Winter Passing

by Cindy Martinusen-Coloma

  “Well, just wait till you hear the rest!” Darby continued with a chuckle. She ignored her grandmother’s condition and pretended she was telling just another story on just another day. “We reached the crest of Siligo Peak, overlooking Deer Creek Canyon hundreds of feet below, when something catches my eye.”

  “City Boy?”

  “Yes! He’s clinging to this rock, scared to death, with his eyes shut! So, since I was assigned to take pictures . . .”

  “Oh, you naughty, naughty girl! Did he even know you took pictures of him?”

  “Oh, yes! He heard the camera clicking and opened one eye. Then he starts yelling at me to stop. Of course, I didn’t. For the rest of the trip, this guy was begging to buy that roll of film from me.”

  “I’ve never been so proud of you!” Although Grandma’s tone was light, her eyes appeared glassy, and Darby wondered if it was from the laughter or the coughing.

  She continued to describe her trip but noticed her grandmother’s eyes blinking heavily. Grandma sagged back against her pillow and squirmed deeper under the covers.

  “Well, I can see my stories just don’t hold your interest anymore.”

  “It’s this horrible medication. I can’t stay awake for long with it, but it pains me too much to live without it. We have a real love—” Grandma burst into another coughing fit—“hate relationship.” Darby propped her forward as her body was racked with uncontrollable spasms. “W-wa-ter,” she sputtered. Darby grabbed the glass and placed it to her grandmother’s lips. Droplets flew across the quilt as Grandma Celia struggled to drink. Finally the cough subsided, and Grandma leaned back. She closed her eyes, then her smile came in slow motion. “I’ve got to hear the rest of your story, my dear. You know it’s not fair I got stuck in this hilly country. You’re lucky to be in the real north of Northern California near all those mountains.”

  Darby stared at her grandmother for a minute. How she loved this woman. She didn’t want to be part of this game of telling stories, joking while disease consumed her grandmother before her eyes. But she swallowed the tears that threatened—there would be plenty of time for crying later. These last moments needed smiles, stories, and joy. And below it all remained the unanswered questions.

  “I guess you’ll have to wait to hear about the cricket in City Boy’s sleeping bag. I’ll let you rest.” Darby forced a smile and rose to leave.

  “Wait.” Grandma Celia grasped Darby’s hand. “I need to talk to you about something.”

  “Okay. How about as soon as you wake up?”

  Grandma Celia’s grip tightened around Darby’s hand. The intensity in the older woman’s gaze startled her.

  “Yes, it’ll have to wait. But it’s very important.”

  Darby could feel her heart beat faster. Maybe she’d discover the secret the shadows held. She had fought the desire to ask, fearing, like her mother, what the mention of that name would do to her grandmother. Darby wanted the real Grandma Celia this morning.

  “What’s it about?”

  “I couldn’t explain it to your mother. She w-worries, and she couldn’t do anything. Besides, it’s something you should do. I’ve known that for a long time.”

  “What do you want me to do?”

  Grandma Celia’s eyes were shut for so long that Darby thought the older woman had fallen asleep. But when Darby drew closer, a second later, Grandma’s eyes fluttered half open.

  “I need you to do what I can’t do.”

  “Anything. What is it?”

  “I need you to make things right with Tatianna.”

  “Who is Tatianna?”

  As Grandma Celia gazed toward the ceiling, an age-old weariness poured into her features. “Tatianna was my best friend.”

  Sensing their time together was short, Darby wanted to hurry her, to ask question after question, but she held her tongue to give her grandmother space to open at will.

  “I have a small safe that Fred is keeping for me.”

  “Fred Bishop, your lawyer?”

  “Yes . . . you’ll find some answers in there. I’ll tell you more when I wake up. But Darby—” Celia held her granddaughter’s arm with two hands. “You must make things right. Make them right for me, please.”

  “Make what right?”

  “You’ll know when you get there.”

  “Where?”

