Lost in Love (The Miss Apple Pants series Book 2)

by Charlotte Roth

  “Oh well, that I doubt but it’s a good thing he liked it. I mean, that’s a start.” She looked over at the chauffeur and they exchanged a few words in German. “Boris says we’re just waiting for the gate to open and then we’re here.” She gestured out the front window, at the big red gate, before she continued. “So, Miss Apple Pants?” She asked, a smile still stuck in her voice.”

  “It’s a long story.”

  “Not really,” Mom laughed. “I had a time in my life when I was a little, how can I put it… Bohemian.”

  “As in the past tense?” Mrs. Rockefeller looked over at me and winked.

  “Okay, more then. Anyway, I went to this market and I found all these crazy outfits—a banana shirt for Frank, I think it was, a cucumber hat for me, and the cutest pair of Apple Pants for this little lady.” She leaned her face against my shoulder and sighed. “She was the cutest girl in the entire world. She loved those pants and refused to wear anything else for the longest time. Apple pants, can you imagine?”

  “I can, actually. Your family as a fruit theme is not that hard to imagine.” Mrs. Rockefeller threw her head back and laughed. “What was it Thomas had written—‘The apple never falls far from the tree’?”

  “No, he wrote…” I grabbed the laptop from Mom and clicked on the post again. “Quote, ‘sometimes you can’t see the forest for the apple trees,’ unquote.”

  “But that’s not how it goes though.” Mrs. Rockefeller looked down at the laptop as if examining its contents.

  “No?”

  “No, there’s no apple or apple tree in there. Just plain trees. I think he might have overthought that one.” She looked at Mom and they exchanged a look.

  “What?” I looked at Mom, who had a smirk on her face.

  “It’s just, I told him about the Apple Pants and how it was your most beloved thing in the world. It was just a foot note really—as we were putting on the candles on your not-so-surprise birthday cake, but I guess he was paying more attention it. And I wouldn’t be surprised if he—” The car started moving again and suddenly we heard loud complaining noises coming from the back seat. I guess the stopping and going had woken either Ava or Alfred, or both, up.

  “It’s okay.” Mom unclipped her seatbelt and literally dived onto the extra row of seats. “I got this,” she said with a strained voice behind my back.

  I stared at the screen again—at Thomas’s profile picture and at the, according to Mrs. Rockefeller, wrongly-quoted quote… “Sometimes, we can’t see the forest for the apple trees…”

  What did this mean?

  CHAPTER 15

  “Who?”

  Even though Berlin was huge, it was not too big for Franz Fassbender—another one of Mrs. Bennett’s slash Richard Rock’s old contacts from the infamous rooster—a guy who, apparently, knew everyone in Berlin and was now standing right inside the red gate, waving at us like we were his long-lost family returning home.

  “That’s Franz.” Mrs. Rockefeller waved back at him and, with a slight elevation in her voice, she explained, “I called him before we headed out to the memorial, and he’s been so kind and invited us all to join him for a late lunch and chat. “Can you roll the window down, bitte?” She motioned toward the window on the passenger’s side.

  “Mrs. Rock,” Franz Fassbender exclaimed, with a mix of a British and German accent, as he hunched beside the car, “how charming to finally meet you.” He extended his hand and Mrs. Rockefeller shook it firmly. “Richard told me so much about you.” His eyes moved to the backseat and he gave me a polite nod. “And you are the young lady in question?”

  The young lady in question? Not knowing what to say, I just nodded back and looked at Mrs. Rockefeller for help.

  “She is. Ella Jensen with an ‘e.’” She said it in a way that made me think of a doctor making notes to her Dictaphone.

  “And the mom?” Franz stuck his entire head inside the town car and smiled when he spotted Mom in the back—among diaper bags and a handful of stuffed animals.

  “Back here,” Mom yelled. “I’m unbuckling the beasts.”

  “The, um, beasts?” he inquired.

  “Yes, I told you. We’re are a full house today—toddlers to oldies. Come on. You said you were taking us out to a late lunch. We are starving. Hop in,” Mrs. Rockefeller added, in her usual demanding voice.

  Franz Fassbender nodded and said something in German in the direction of Boris, who unlocked the car.

