I pushed the bike out of the shed and swung myself onto the saddle.
I carefully pushed aside the curtain and watched Elisa pedal vigorously down the narrow path that led past the garden and into the woods. I could only gather that her forced stay in the darkroom and my message had bothered her. I hadn’t actually thought that she would go out of her way to have another confrontation at the table so soon.
I stepped back from the window and smiled.
I carefully steered my bicycle around the jutting roots on the forest path and gripped the handlebars tighter as the path continued to get bumpier. I quietly hummed to myself as I pedaled energetically. The further I got from the mansion, the better my mood. My odd relatives and Valerie could go jump in a lake!
As I left the woods behind and reached the gravel path that led to the small quarry lake, I took the apple out of the pocket of my hoodie. Awkwardly steering the bike with one hand, I bit hungrily into the apple.
In every direction, I saw only fields, their wheat crops swaying gently in the wind. Aside from the crunching gravel and the squeak of the bike saddle, it was absolutely quiet. As much as I liked my turbulent life in Berlin, I also felt at home here on the edge of Düsseldorf, where you could find yourself in the middle of nature within minutes.
I turned on to the path to the quarry lake and threw the apple core into one of the bushes lining the embankment. I didn’t see a soul as I dismounted, leaned the bicycle against the jetty, and walked out on the flimsy, rotten planks.
At the end of the jetty, I took my sneakers off and let my naked feet dangle in the water. The ice-cold water momentarily took my breath away. I made slow circles with my toe observing the ripples on the smooth surface of the water.
The tension I’d felt from the last few days eased and for the first time I could really catch my breath. There wasn’t a better place to collect my thoughts. Neither my overbearing aunt and her odd brother, nor the resentful Valerie or David could disturb me here. My gaze was lost in the fathomless depth of the water. I watched how it flowed over my feet and slapped gently against the wooden pillars.
I was startled out of my observations by the sound of dogs on the jetty behind me. My aunt’s cocker spaniels were bounding toward me. “You little scamps,” I called, embracing Miss Marple’s head with both my hands as she greeted me joyfully. “Did you run away from something?”
Miss Moneypenny followed and nestled up to me with her fiercely wagging tail, demanding her share of affection. Who could withstand those trusting eyes? I attempted to satisfy both dogs, ruffling their silky fur.
I looked up at the sound of human steps on the gravel. David was jogging along the embankment. When he spotted me, he changed direction and came out to meet me on the small jetty. “So you’re skipping out on breakfast too?” I asked.
He nodded and wiped the sweat off his face with the bottom of his gray T-shirt.
I snuck a peek at his naked torso and suddenly felt like a pubescent fifteen-year-old. Inwardly, I cursed my hormones and forced myself to look at his face. “Actually, I just wanted to jog a short lap, but the little bastards took off on me.”
Indignation rose up in me. “Miss Marple and Miss Moneypenny are not bastards!” I objected.
“Oh, yes they are. Spoiled, smelly bastards.” He contradicted his own rude words as he took an enthusiastic Miss Moneypenny in his arms and nestled his cheek against her head.
I watched, amused, as Miss Marple jumped up on his leg and yelped. “I bet you let both of them sleep in your bed, don’t you?” David’s grin gave him away.
“You better not tell my mother,” he said jokingly, then sat down cross-legged next to me with the dog awkwardly in his arms. “So what’s your excuse?”
I directed my gaze back at the water and searched for some witty reply. But as always, David’s presence had a negative effect on my powers of speech. And the night before, for the first time since I’d arrived, my need for togetherness was fulfilled.
David pet the cocker spaniel’s head, and she closed her eyes contentedly. “I have no choice but to be a part of that.”
I looked at him, taken aback. I would have never thought that he was contributing to the tense atmosphere.
“Do you really think that, after everything, things would be cool between you and me?”
“No, of course not,” I said, trying to find the right words. “You seem so unflappable, as if nothing could ever ruffle you.”
“Believe me, I often feel quite different inside.”
After this surprising confession, David averted his gaze and looked out over the water. I silently observed his handsome face, which I had burned into my memory over the years. His damp, sweaty hair stuck to his temples; sweat trickled down his neck.
I could have sat and looked at him for hours. My fingers literally itched to trace the contours of his face. In order to distract myself, I pulled Miss Marple onto my lap and buried my hands in her golden-brown fur.
As the silence between us grew, I decided to grill David about the rest of the family. “Does Uncle Justus actually live with you permanently now?”
“Unfortunately, yes,” said David, looking at me with a tormented expression. “Four years ago, Mom let him renovate the old orangery and now he delights us with his charming presence every day.”
“Does he still have that uptight girlfriend?” I asked, desperately trying to remember the name of the reserved curator he’d been dating.
“Ursula?” He shook his head with a chuckle. “No, Ursula’s been on a journey of self-discovery in Thailand for the last three years.”
“I would have done the same thing if I’d had to put up with Uncle Justus.”
David burst out laughing. “He’s been spotted several times in the university cafeteria with his teaching assistant.”
“What?” I looked at him in disbelief. “She couldn’t be more than half his age!”
