This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, organizations, places, events, and incidents are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.
Text copyright © 2014 Florentine Roth
Translation copyright © 2015 Jennifer Marquart
All rights reserved.
No part of this book may be reproduced, or stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without express written permission of the publisher.
Previously published as Der Duft von Bergamotte by Amazon Publishing, Munich, 2014. Translated from German by Jennifer Marquart. First published in English by AmazonCrossing in 2015.
Published by AmazonCrossing, Seattle
www.apub.com
Amazon, the Amazon logo, and AmazonCrossing are trademarks of Amazon.com, Inc., or its affiliates.
ISBN-13: 9781477830277
ISBN-10: 1477830278
Cover design by Jason Blackburn
Library of Congress Control Number: 2014922267
Contents
Prologue
A few days before . . . Friday
Saturday
Sunday
Monday
Tuesday
Wednesday
Thursday
Friday
Saturday
Sunday
Monday
Tuesday
About the Author
About the Translator
Prologue
The headlights only dimly lit the deserted back road, and the windshield wipers moved frantically back and forth in the downpour. I was carefully steering the old Alfa Romeo Spider through a sharp curve when headlights from another vehicle appeared behind me, blinding me in the rearview mirror. Squinting against the glaring light, I glanced uneasily in the left side-view mirror. The headlights were large and positioned rather high, suggesting they belonged to an SUV. And it was gaining. “Ever hear of keeping a safe distance?” I mumbled under my breath and refocused my attention on the wet, glistening road ahead. The trees strained in the storm, their branches bending and blurring before my eyes like a single billowing mass.
Suddenly, there was a dull thud and the car jerked forward.
Adrenaline shot through my veins as I realized that I’d just been rear-ended. What was I supposed to do now? Stop? I cast an uncertain glance in the rearview mirror.
Instead of slowing down, the driver behind me was closing the distance between us again. A sickening wave of horror surged through me as I grasped that this hadn’t been an accidental collision. Someone had rammed into me on purpose.
I floored the gas pedal, and the vintage car’s motor revved. As I sank deeper into the leather seat with the acceleration, I held my breath. The dark landscape sped by me.
My heart stopped for a moment as the wheels spun and momentarily lost contact with the street on the next curve. I hastily righted the car and sighed with relief when the vehicle was firmly back on the road.
The rain drummed so heavily on the windshield that the windshield wipers could barely displace the deluge of water. I tried to keep panic at bay—I needed to remain levelheaded if I were going to get out of this—but it was in vain.
I glanced in the rearview mirror. The SUV had fallen back a bit. With shaking hands, I felt for my cell phone and pulled it out of the side panel of the driver’s door. I tried to turn it on—to no avail. The battery was dead. “Damn it, of all times.” I threw it on the passenger seat.
I looked at the rearview mirror again. The SUV had caught up to me. Because it was dark, I couldn’t tell who was at the wheel. In a few hundred meters, the paved street would merge into a forest road. The Alfa still enjoyed a small advantage on the pavement, but on rough terrain, the SUV would inevitably catch up. As the country road appeared before me, my pursuer’s powerful motor roared up and the SUV rear-ended my car once more, catapulting it forward. Only with great effort did I succeed in slowing the car down on the slippery road. My pursuer took advantage of this to come up alongside me. The SUV looked exactly like my uncle’s Range Rover, but the cab was so far up that I couldn’t see the driver.
The vehicle next to me swung out and then lurched back into the Alfa.
I yelled in panic, unable to keep my car on the road any longer. It crashed through the guardrail and plunged down the wooded hillside.
A few days before . . . Friday
I stood in front of the wrought-iron gate, poised to ring the doorbell for the fourth time. The video camera mounted above the gate silently spun in my direction. In search of a friendly face, I looked uncertainly into the camera.
I couldn’t help but think that she’d gone overboard on the safety precautions. When the gate rolled open, I shouldered my heavy travel bag and headed up the gravel driveway, which ended in a circular flower bed in front of the mansion.
I’d only taken a few steps when the yapping cocker spaniels, Miss Marple and Miss Moneypenny, charged me. I dropped to my knee to greet them. They paused briefly, suggesting that they didn’t recognize me right away, which irritated me. But soon they were jumping on me and licking my face. How I had missed them!
Accompanied by both dogs, I walked slowly up to the old mansion, which had disappeared under even more trails of ivy since my last visit. The September sun bathed both sides of the broad driveway and the elaborately landscaped flower beds in a warm light.
I soon discovered my Aunt Helen among the greenery. I stopped for a minute and observed her as she gave the gardener exact instructions on how to trim the bushes.
That was how I imagined hell, I thought, as I noticed the exasperated expression on the gardener’s face. It would drive anyone insane to be at Aunt Helen’s beck and call, ordered to trim dozens of bushes into horse shapes and rid countless flower beds of slugs.
The white gravel crunched under my worn Chucks as I reluctantly approached the roses. “Hello, Aunt Helen.”
She turned around, evidently surprised. “Elisa!” She pulled off her gardening gloves and clasped my arms clumsily. “We weren’t expecting you until tonight.”