  Grandma’s eyes flickered shut, then opened slightly. “Tatianna needs her name. I’ll tell you later. I need some rest first.”

  “Her name? What do you mean?” Darby asked, startled. Grandma’s hand motioned not now, not now, then she fell asleep.

  Salzburg, Austria

  The rain slapping Brant Collins’s face was neither felt nor acknowledged. The drops streamed like tears from his jaw, nose, and chin. His legs walked without direction across wet streets. He even crossed a busy intersection without looking. A loud horn and the whoosh of a bus focused his thoughts. He stepped onto the bridge and finally stopped at the crest.

  Resting against the railing, Brant glared into the gray fingers of the Salzach River below. He noticed the newspaper clenched in his hand. It had long ago turned limp and now dripped like a leaky faucet. He wiped rain from his face and unrolled the paper where much of the black ink had worn off against his wet hand. The faces in the photo were now contorted images, quite suitable for the people they represented. The man had been captured with his eyes toward the ground, but the woman stared straight from the page into Brant’s eyes. Her smile was a twisted sneer—the person she really was. Her eyes still met his defiantly beneath the headline: COUPLE ACCUSED IN HOLOCAUST SURVIVOR FRAUD.

  Brant had given much of the past year to the Aldrichs. The woman had begged his help to find her family’s lost paintings. They were the last link to her father, who had not escaped the Nazis. More than oil and canvas, they were the only portraits of her childhood. “Please help,” she’d pleaded. “I want to die with those paintings on my wall.” So, of course Brant had helped—that was what his work was all about. More than papers and research and digging into the past, his work at the Austrian Holocaust Survivors’ Organization was for people—for making a difference in the individual lives that had been tormented by war, incarcerated in camps, and tortured. He longed to see Frau Aldrich’s expression when he told her they’d recovered her dream.

  And Brant had done just that. He did find the art in a small collection in the United States. He did see the joy in Frau Aldrich’s face. But he also saw the torment of the rightful owners.

  It had all been an act. The Aldrichs—brother and sister, they said—had come to his office door after another newspaper account reported a victory for one of Brant’s clients, a French woman survivor. They’d told their sad story and walked from his office surely laughing at his concern and commitment to help. Not only were the Aldrichs not Jewish, nor brother and sister, Greta was actually an ex-Nazi camp guard. Her information about the art had come from one of the inmates under her guard. It was suspected that Frau Aldrich had even selected her victim for the gas chamber because of the information she’d obtained. Greta Aldrich had been unable to find the art after the war, but with Brant’s help she’d almost gotten what she wanted.

  He couldn’t believe he’d been duped. Brant tore the soggy paper into several pieces and released them over the railing. The river’s ripples gathered the pieces and carried them away.

  This had not been the first attempt at a fraudulent claim, especially since the opening of Swiss banks. Brant had immediately identified a recent claim as false—an American claiming to be Celia Müller. He had prided himself on the fact that he could not be deceived, and now the Aldrich story had shattered that illusion.

  Angry, Brant turned away from the river. He moved quickly, suddenly aware of the cold that clutched him. When his pager sounded, he paused beneath the eaves of a weath
ered white-stucco building. Brant was about to turn it off when he noticed the number. Why would she be calling? There could be only one reason. He found his phone in his coat pocket and punched in the number.

  “This is Brant. What happened?”

  “We think he had a stroke,” the woman said.

  “No.”

  “You better come.”

  Brant was already running.

  Chapter Three

  Darby saw death in Grandma Celia’s face. It wouldn’t be long. As Grandma’s breath grew more labored, Darby’s day was consumed with watching that breathing. Her mother seemed to accept that this was the end, though her expression shifted from the weariness of waiting to the clinging hope that Grandma’s life wouldn’t slip away quite yet. But Darby couldn’t accept it. She even prayed for the first time in years. God, don’t take her, please, don’t take her.

