“It would be too risky to treat the perm chemically. We might end up with your hair looking like steel wool.” Frau Ziegelow tapped her manicured fingers. “I think it’s best if I use a flat iron and then blow-dry the frizz over a styling brush. That way, you’ll end up with nice corkscrew curls, and we can create a marvellous up-do with those. How about we just try it out today, and then we’ll know what’s possible for the big event?”
“You’re the expert,” I answered, and added softly, “Thank you. I’ll never forget this.”
“Nonsense. You’ve done much more for me—it’s only fair that I contribute to your unforgettable day.” The wary expression appeared on her face again, similar to the one Bri had been wearing of late. “And it will be unforgettable, won’t it?”
“Definitely,” I answered, wildly determined to hide my doubts.
And I did have doubts.
Not about Justus. I doubted myself.
Since my return to Germany five days ago, I had come to realise that I simply could not pretend that I hadn’t changed. I recognised this when I made room for the Border collie jumper among my cashmere pullovers and fought back tears when I realised I would probably never wear it again. Since then, I’d discovered a new eerie trait every single day.
I would get up an hour earlier lately to walk to the office through Greenburg Park. I would have a caramel coffee each morning in the little café on the corner of Sebastian-Rinz Straße and had got to know the waitress, Susanne, with whom I’d never exchanged more than three words before. Buying groceries at the supermarket after work, I would put a six-pack of beer into the cart, and when I saw peppermint drops by the checkout, I almost started to cry. To top it all off, I was breaking one of the holiest rules of lawyers today by having my hair rescued by a client.
“Take a deep breath, child,” Frau Ziegelow said into my ear, as if she’d heard my thoughts. “Other than death, there’s nothing that cannot be reversed.” She paused meaningfully and then continued smoothly. “Trust me, an hour from now, the world will look rosy again, just as it should for a happy bride.”
But her generous smile filled me with dread. A happy bride.
An hour later, we were headed to Sachsenhausen in my little car. I had offered to drive Bri and Li home—forgetting that this meant Villa Meeseberg. My pulse rose even before we turned onto Mörfelder Landstraße. I drove up the familiar gravel drive with sweaty palms and stopped on the carpet of white blossoms under the cherry tree. Leaving the motor running, I stared at the stone lions next to the iron gate and counted the seconds until I could get out of there.
Unfortunately, neither Li nor Bri made any move to get out of the car. Bri, her arms crossed, leaned back in the passenger seat and squinted at me while Li patted my artistically pinned-up curls for the hundredth time.
“You look like Sissi! You know, on my favourite painting of the Austrian Empress. It’ll be wonderful if Frau Ziegelow can reproduce this for the wedding,” she clucked, fascinated by what the master had fashioned out of my poodle frizz.
My face was framed by full and shiny corkscrew curls and Frau Ziegelow had braided genuine daisies into the chignon. Without any doubt, this bridal hairdo was a work of art, but even a perfect bridal up-do wasn’t enough to make me look like a happy bride.
I glanced nervously at my watch and then out of the window to the drawing room—almost four thirty. Almost time for Grandmother’s tea.
“Since you’re here anyway, why don’t you come in? There’s cake,” Bri said with forced casualness.
“Thanks, but I have to watch my weight,” I replied, thin-lipped.
Bri laughed hoarsely. “You barely ate in Scotland, young lady. A piece of Li’s cheesecake won’t hurt you.”
“Or even two,” Li giggled. “Besides, you should talk to Adele. Tell her that, thanks to her awful plan, the bridal ring is now lost forever. It’s not your fault, it’s hers.”
“The plan wasn’t that bad,” Bri murmured, but looked away quickly in order not to face my disapproval.
I held on to the steering wheel with both hands and pulled my shoulders up around my ears. I was freezing despite the early summer warmth. “Today was exhausting. I don’t feel like talking to Grandmother right now, okay?”