“I’m afraid that’s true.”
I shook my head at the image, then changed the subject. “How do you like working for the family law firm?” I asked, scrutinizing him. I could very well imagine that my uncle placed higher expectations on his stepson than on his other employees.
“The work is about as demanding as when I was an intern. Not too bad.”
“I see.” I didn’t let up. “And how do you get along with the other partners?”
David rolled his eyes. “They don’t trust me and dump all of the most unpleasant cases on me.” I couldn’t imagine Valerie’s father doing such a thing “He’s making my life hell at the moment. Ever since Valerie and I broke up, I’ve been persona non grata in the Jansen household.”
Dancing for joy on the inside, I looked at him incredulously. “But then why is she hanging around here all the time?”
“She thinks she has to stand by my side during this dark time, and I just don’t have the energy to fight about it right now.”
“I can imagine.” I decided not to pursue the matter further, so we just sat in silence on the jetty and stared out at the lake.
When we got back to the house, David accompanied me to the door of my room, where we stood across from each other for a moment, unsure what to do next.
David finally broke the awkward silence. “See you later,” he said. I smiled. David grinned, then turned and left me alone with my treacherous, pounding heart.
My euphoria dissolved the moment I discovered the small slip of paper attached to my bathroom mirror with Scotch tape:
If I were you, I’d make a run for it.
I crumpled it up and threw it in the garbage can. I didn’t know who was writing these messages, but I didn’t plan to leave until I’d found out.
As I spooned chocolate mousse into my mouth, I observed how Elisa warily examined everyone present. My last message had clearly made an impact. It seemed to have scared her; hopefull
y, it would be enough to banish her. That would be okay with me.
I tried to ignore my dark thoughts as I scraped the last bit of incredibly delicious chocolate mousse out of the small bowl. As I debated whether or not to ask for seconds, I had the distinct feeling I was being examined. However, as I let my gaze wander over the table, scrutinizing those gathered around it, I couldn’t identify any potential suspects.
Aunt Helen, who had only eaten her usual minuscule portion—she was fussy about her figure—was listening to Lukas, who was telling witty anecdotes about his fellow medical students and professors.
Kristina shook her head with laughter and complained about her boring fellow students, something that seemed fairly predictable since, in my opinion, only geeks study art history.
Even Uncle Justus’s pinched face broke into a smile, which brought out the resemblance to his sister.
Only Valerie maintained a kind of scowl, which was likely due to the fact that David wasn’t paying any attention to her. After what he had told me this morning, his distant behavior toward her suddenly made sense.
My gaze then shifted to David and I lost myself for a moment in his serious gray eyes. I was oblivious to Lukas’s jokes and Valerie’s arrogant manner, only noticing how my mood significantly improved. Because David had called it quits with his girlfriend—who was still in denial about the breakup—an unimagined possibility opened up, but its meaning was still unclear.
Baffled that my uncle’s critical health condition hadn’t been mentioned yet, I decided the time had come to bring it up.
“Aunt Helen,” I said, clearing my throat. “I’d like to go back to the hospital tomorrow. When exactly are visiting hours?”
All conversation at the table came to an abrupt end. Everyone turned to stare at me.
“Do you really want to go back to the hospital tomorrow?” David didn’t seem to think it was a good idea.
But then Lukas broke in. “It’ll be best to go midmorning, as they’re doing a few tests in the afternoon.”
I looked at my aunt, who just stared at her sons absently. Why didn’t she say anything?
Dinner ended in silence, and I was still none the wiser.
Valerie waited until everyone had left the dinner table, then pulled me into the library. “Keep your hands off David,” she hissed. “Do you understand?”
I raised both my hands in a gesture of peace. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“Don’t be like that. You don’t think I’ve seen the way you stare at him all the time?”
I refused to let myself be intimidated by her. I watched as her delicate face flushed red with anger. As she glared icily at me, I suddenly realized that beneath her beautiful facade seethed only hate.
“What I feel for David does not concern you,” I said. To further provoke her, I added, “Besides, he told me that you broke up.”
“It’s just temporary. David just needs some time.”
“I wouldn’t be so sure of that, Valerie.”
“Yes. Well, nothing’s been decided.” She gave me a haughty look and rushed out of the library without another word.
A little taken aback, I stood there and replayed the odd encounter in my mind. I ran the tips of my fingers over the spines of the old bound books, savoring the musty smell of the paper. Maybe I should take a book to read? In my current agitated state, sleep was the last thing on my mind.
An elaborately designed book caught my interest. I pulled it off the overcrowded shelf and had to laugh when I read the title: The Art of War by Niccolò Machiavelli.
Annoyed by my family and overwhelmed by the recent chain of events, I went to bed early. I tossed and turned for what seemed an eternity. My tumultuous thoughts wouldn’t leave me in peace. If I wanted to survive the next few days, I’d have to come up with something.
My family had rigorously blocked all of my attempts to talk about Uncle Matthias. So I would have to interrogate every single one of them to shed some light on the situation. Though the notion of grilling Uncle Justus was abhorrent to me, I knew it had to be done.