  Darby’s childhood in an all-female home had been with examples of strength in both her grandmother and mother. She tried to maintain that strength on the outside but felt herself weaken as her grandmother walked closer to death’s door.

  Death is part of life, she reminded herself throughout the week. Everyone loses loved ones. Everyone dies. I need to be ready. But how can I prepare?

  Grandma had been her cheerful self only a few short and treasured minutes. Although she continued to call Tatianna’s name in the late-night hours, there was less urgency in her voice. Yet no opportunity had arisen for Darby to ask about her grandmother’s mysterious friend.

  Darby waited until her mother went grocery shopping, then found the number for her grandmother’s lawyer.

  “Is she gone?” Fred asked before saying hello.

  “No, not yet.”

  “Oh, thank goodness. I see my share of lousy people in this profession. It’s an honor to know someone like your grandmother.”

  “I agree. But I’ll get to the reason for my call.” Darby propped her elbow on the counter beside the telephone. “Grandma told me about a personal safe she has left with you.”

  “Ah, yes. She brought it to me about a year ago. I don’t normally keep such things and encouraged her to get a safety deposit box, but you know her thoughts about financial institutions.”

  “Yes. In high school, she’d let me leave an IOU note for every ten-dollar bill I borrowed from her mattress. Does she have her savings in the safe, or should we check under her bed?”

  “Actually, I’m not at liberty to tell quite yet. Besides, I don’t know the complete contents. My instructions are to wait for her passing, then we’ll move to those details.”

  “Grandma didn’t tell me anything except that you had a safe, and I’d find some information she wanted me to have inside.”

  “I understand, but those were the instructions.”

  “That’s all I needed to know. Take care, Fred.”

  “You too, Darby. And take care of our lady.”

  “I promise.” She hung up the phone and sat back in her chair. Whatever was in the safe, it wouldn’t help her at present. Soon, too soon, the safe would be opened, for her grandmother would be gone.

  Darby spent the nights in Grandma’s room, in case anything happened.

  The days and nights blurred until their borders appeared as one continuous fog, only distinguished by the house lights being turned on or off. In the middle of a night, a voice stirred Darby. Fatigue held her as she struggled toward the surface of consciousness. Suddenly, she sat upright, seized awake.

  The voice traveled its own journey, moving backward along a near-forgotten path as Darby’s eyes sought through the dim light to where her grandmother sat up in bed.

  “Perhaps in another time or place it would not have felt so intense—but we were there, in that troublesome time. People fear hard times, but challenges usually make strong bonds stronger. We found great love in the midst of turmoil.”

  Darby strained forward, mesmerized by Grandma’s voice. Its rhythm was like a midnight hymn rocking her back and forth.

  “Would our love have changed if given the chance to be together all these years? I’ve wondered, can’t imagine it, but we only had six months as husband and wife.” A chuckle escaped. “We cherished every moment of that time.” Her voice seemed to drift away to memory.

  How welcome this dreamlike spell was compared to the coughing fits or troubled callings. Grandma Celia reached for Darby’s hand. Darby moved forward and grasped the outstretched fingers, surprised to see her grandmother’s eyes shining lucidly and full of comprehension in the reflected light. “Darby, will you open the window for me?”

  “Of course.” Darby leaned awkwardly over the bed to pull the window up an inch. Cool air swam into the room, and moonlight filtered through the parted curtains.

  “That box on my dresser, the one Uncle Marc made me. Bring it to me, please.”

  Darby moved toward the lamp switch.

  “My dear, please don’t turn on the light. The moon is bright enough. I don’t want to lose this—this magical night. I have found your grandfather in my memories here.”

  “Yes, Grandma.”

  Darby retrieved the miniature carved box. She turned and stopped, seeing Grandma Celia with streams of moonlight flooding the bed. She was beautiful. Her rumpled gray hair glowed like an angel’s cloak down to her shoulders.

