Disclaimer: I do not own these characters who were so wonderfully brought to life by Marcus Zusak in his novel "The Book Thief". If you have not read it yet, run, do not walk to your local library or bookstore. Summary: Liesel leaves Molching to start her adult life after the War has ended.
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The day Liesel Meminger left Molching was not so very different then the day she had came to the city six years ago. She was almost a woman now, not the scared little ten year old girl being given up by her mother, but she was leaving everything she knew for a future full of uncertainties. The only comfort was this time she was not alone this time. With a little luck, she'd never be alone again.
Though she had stayed with Frau Hermann since the bombing that destoryed Himmel Street, there was not the same attachment to the mayor's wife she had with the Hubermans. Life was more luxuriant then she'd ever known it, but it was somehow dulled without love in her life. Many nights she lay awake thinking she would give anything for the sound of Papa's accordian, Mama calling her a saumensch, and words on the wall of the basement.
Then Max came back, and there was one tiny part of her past still alive. Her last link to the years on Himmel Street, ones she would never forget as long as she lived. Despite the pain of losing her mother and brother, the fear of the war, and the tough conditions they lived under, they were some of the best years of her short life.
Now that she was a young woman of sixteen, and Max was close to thirty, a different sort of feeling was settling between them. After he'd been in town for three days she went to sleep wondering if she might not love him as more then a friend. When he told her the very next day he would have to leave soon, she thought her heart would explode. It shouldn't have been a surprise, even though the camps had been closed and the war was over, Germans were no more tolerant of a Jew in their midsts then they were before Hitler's demise.
"If you have to leave," She said as she blinked back tears. "Take me with you."
"Liesel," There were tears in Max's eyes too as he cupped her face between his hands. It was the first time he touched her and she felt a shiver in her stomach. His eyes were swampy and his hair were feathers, but he was handsome in a way. Different then the handsome she'd been raised with, but his was a face of someone she'd loved and missed for a long time.
"You don't know what you're asking." He said in a quiet voice. "I have to travel very far to find a place where I can live without fear for my life."
"Then take me very far." She said firmly. "My Papa did a favor for you...now you can do one for me..."
"Liesel..." Max's eyes were upon hers, thoughtful and at the same time frightened. "I have thought about this many times. What it would be like if I saw you again. After I heard about Himmel Street...and that your Mama and Papa were gone...."
"What did you think?" Liesel felt a lump rise into her throat at the mention of her foster parents and friends that had been taken away from her not that very long ago.
"If you were older..." A slight, shy smile had crossed his face. "But then I come here and find you almost a woman. I didn't expect you to be so beautiful."
The train's whistle brought Liesel back to the present. Another two days had passed after Max called her beautiful, and now they were sitting together on the cold bench of the train's passenger car. He was taking her with him, away from this country that had wounded each of them so gravely, but was also the only home they'd known. They didn't have much, only a bit of money, a bond formed over words painted on a basement wall and a promise of marriage when they got to their destinantion.
As the train pulled out from the station, she looked out the window and silently said goodbye to Molching. To Mama and Papa, to Rudy, her first love and partner in crime, and to Frau Hermann who would find a letter on Liesel's pillow that morning explaining why she'd gone, but not the where. She wasn't any more certain of the future beyound Molching anymore then she'd been sure of the future when she was a scared little girl coming to Molching.
Only two things seemed certain to her now. One was the power of words. And the other came to her as she felt Max's hand shyly take hers across the wooden bench they were sitting on. The other was the power of love, no matter how impossible and no matter how challenged by life or death.