  “Ah, the smell of a new car,” Franz Fassbender declared as he sat down right next to me, bringing his own set of smells—as in an overdose of cologne—into the car. I was not the only one who smelled it because just seconds later, Boris discreetly cracked open all the windows. “We are going to Suicide Sue, Duncherstasse zwei, bitte.” He tapped his fingers on the armrest, and Boris repeated what I believed to be the name of the place and the address as Mrs. Rockefeller turned in her seat and faced us.

  “Suicide Sue? Did I hear that right?”

  “Yes.” Franz nodded at Mrs. Rockefeller, looking quite amused.

  Mrs. Rockefeller shook her head lightly as if to say, “What the young people come up with these days is beyond me.”

  “It’s the place to go, or to be seen. I know one of the owners, Franziska. We used to play a little sinfonietta together. Many years ago.” Once again, he tapped his fingers on the armrest and I couldn’t help noticing how long and lean they were. Maybe when he said sinfonietta he meant orchestra. His fingers sure looked like they belonged on a grand piano. He smelled and looked like a piano player too—smooth, fresh, and clean.

  “She was the cello. I played the piano,” he added when he saw me staring at his pencil-thin fingers.

  Mrs. Rockefeller let out a big sigh. “Oh, how delightful. I love the piano. Richard could play Fur Elise blindfolded. The piano is so soothing.”

  “It wasn’t really. It was in the late eighties in Germany, right after the wall came down. It was loud and very political.” Franz threw his head back and laughed, almost hitting the handle on one of the strollers. “Anyway, she knows we’re coming. I gave her very special instructions—two young kinder, a woman with a special thing for coffee, and one with zöliakie.” He paused and nodded at me. “And one with a taste for…” He moved forward in his seat and placed a hand on top of Mrs. Rockefeller’s shoulder, which almost made her jump in her seat. “What was it the old Rock always said?”

  “‘A taste for strong snaps and clever remarks,’” they said in unison, which made them both laugh.

  Franz offered me a fatherly look. “The Rock was a man of few words but when he spoke…” He looked out the window and clicked his tongue as the town car came to a small halt.

  “Suicide Sue is coming up here on your left. I’ll park right over there, dahinten the yellow Moped. You just stay put.” Boris looked over his shoulder and started turning the vehicle around.

  I pulled down the window and a wave of delicious cinnamon bun slash coffee slapped me in the face. I looked up at the big lush plants gracing the front of the white mundane façade. It smelled and looked nothing like what I imagined a place called Suicide Sue would look like—well except for the sign, which was portraying a one-eyed woman Ninja—and, suddenly, a memory of Miss T flooded my mind as vividly as if it had happened yesterday. Maybe it was the sassy look on the Ninja woman’s face, which kind of reminded me of Uma Thurman in Pulp Fiction—Miss T’s favorite Tarantino movie—or maybe it was the smell of cinnamon and coffee, but it was if I could reach out and touch her.

  “Bright eyed and bushy tailed this morning?” She had chirped too loudly that morning she had shuffled into my room, wearing her housecoat and slippers, leaving a trail of cinnamon scent behind her. It was then she had told me about the package from Hans. When I showed her the little house he had made me, gushing that he had made it entirely out of Post-it notes, she looked at me like I was drunk (this was before I had ever tried to drink, let alone get high in a web cafe in Amsterdam with someone wh
o was old enough to be Miss T’s sister). I had then dragged her into my room and showed her my closet of Post-its, my closet of memories. She giggled when she found several with her name. She told me it made her happy, but after eating a stack of her yummy pancakes, she said it also concerned her that I didn’t hang out with any friends my own age.

  “Go out and find friends without wrinkles and liver spots on their faces—people who have no first-hand recollection of the Great War,” she had joked. “You need to work on your age average. Numbers are off. Now, go out and live a little, love a little.”

  Nine months later, I was a mom. I guess that was one way of averaging out my age numbers. Now, I was hanging out with people either twenty years older or twenty years younger than me. But, I didn’t mind. I was, as Grandma always used to say, an old soul wrapped in a beautiful woman’s body. And it suited me just fine.