“You’ll never feel like having this talk with her,” Bri said curtly. She grabbed my chin with her thumb and index finger, forcing me to look at her. “Let’s toss a coin. Heads means we get out of this sardine tin of a car without you. Tails means you come in and eat some of the enormous calorie bomb Li baked this morning. Get a coin out of your crochet bag, sis.”
“You’re a real pain in the neck, Aunt Bri.”
“So you’ll play?”
“Do I have a choice?”
She grinned and took the coin Li offered. She tossed it into the air and skilfully caught it with one hand.
“Ready?”
“Come on, Bri. Don’t keep us in suspense,” Li giggled.
The fist came towards me in slow motion. Shaking my head, I stretched out my hand and felt cool metal land on my palm. I held my breath.
A silvery five-pence piece lay in my hand. Facing up wasn’t the image of Her Majesty but a tiny crowned thistle, the symbol of Scotland.
While Bri and Li went to their rooms to get changed for tea, I took advantage of the brief reprieve. Instead of marching into the salon to face Grandmother with my head held high, I turned right after my usual salute to my ancestor Philipp and slipped out to the garden through a side door.
Since my great-aunts had never been very passionate gardeners, my grandmother had hired a local gardener to take care of the half-acre of greenery. The old, stooping man had technically retired, but still came by every Tuesday to slowly trim the hedges, prune the apple trees, and mow the lawn. When he got tired, he’d lean on his rake and stare at the house, which used to terrify Charlie and me. We nicknamed him “Scarecrow.” By now, I knew that the poor guy had been hopelessly in love with Grandmother for half of his life, while she was equally focused on her great love—my grandfather, Gustav von Meeseberg.
He was the one who had started the kitchen garden, right behind the ivy-covered pergola where we drank Bri’s homemade ice tea every summer. Since my grandfather’s death, this part of the garden had become Grandmother’s refuge. In summer, there was always an abundance of berries. Grandmother taught us how to grow tomatoes, sugar peas, tender baby carrots, and kohlrabi. We snacked on it all until our mouths and fingers were red, our tongues blue, and our bellies so full that there was no room for dinner. It was to this special place I was drawn now, and it was there that I ran into the very person I was trying to avoid.
She was kneeling in a freshly raked bed, weeding without gloves. She had always claimed that the point of gardening was to get in touch with the soil.
“Kohlrabi used to be your favourite,” she said without interrupting her work. “Charlie always wanted to eat it right away, right when I pulled it out of the soil, but for you, I had to peel it like an apple, paper-thin rind, and make sure it stayed—”
“All in one piece.” I finished quietly.
“You’ve always liked things to be in one piece.”
She got up, groaning, supporting her back with one hand. I stood awkwardly on the narrow woodchip path.
“What you and Charlie dreamt up wasn’t very nice,” I said, suddenly courageous. The sooner we cleared the air, the sooner I could sleep again.
My grandmother bent down to her weeding pail and freed a little shovel from a nearby molehill. “It’s never pleasant to be pushed into cold water, Josefine,” she said finally. “Not for the one who does the pushing, either, unless that person is a monster.”
“So you sent me all the way to Scotland because you wanted to teach me how to swim,” I said sarcastically while warding off a bee that had apparently mistaken my yellow blouse for a flower.
“Well, to extend your metaphor, I just hope you went in deeper than your knees.”
My sharp
reply got caught in my throat when Grandmother raised her chin and looked at me from under her straw hat. For a moment, I thought she had talked to Charlie, but there was no way Charlie would have called to confess that she pawned the ring. Yes, they had plotted together, but that had surely not been part of the plan, and I wasn’t the only family member who feared Adele von Meeseberg’s wrath.
“I guess that means that I shouldn’t expect an apology.” I actually managed to display a half-hearted level of defiance, which bounced off Grandmother like a rubber ball off bulletproof glass.
“Well, I’ve got nothing against apologising,” she said slowly. “If, that is, you tell me that you regret every minute of your journey—every single minute.”
My cheeks started to burn. I took a deep breath and forced myself to sound calm and in control, even though I felt like I might swoon from the deep longing her words brought to the surface.
