes I have the urge to reach up and run my finger around a curl, and I have to hold my hands together, to stop them from moving.

  “Oh, Joshua does, does he?” She laughs. Shelby’s laugh is like water. Sometimes it’s good, cleansing, even refreshing. Other times, I feel it might drown me. “Come on.” She yanks my arm, turning me in the direction opposite my studio apartment. “I want to see a movie this afternoon. And I don’t like to see a movie alone.”

  “What about Ron?” I ask her, referring to her beau, who I have no doubt she’ll marry at a moment’s notice if he ever asks, though some doubt he ever will. They have been dating for as long as I’ve known Shelby, which, as Shelby herself admits, is a long time for a girl to date a boy without any kind of promise.

  “Ron is still working. Everyone else is still working. Come on,” she wheedles.

  Shelby is always wanting me to go somewhere with her after work. Mostly, it is to Sullivan’s Bar to have a drink, and sometimes I do go with her even though I don’t drink alcohol, but just because she is my friend and her laugh can be so much like water that I want to swim in it, to close my eyes and float away. But at least once a month or so, there is a movie she wants to see. And nearly always it is one that Ron is not able or willing to see with her.

  Last month Shelby dragged me to see Some Like It Hot and then went on and on about Marilyn’s curves and her butterscotch voice. I thought the movie was fine, but I did not laugh at the places Shelby did, at Tony Curtis and Jack Lemmon’s antics dressed as women. I still do not fully understand the American sense of humor. Hiding is hiding is hiding. What’s so funny about that?

  “Come on,” Shelby is still urging. “I’ve read the book and seen the play. The movie will complete the trifecta, and I don’t want to see it alone. The Diary of Anne Frank is much too sad for that.” She pulls her tiny pink lips in a pout, and all I can do is stare at her, not saying anything. I feel a tugging in my chest.

  I saw a bit in the Inquirer
a while back about the possibility of a movie being made, and something about non-Jewish actors being cast, but then I put it out of my mind. Perhaps if I didn’t read the article or pay attention, it would simply go away? “I can’t believe they’ve made a movie,” I finally whisper.

  “Oh, Margie, seriously, I swear it. Sometimes I really do think that apartment of yours is located under a rock.” She shakes her head. “You’ve at least read Anne Frank’s diary by now, haven’t you? Oh, tell me you have!” All I can think is that she’s saying it wrong—not “Frank,” like the American version of hot dog with beans, a dish that Shelby seems rather fond of, but “Frank,” rhymes with “conk,” which is what I’d like to do right about now, conk Shelby over the head with my satchel if she doesn’t stop talking. And she is still talking.

  “I’m not feeling well,” I interrupt her, and that is a gross understatement. I am sweating, and my hands shake. Black spots float in front of my eyes, and I close them, then open them again, which only makes the spots turn white. “I think I better go home,” I whisper.

  I disentangle my arm and take off briskly, hoping she won’t follow me. “Margie,” she calls after me. “Margie. It’s the sweater. Take off the sweater. It’s too darn hot outside.”

  But I don’t stop running until I put the key in the lock, turn, and step inside my apartment.

  CHAPTER TWO

  IN 1959, MY STUDIO APARTMENT IS IN A FIVE-STORY BRICK building with evenly spaced square windows on Ludlow Street, in Center City, Philadelphia. The building is much wider than the buildings on the Prinsengracht, but not any higher. Philadelphia, like the canal district of Amsterdam, is a city of lower buildings, surrounded by water. Shelby told me that because of a law in the city of Philadelphia, no building can rise higher than the statue of its founder, William Penn, which sits atop City Hall. He is like a beacon, this bronze man, watching over all the smaller buildings, and in a certain way that makes me feel protected here. It is a false kind of protection, but still, I feel it nonetheless.