  “You can come out now.” Mrs. Rockefeller was hovering over me right outside the window, and for a moment, I actually thought she was Miss T—sweet little Miss T.

  “Oh.”

  She opened the door for me and I found Alfred already strapped into his stoller, a big smile on his face as always.

  “Hey, buddy. Did you have a good nap?”

  He nodded and held up Telephant for me to see. “He did, too.”

  “Good.” I grabbed my laptop from the seat and climbed out. “You hungry now?”

  “I could eat a horse, just like Grandpa always says.” He looked down at Telephant and made a scrunchy face as if the expression—to eat a horse—was somewhat offensive to another animal species.

  “And he would too. Okay, let’s go. I’m sure they have anything but eleph— I mean horse in here.” We both looked up at the restaurant.

  “Maybe they have Ninjas,” Alfred suggested as I pushed him up the ramp. “Gluten-free Ninjas,” he corrected himself, which brought a big smile to my face. When did he learn about gluten free?

  “Maybe. That would make me happy. And my stomach,” I added when it growled so loudly that even Alfred heard it.

  “Mama tummy is hungry?”

  “It is. Now, let’s eat.”

  Mrs. Rockefeller held the door open for us and the mouthwatering smell of cinnamon and coffee grew even stronger.

  “I swear, if they don’t have anything gluten-free-licious, I’m gonna cry.”

  “Don’t you worry,” Franz said behind my back, scaring the shit out of me. “I swear you won’t cry.”

  I did cry, not because of the lack of gluten-free food but because of the abundance of it. Mrs. Rockefeller was not wrong about Franz and that he knew almost everyone or anything there is to know about Berlin. Apparently, he had contacted every gluten-free bakery, shop and/or restaurant in a ten-mile radius of Berlin, and they had all delivered bread, muffins, cake, bagels, petit fours, sourdough … you name it, to Suicide Sue. I had not one but two bread baskets all to myself and I intended to eat it all, making up for all those times I had to pass the warm bread rolls, breadsticks, croissants, and desserts.

  “The name makes perfect sense to me right now,” I said, reaching for yet another roll. “I mean, if I die right here, right now, I would die happy. ‘Eliminating Ella.’”

  Mom smiled before her eyes darted to the end of the table where Franziska had placed Alfred and Ava with a basket of bagels and a container of oversized crayons.

  “Don’t worry. They’re not listening, and I’m not dying here.” I plopped a big piece of flaky croissant in my mouth and smiled.

  “Well, I’m dying to hear what Franz has to say.” Mom looked at Franz across the table from her. He was nibbling on a small piece of croissant, looking more concerned, it seemed, about the greasy crumbs on his dark blue cashmere shirt than the delicious crumbs in his mouths. Obviously, he had tried the famous Suicide Sue croissants before and, even more obviously, he was not a big fan of carbohydrates.

  “Well, let’s start with a photo.” He dabbed at his face with the nice cloth napkin and held out his hand as if to say, “Hand it over, sista.”

  “Um photo?”

  “Yes, photo. You do have a—” He stopped midsentence when he saw the way I looked over at Mom. “So, I guess you don’t have a photo—not even a blurred selfie, Instagram, Facebook? ... Gar nichts?”

  “Um, no. It was kind of random how I met him that day. See, to begin with, I thought he was the one who had left the message on our old-school answering machine, that is, I thought he was Frank. But that turned out to be the wrong Frank and then, of course, I found out that his name wasn’t Frank at all and his real name was Hans. I met him the day right before he was going back to Berlin. He did ask me if he could call me, I mean, when he got home, and I said no. We didn’t even exchange our phone numbers. The phone he had with him that day was one he had borrowed from a friend’s mom who worked at Sprint. I don’t know why I even mentioned that.” I shrugged and looked over at Franz, who was sitting with both his arms crossed. He motioned for me to go on, and so I continued my rambling.

  “I don’t know why I even said that, I mean why I said no to him about calling me when he returned back home, but I guess I just knew all too well how long-distance relationships go. I thought it was just easier this way—a clean-cut, rip the Band-Aid off.” Again, I shrugged, which seemed to be the only way I could express how I felt about my own stupidity.