I responded timidly to the hug. “I know, I caught an earlier train.”
Aunt Helen gently shoved my shoulder and eyed me critically. She shook her head disapprovingly as she studied my short, dark-brown hair, which always had a tinge of red in the summer. “How could you have cut off your gorgeous locks? That short hair makes you look like a boy.”
I restrained myself from rolling my eyes. “I just needed a change. Besides, not everyone can look as stunning as you.”
I eyed my aunt’s elegantly pinned-up golden-blonde hair with envy. Even though it was colored and her classic features now betrayed a few wrinkles, Aunt Helen still looked years younger than fifty-one.
But Aunt Helen was unresponsive to the compliment. “Where did you get your pants? Do you make so little as a photographer that you can’t buy yourself anything decent?”
I grinned as I tugged at a thread on my intentionally torn black jeans. “I’ll never be able to spend as much as you do, Aunt Helen. But even apart from that, this is how jeans are supposed to look. Everyone in Berlin wears them like this.”
My aunt raised one of her carefully plucked eyebrows. “Oh, child, I would have thought you’d left your punk phase behind at twenty-six.”
“Oh, can we not talk about that? How is Uncle Matthias? When can I visit him in the hospital?”
Aunt Helen’s face assumed an anxious expression. “Unfortunately, you’ll have to wait until tomorrow morning. The doctors want to do a final test
to determine whether there is any residual damage from the heart infarction.”
I held my breath. “Is he in pretty bad shape, then?” I asked.
Aunt Helen patted my arm reassuringly. “No, he’s feeling much better already. The doctors are very confident. But he’ll have to take it easy in the near future. He just has to accept it.”
I nodded and let my aunt lead me toward the house. As we walked up the marble steps, the large oak door seemed to open as if by magic.
Aunt Helen turned to me and smiled. “Agathe has probably been watching for you from the kitchen window.”
As we entered the house, I was pulled into such a fierce hug that my travel bag fell on the floor with a thud.
“Agathe, not so hard! I can’t breathe.” I laughed as I tried to fend off the warm greeting from the Westphal family’s longtime housekeeper.
“Elisa, dear. You’ve been gone far too long. I was beginning to think I’d never see you again.” Agathe, who had never completely lost her Polish accent, studied my face. I had to agree with her—I hadn’t thought I’d ever enter this house again either. I looked over her shoulder at my aunt, who had reassumed her aloof demeanor.
“I imagine you two have a lot of catching up to do.” Aunt Helen’s voice sounded noticeably cooler. “I’ll be in my office in case you need anything, Elisa.”
I broke away from Agathe and glanced up at my aunt, who was jogging up the stairs to the second floor. “I’ve only been here for two minutes and I’ve already blown it with her. What a magnificent start.”
I turned back to Agathe, who patted my cheek the way she had so many times in the past. “You know that she can’t show how very happy she is to see you.”
I rolled my eyes and whispered, “I don’t think she wants me here. If Uncle Matthias hadn’t had a heart attack, I would have never come back.”
Agathe pulled me into the kitchen. “Rubbish. You shouldn’t take everything to heart. I still have some lemon cake, the kind you used to love. Come and have a slice and tell me about your life in Berlin.”
I gave myself up to fate and dropped into a chair at the well-worn kitchen table.
I shook with anger as I watched Elisa open the door to the guest room and carry in her travel bag.
The creak of the closing door rang in my ear as I took a seat on the windowsill at the end of the corridor. I tried in vain to concentrate, to collect myself and escape the storm of my thoughts. Everything started to spin; colors swam before my eyes.
Plagued and haunted, I stared ahead, trapped in my thoughts; I couldn’t escape them. My pulse accelerated.
My heart raced.
I struggled to master my thoughts as a wave of black despair threatened to overwhelm me.
But if something is thought even just once, it’s too late.
There is no going back.
I washed my hands in the bathroom that adjoined the guest room and studied myself in the mirror. Red-rimmed green eyes, further emphasized by the deep shadows beneath them, gazed back at me. My natural pallor stood out noticeably. Ever since I had received the call from my aunt informing me of Uncle Matthias’s heart attack and decided to visit my relatives in Düsseldorf, sleep had been the last thing on my mind.
I shouldn’t take everything to heart. Agathe’s words wouldn’t leave my head. Easier said than done, I thought.
It had been six years since my father, Arndt Westphal—Matthias Westphal’s younger brother—had been buried; when I’d left this house, I’d sworn to myself that I would never set foot in it again. Tears welled up in my eyes as I recalled the happy days before I’d left this house: My father and me on a sailing trip on the Baltic Sea—his hair disheveled by the icy wind—calling out complicated instructions. My father coming home late at night after a stressful day at the law firm, being greeted effusively by our dogs. My father trying in vain to explain curve sketching in mathematics, laughing at the look of incomprehension on my face.
I wiped my eyes, angry with myself. Actually, I’d handled my father’s fatal car accident pretty well, but being back at the old mansion where my father had grown up tore open old wounds. I tried not to think about the terrible scene that had taken place after the funeral, but it plagued me nonetheless.