I grabbed my phone and sent my mother a text. She still hadn’t gotten in touch. Maybe she had some idea what this was all about.
Monday
It was midmorning, and I found myself on the subway at the mercy of the train’s garish neon lights and various unidentifiable smells. I was on my way from the hospital to the historic district, where I had agreed to meet Lukas, who needed a book from the university library.
My visit with Uncle Matthias had really upset me again. He still took me for my mother and couldn’t be convinced otherwise. I tried to make sense of it, but the deafening conversation of the pubescent girls beside me on the subway was too fascinating to ignore. They were chatting about the boyfriend of a certain Monique, who, at fifteen, had already gone through quite a few men in her time.
I winced when one of the girls asked whether this new guy was hip or a loser. But one of the girls waved her hand reassuringly. The new boyfriend was definitely hip. After they had all breathed a collective sigh of relief, a quirky conversation about a pop star’s Twitter updates and the seizure of his little capuchin monkey followed.
I tried to suppress a grin. I would have liked to eavesdrop further, but, unfortunately, I had to get off at the next stop.
The beeping doors of the subway opened, and I headed up the escalator. As I traveled up with the tide of other passengers, Uncle Matthias’s frantic expression popped into my mind’s eye. The closer I got to daylight, the more my mood sank.
A gray rain welcomed me at street level. I swore as I rummaged around in my bag for a folding umbrella. “Salve, mulier pulchra.” Lukas’s words interrupted my struggle with the unruly umbrella, which refused to open.
I turned around and pushed the umbrella toward Lukas, so that he could try his luck. “Unfortunately, I didn’t understand a word you just said. But top of the morning to you.”
Lukas successfully opened the umbrella, then raised an eyebrow at me. “It means: ‘Hail, beautiful woman.’ You must still have a bit of Latin knocking around in your head from your qualifying exams, don’t you?”
“Unfortunately, no. Not everyone was infatuated with the Latin student teacher and constantly sending her text messages in Latin.”
“Do you seriously believe that I only remember it because of those texts?” Smirking, Lukas held the umbrella over our heads and pulled me into the line outside the café where we’d agreed to meet. “By the way, did I tell you that I ran into Frau Mertens last year at the one-hundred-year-anniversary celebration of our venerable high school?”
Thankful for the distraction from our family drama, I listened to Lukas’s amusing, somewhat exaggerated description of his once-attractive student teacher’s transformation into a crunchy, organic produce–buying, Birkenstock-wearing eco-mommy.
As we climbed the steps to the café’s entrance together, Lukas recited, word for word, the ancient oath of love that Frau Mertens had written him. Breathless from laughing, we found a free table and dropped into the comfortable leather armchairs.
I studied my cousin. For years his only true loves had been Star Wars—he had forced us to call him Luke Skywalker for a long period—and Fräulein Mertens. Though he still had the same mischievous face, the Westphal family jester had become an adult in recent years.
After we’d ordered—Lukas a double espresso and me a latte macchiato—I worked up the courage to bring up what was on my mind.
“Lukas,” I began, getting straight to the point, “do you have any idea why Uncle Matthias thinks I’m my mother?”
“He does?” he asked, looking at me in amazement. “I can’t imagine why.”
“On Saturday, I just thought it was because we hadn’t seen each other in so long, but this morning he called me ‘Hannah’ the whole time.”
“Well, it�
��s true that you look a lot like your mother with your short hair, but he couldn’t be that confused.”
“I don’t believe it either,” I said pensively. I thanked the waitress who brought our coffees just then and shook a generous quantity of sugar into the milk foam.
Lukas drank a sip of his espresso and examined me over the rim of his cup. “He seemed lucid to me when I was there yesterday.”
Baffled, I shrugged. “Why doesn’t anyone at the house ever mention his condition? Everyone is acting as though Uncle Matthias is going to be better in no time.”
Lukas nodded. “While Dad was being rushed to the hospital in an ambulance, Mom had an actual nervous breakdown. She only made it through the first few days thanks to sedatives.”
So that’s why Aunt Helen seemed so serene; that explained why Uncle Matthias’s condition didn’t seem to have affected her.
Lukas swirled his espresso cup. “We all agreed that it would be best to talk about it as little as possible so as not to upset her.”
I understood, of course. “Is she still taking a lot of pills?”
“Not as many as she did at first, but the dose would still take down a hippo.”
“How come?” I asked, confused.
“No one told us when we were kids, but when her first husband died in a sailing accident shortly after David was born, she fell into a deep depression—she’s been taking pills ever since.”
“I had no idea.”
“I didn’t either,” he said, then sighed. “The first time I found her pills was three years ago. I confronted her about it and she came clean.”
As I pictured a young Aunt Helen facing life alone with a baby, I felt a twinge of sympathy for her. “Do you actually know who he was—her first husband? I’ve never seen a photo or heard anything about him.”
Lukas shook his head. “I haven’t either. My mom never talks about him. I only know that he was French and once studied philosophy at the Sorbonne.”
Shuttered Life Page 4