  For a moment, Franz’s eyes moved to Alfred at the end of the table, probably trying to imagine what his father looked like. “Okay,” he began, now staring at my curly red hair. “I get it. It makes perfect sense. Long distance relationships are unmöglich, I totally agree: it’s all just tears and heartache. It never works out, but but but that was before that happened.” He nodded in the direction of Alfred and we all stared at my little blond and very German-looking boy. “From the looks of it—what a handsome boy, by the way—and from the karg, um, sparse description I previously got from you, Mrs. Rock—” he leaned back in his chair and looked over at Mrs. Rockefeller, “—we’re dealing with nothing more than characteristic features like a very symmetric face, blond hair, blue eyes, and, I’m guessing, average height?” He looked at me and I nodded.

  “Well, we just described over seventy-five percent of the German population.” He tossed his head back and laughed. “I’m sorry. I meant no harm, but...” He cleared his throat and looked at Mrs. Rockefeller, and I noticed a few red spots forming on side of his neck. I recognized blushing when I saw it, being a pro at it myself.

  “It’s all good, Franz,” I assured him. “It’s a mission impossible. I know. It’s—”

  Franz held up one of his long piano fingers to stop me. “Well, not yet. We also know that he was, or perhaps is, already an architect, and he did the student exchange program. I believe it’s called the Erasmus exchange program here. As far as we know, he’s from Berlin and the six months of studying in Seattle was from January 2012 till July 2012, correct?”

  “Not sure about the months, but that sounds fairly accurate.”

  “So, it’s been almost four years now, give or take a snippet. He could be an architect by now.”

  I looked up at the old beautiful tray ceiling and nodded, suddenly remembering how I had never bothered to look up or appreciate a ceiling until the night with Hans. With a silly grin on his face, he had told me how he always had a passion for old molded ceilings. “It makes perfect sense,” he had said, with his cute German accent, as we were lying cheek to cheek, right after we had both lost our virginity. “We spend so much time looking up—when we’re about to sleep, when we wake up, when we can’t think of someone’s name, or—” he had looked down at me and smiled, “when we meet someone for the very first time and we get shy—especially if they make us feel in love.” Of course, my eyes had shot straight upward, and that’s when I noticed the beautiful molded ceiling. And I knew that I would never forget that moment, or him, every time I looked up at the ceiling. Today was no exception.

  “Do you still love him?” Franz’s questio
n took us all by surprise—even Mom, who almost spit out “the best suicide latte” she had ever had—and soon all eyes were on me. It was the exact question Mom and Thomas had asked me not too long ago, and I had thought about it ever since.

  I took a deep breath and looked around the table. “The truth?” When they all nodded, I took a deep breath and continued, “You know, I fell in love with Hans instantly the day I met him. I had never known love until then, well, not that kind of love. He knocked me off my feet completely. But I think motherhood has changed me, watching Alfred grow up, taking his first step, calling me ‘mom’ … It has all changed me. I’m not that seventeen-year-old girl anymore. As Thomas once joked, I went from seventeen to thirty overnight. Even the word ‘love’ has changed for me. When I think about love, I think about smelling the top of Alfred’s head when he sleeps, and stealing kisses from him. I think about family dinners, and special moments with Grandma on the front porch, tea with Martha, drawing with Alfred and Eleanor, movie nights with Thomas… But, maybe if I saw him again, it would all come back but Thomas says tha—”

  Once again, Franz held up his long piano finger to stop me. “—Hold on. Who is this Thomas I keep hearing about?”

  “Wha-what do you mean? What have you heard about him?” I looked over at Mom for help but before she had a chance to explain, Franz continued with his next questions.

  “Well, is he the handsome guy who’s on vacation right now with his daughter and sogenannt girlfriend? The one with all the long comments on the Facebook page which, by the way, is such a cute thing to do.” He raised an eyebrow and looked at Mrs. Rock. “Sorry for prying, but Abby showed me when you two were in line to the women’s bathroom. And I did notice Aaron liked the photo from the memorial for die ermordeten Juden. It makes me happy to know that you and your son are fin—”

  “—Let’s not talk about that right now.” Mrs. Rockefeller dropped her napkin on top of her plate and cleared her throat. “We’re here to try to locate Eleanor’s sweetheart.”