I put away the few cosmetics I owned in the small, white-lacquered cabinet and then went back into the guest room. The old parquet floor creaked as I walked over to the open window. The delicate, flower-patterned curtains moved softly in the summer breeze.
I drank in the smells of freshly mowed grass and blossoming roses and let my eyes wander over the parklike garden. Childhood memories rose up in me. The old swing still hung in the mighty oak tree. How often I had swung there, swinging until I became dizzy, trying to touch the sky with my feet.
I opened my bag and put away the few pieces of clothing I’d hastily packed in the Biedermeier wardrobe. I carefully tucked my favorite camera away on the bottom of the antique wardrobe; without it, I wouldn’t be anywhere.
A light knock on the door made me jump. It opened before I’d even had a chance to respond. “Do you plan to hide away in here, Elisa? Or do you want to come down for dinner?”
I looked at the black-haired man leaning casually against the doorframe, but didn’t say a word.
David, Aunt Helen’s son from her first marriage to a Frenchman, was three years older than me. When we were kids, he’d driven me crazy with his mean-spirited pranks; giant spiders deliberately left in my bed, decapitated Barbie dolls, and chili powder in my favorite pudding were simply a regular part of daily life at the mansion. As we got older, David either teased me mercilessly or ignored me. The latter was, in fact, worse, because ever since the summer I turned fourteen, I had been hopelessly in love with him.
I turned scarlet as I tried in vain to find the right words, which always seemed to elude me at the very moment I most needed them.
David crossed the guest room in two long strides and came to stand before me. I had to tilt my head back to see his worry-lined face. Even if it hadn’t been six years since I’d last seen him, my heart still would’ve pounded like crazy. He furrowed his prominent, curved eyebrows and brushed a rebellious hair off my forehead. “Strange. With your hair short, you look just like Aunt Hannah.”
I recoiled from his brief touch and crossed my arms over my chest. “We haven’t seen each other in six years, and that’s all you have to say to me?” My voice dripped with sarcasm.
“If I remember correctly, you took off without a word and never responded to any of my calls or messages.”
David’s dark, accusatory voice penetrated the protective armor I’d worn since my father’s death.
My guilty conscience stirred as uninvited memories surfaced in me. David, who had held me in consolation for hours in the emergency room during my father’s operation. David, who had held my hand through the whole funeral and saved me from collapse.
My mother, who’d been at the wheel of the car—and whom everyone in the family blamed for my father’s death—had been so pumped full of sedatives at the funeral that she’d sat lifeless in the kitchen next to me, unable to give me any comfort. Only David could get through to me in the dark days between the news of my parents’ accident and my father’s funeral. We went for long walks along the Rhine with the dogs, and he did everything imaginable to distract me.
“I’m sorry, David. But you have no idea what it was like . . .” The words stuck in my throat and I shrugged apologetically.
David looked at me, but then waved a hand. “Forget about it. You’re here now.” He turned around abruptly and marched away. At the door, he turned back to me. “Hurry up, the food will get cold soon.” He winked. “You haven’t already annoyed my mother on your first day, have you?”
I shook my head and indicated that I would be right down.
I quickly unpacked the rest of my belongings and shut the d
oor to the guest room behind me. As I walked the length of the long corridor that led to the stairs, I tried to shake off the thoughts about my father’s death. Old oil paintings depicting the Westphal family’s ancestors—who were traceable to the fourteenth century—hung on the wood-paneled walls. As I arrived at the top of the staircase, I fleetingly considered sliding down the banister like I had when I was little. It was one of those moments when you recognize you’re finally grown-up, I thought wistfully, as I realized I would rather go down the stairs on my two feet.
I paused for a moment in front of the closed dining room door to collect myself and take another deep breath. The reunion with Aunt Helen and David had already taken its toll, and my nerves were raw.
I was so lost in thought that I didn’t notice that someone had come up behind me. I cringed as two large hands covered my eyes and said in a damned good imitation of Darth Vader, “The dark side has you again.”
I turned around, delighted, and threw my arms around Cousin Lukas’s neck. Lukas was Aunt Helen and Uncle Matthias’s son. As his powerful arms squeezed me tight, I felt a wave of affectionate tears well up in me. I was on the verge of turning into a real crybaby. “You were gone much too long,” Lukas said, holding me out at arm’s length and shaking me lightly.
I was surprised. It struck me that my departure from Düsseldorf hadn’t only been painful for me. My grief and my anger over the years had made me blind to the feelings of other people.
Lukas, whose auburn mop of curls protested against every hairdresser, grinned suddenly. “I know how you can make it up to me though.”
I studied his freckle-dappled face, which in recent years had lost the last traces of boyishness. Now—at twenty-five—he clearly exhibited his father’s prominent traits.
“Please, not a Star Wars night.” I grimaced. As a child, Lukas had regularly forced his twin sister, Kristina, and me to watch the Star Wars films with him. “Don’t you have any friends you can annoy with those?”
He shook his head. “I understand. The main thing is you’re here now.”
Shuttered Life Page 1