“What I can say is that this journey”—I stretched out the word on purpose—“did not change my wedding plans.” I couldn’t back down. I simply couldn’t.
My grandmother inspected me silently. Then she shrugged, hung the pail on the crook of her arm, took the rake, and turned towards the house. Puzzled, I watched her bobbing straw hat and swaying little bucket. I ran after her as well as I could in my heels, which sank into the lawn, once again wishing for comfortable, flat shoes. Rubber boots, even.
“There’s something else I have to tell you,” I said.
She didn’t slow down, but I had to stop to get the terrible words out.
“The ring is gone. Charlie lost it. Are you still going to—” Damn it, now my voice was trembling. “Will you still come to the wedding?”
“The library, Josefine. Right now. We have another twenty minutes before tea,” Grandmother ordered over her shoulder, disappearing into the house without turning around once.
The library had originally been my grandfather’s study. Nothing had been changed after his death—even his pipe still waited for him in the heavy crystal ashtray. While Grandmother sat down behind the imposing desk, I stepped uneasily up to the bookcase on the other side of the room. Very much aware of her eyes on me, I ran my finger over the books’ spines: Böll, Hesse, Kleist, Grandfather’s Karl May collection, and the collected works of Christian Morgenstern, my grandmother’s favourite. Next to it stood thirty volumes of the Brockhaus encyclopaedia, which Li used to consult whenever we got stuck with our homework. Out of habit, I crouched down and looked at the lower shelves. They were still there, the treasures of my childhood—shelved at knee height so that even a four-year-old could reach them. I didn’t have a chance to pull out one of the dog-eared, cocoa-stained picture books, since Grandmother cleared her throat and brought me back to the present. I straightened up, went to the desk, and sat down obediently across from her.
“Are you absolutely sure you want to marry this man?”
I nodded, uneasy, playing with the paperweight, a sphere of acrylic glass with a genuine dandelion flower inside. Grandmother seemed to sit up even straighter in her chair after my silent answer, as if a thread were attached to the top of her head, pulling her up. Her silence was difficult to bear, as were her penetrating eyes, the colour of a quiet ocean.
“But I can’t wear the ring in front of the altar,” I whispered and, to my dismay, felt myself tearing up. “That’s why I wanted to beg you—”
“I’m not deaf,” she interrupted with a gruff gesture. “I heard what you said in the garden.”
My finger clutched the dandelion paperweight so tightly that my knuckles turned white. “And what is your answer?”
“My answer is”—she bent down to open a drawer—“that I won’t stand in the way of my favourite granddaughter’s happiness.”
Confused, I looked at the wooden box that Grandmother pushed towards me.
“What’s that?”
“Open it.”
A strange smile appeared on her wrinkled face, cheerful and sad at the same time. My heart beat fast as I carefully unlatched the box—then skipped a beat when I looked inside.
“But that’s the bridal ring,” I whispered, stunned.
“Strictly speaking, it’s a reproduction. One of two replicas, to be precise.”
My thoughts came thick and fast. “A second copy? That’s . . . That means—”
“It means that Charlotte lost a copy of the ring. Don’t tell her. A little guilt will do her good.” Grandmother shook her head.
“But if Charlie’s was a reproduction, and this one is, too . . .” My eyes widened as I pointed to the narrow golden band with a diamond that apparently wasn’t a diamond. “Where’s the real ring?”
“Lost.”
My grandmother slowly got up from the leather chair and went to the window. I only noticed now that she wobbled when she walked and almost imperceptibly dragged her left leg. She gazed at the cherry tree while I waited for her to collect herself. Or maybe it was the other way around, and she was giving me time to pull myself together.
“I lost it,” she said softly, more to herself than to me. “It was during a boating trip on the Main, shortly before your grandfather and I got married. I was standing at the railing with my best friend, Annegret. Wanting to brag—giddy with love and silly as I was—I took it off my finger for her to admire.” She smiled wistfully. “Sometimes, a gust of wind at the wrong time is all it takes for our dreams to be dashed.”