  Celia’s hand trembled as she reached for the wooden box. For a moment, Darby wondered if this was real, or if perhaps she was still asleep. Even the questions she’d been holding all week vanished while she watched her grandmother search inside the carved box.

  Grandma Celia’s voice again broke the aura of silence in the room. “I haven’t spoken about him in a long time. It was easier for me, and for your mother. She wanted to know him so badly. Even when my hope had died, your mom’s continued. I had told too many stories about her daddy, though eventually her hope was crushed by reality. That’s why I quit speaking of him, since we had to leave him behind. But he’s been locked inside all these years, always near.” Grandma patted her heart.

  A sharp cough interrupted the stillness. Grandma Celia placed a tissue over her mouth, then crumpled it in her bony fist. Her weak smile reappeared. “Perhaps it would have changed if your grandfather and I had been given a life together. We might have become like some couples who have grown old together. But in my mind, he’s still that wonderful man who swept me off my feet. You would have loved him, Darby. You’ve reminded me of him. You both were full of life, laughter, and adventure. Ready to tackle anything that comes along.”

  Darby had never heard her grandmother talk this much about her grandfather, and for some reason, she’d never asked many questions about him. He was long dead sometime during the war, and there was little else she knew. The way her grandmother spoke of him brought such curiosity, and Grandma Celia’s voice had never sounded the way it did now. She seemed to spin memory on her lips, like she tasted each thought, kissed each moment.

  The moonlight touched a tiny object Grandma withdrew from the box. “And here it is.”

  Darby looked closer.

  “It’s too late for the two of us in this life, but there is something that must still be done—” Another cough seized Celia. Darby leaned Celia forward, groping for the water behind her. Grandma’s thin frame jolted into slower coughs until they died away. Darby reached for the tissue over her grandmother’s mouth and offered the glass. Even in what Celia called the magical moonlight, Darby saw bright red splotches on the tissue she tossed into the trash.

  “I want you to have this.” Grandma’s voice was hoarse, her hands shaking.

  “A ring?”

  “Only half a ring. This is the engagement part. The wedding half is gone. Do you see the diamonds on top?”

  Darby saw where, in place of the usual setting, there was another ring of gold with diamonds attached
around the rim.

  “Your grandfather designed this ring.” Grandma cleared her throat and sat up a little more. “When joined with the w-wedding half, that circle becomes two small rings locked together, surrounded by lasting treasure.”

  “It’s beautiful,” Darby whispered, looking at her grandmother’s face. She should rest now. But the expression on Grandma’s face, tired and weary though it appeared, held a sense of purpose. “What happened to the other half?”

  Grandma Celia smiled. “So many stories I have told you, my Darby.” Her fingers caressed Darby’s cheek. “Since you were a child, so full of wonder, I have told you my tales. But I kept hidden the real stories because I didn’t want to steal the joy I saw in your eyes. When your mother was a child, I stole many moments from her because I was consumed with my own sorrow. I tried to protect you, but other forces have taken the wonder from your eyes. I see an empty place in you—one I recognize from experience. And you run from it, afraid to face your own heart.”

  Darby stared at her grandmother for a long time. How had the past so quickly turned to focus on Darby’s life? “Grandma, don’t worry about me. I’m happy, very happy.”

  “But you’ve lost your joy. It’s taken years for me to see it. I saw your spirit wounded as a little one when you finally understood that your father was not returning. I also don’t think you’ve ever gotten over you and Derek breaking up. I see it most clearly through your work. You hide behind the camera, where once you danced with it. Yes, I see the change most in your work.”

  Darby sat back in the chair. What could she say to these words that cut so deep, even as she denied them?

  Grandma squeezed her hand and breathed deeply. “Don’t be afraid. Don’t hold me so tightly. You must know that you can’t put your faith in people—they fail you, break your heart, die on you. You can love them and receive love, but don’t put all of yourself in another human—we are too imperfect of creatures.”

  “So what can I do?” Darby asked. “How can I let you go?”