I gasped as the truth sank in. “You married Grandfather without the protection of the bride’s ring!”
My grandmother shrugged. “You do whatever it takes if you truly want something, and all I wanted was to marry Gustav von Meeseberg. But your great-grandmother Helene would never have allowed it. After her sister died tragically, she was obsessed with the mystical power of the ring. So I made a drawing of it and secretly commissioned a jeweller to make two identical copies. Just in case something similar happened again.” She added dryly, “Didn’t take long, did it?”
I couldn’t sit still any longer. The dandelion paperweight rolled across the desk and dropped to the Berber carpet with a thud. I left it there and began to pace up and down.
“Just to make sure I understand correctly—the real bride’s ring has been resting at the bottom of the Main these past sixty years. The ring I thought was genuine was a reproduction you had made so you could marry Grandfather. What I don’t understand is . . .” I stopped and lifted both hands, more helpless than angry. “Why did you make us believe all these years that the ring meant so much to you? You sent me all the way to Scotland, for crying out loud. For what? For a copy of something that turns out to be no more than a fantasy?”
“Who says that it’s a fantasy?” Grandmother asked gently.
“Please! I mean, you were happily married your entire life—no tragic disaster or any of that . . . nonsense. Doesn’t that prove that it’s just a silly superstition?”
How strange. Not only was I hurt and furious, but I was also disappointed like a child who had lost Santa Claus and the Easter Bunny at the same time.
“You should have told me!” I shouted, hardly able to keep it together. “It would have saved me a lot of trouble. Not to mention Li and Bri. I assume that they also didn’t know that we were chasing a copy?”
“Oh, I’m sure my little sisters had a grand time in Scotland,” Grandmother said. “You brought something back, too, Josefine. Your eyes are far more alive than those of the miserable young woman who stood in this room not so long ago. Moreover, when was the last time you dared talk to me like this?” A tiny smile played on her face. “A little rebellion suits you.”
Rebellion? Me? This must be a bad dream. I’d wake up any minute now. But the cool hand that guided me back to my chair felt very real.
“Let me explain, Josefine,” Grandmother said, and she sat down as well. She bent forward, propped her elbows on the desk, and clasped her hands as if she were praying. “In the past, the myth of the ring really had only one purpose—it helped the head
of the family control who the daughters and granddaughters married. This was very important for a well-to-do family. If a future husband was considered unsuitable, they had the ability to withhold the ring. Disasters in marriages without the ring were welcomed and exaggerated because it reinforced the legend. It was a simple recipe that worked exceedingly well. Over the centuries, the family combined random accidents with the tragic history of our ancestor Emilia, shrouded the whole thing in mystery, and voilà—a perfect system for keeping the girls in line.”
She cleared her throat and reached for the water decanter. In a daze, I watched her pour water into a glass in a thin stream, take a few sips, and then wipe her mouth with a handkerchief.
“There were some, of course, who defied the family and married as they wished, but if the unions were happy, they were swept under the rug.” Grandmother nodded admiringly. “The mind is capable of amazing feats. It can bring a myth to life. Marriages have become very serious events in our family thanks to this ring. A bride has to consider very carefully to whom she’ll say ‘I do.’ Ideally, the family approves and gives her the ring. But if she’s denied it and marries nonetheless, then that proves hers is a true love because, after all, she believes she’s risking her life.”
Grandmother leaned back in her chair and closed her eyes as if she had to gather all of her strength for what she would say next. I waited with bated breath.
“I kept the myth of the ring alive because it works in both directions—for you, for Charlotte, and for all who come after. It doesn’t matter if the diamond is real or a cubic zirconia. It’s our belief in its magic that helps us recognise whether we truly love someone. Love is the key to happiness, my little moth. And that’s what I wish for you, no more and no less.”
Her ice-blue gaze seemed to penetrate my innermost core, making my stomach do cartwheels. I could guess what she’d say next, and I was afraid of my own response.
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