Out of Splinters and Ashes

by Colleen L. Donnelly

  “Just leave us alone.” Cate was turned his way as he faced her.

  “I can’t do that. You need to tell me what you know. About everything. Think hard.” He understood the ugly bond between fear and anger. He felt it now, and was responsible for what he saw of it on her. But sharing Amabile had been right.

  “I said leave us alone.”

  Cate would be facing a lot of alone with what Dietrich had to do, what her grandfather may have done, and with a fiancé who had chosen a slow walk toward her instead of a run. “This will be difficult for your fiancé.”

  Cate clenched tighter to the steering wheel.

  “He knows,” Dietrich continued, “that ‘The race is not to the swift.’ ”

  “Emerson is none of your business, and I only speak ‘literary’ with my grandmother.”

  “He can’t outrun what is happening to your grandfather. Your man has to stand on his own values and keep the focus off the negative going on with your family.”

  “Are we close to your hotel?”

  “Not yet.”

  The car veered to the right, a chorus of horns protesting the maneuver as she yanked to the street’s edge and braked to a stop.

  “Get out.”

  “What?”

  “I said, get out!”

  He opened the car’s door and stepped outside. She was back in traffic as quickly as she’d pulled out of it, horns blaring their protests again. Then the little runner was gone. Fast.

  Chapter 38

  Emerson had excellent values, values he’d assumed were mirrored by my grandparents. Values that included family, didn’t just let them be… I stared at the street ahead of me. I hit the gas and hurried to my grandparents’ house.

  Who was that German man, anyway? How did his search for a runner keep appearing in our lives? Amabile—she was a ridiculous story, a coincidence at best, pure fiction, proving again Dietrich was a liar. I slammed the heel of my palm against the steering wheel.

  There were two places an army attorney would probably search eventually—Grandpa’s home, and Grandma’s store. I wheeled my car into Grandpa’s drive, climbed out, and scurried to their house. There had to be something in there. Something of the military he’d failed to throw away. For her.

  The living room seemed to sigh with relief as I entered and closed the door behind me. Like the house had worried the last of the Crawleys had finally gone. I pulled all the drapes and turned on enough lights to see as I sorted through every drawer, every cabinet, and every closet I could find in their house.

  The main level produced nothing. Upstairs they had a gabled loft they used for an attic, where a string to a single ceiling bulb exposed boxes stacked around the edges, a thick layer of dust telling me no one had been up here in ages…until now.

  I disturbed the dust on every box, pawing through the Crawley history, producing a stack of family letters and pictures but nothing from the army. I scooped what I’d found into a pile and took it downstairs with me.

  The basement was mine, but I checked it anyway, the faint smell of acid making me melancholy for the grandfather I had always trusted. I turned on the lights in the little photo lab he’d built, checked every nook and cranny, and found nothing there or in the rest of the basement, either.

  “Good luck, McCoy,” I said as I carried my stack of envelopes and pictures from the house. Good luck, Grandpa, echoed behind me.

  I deposited what I’d found in the passenger seat of my car. Where the German had sat. I slammed the door I should have rolled him out of.

  There was one more place to look—Grandpa’s garage. I entered and toured the perimeter, running my hands and fingers along the wall, checking boxes, cans, any sort of crevice I could find, as I inhaled the quiet scent of the man and touched what he seemed never to touch himself.

  “Why, Grandpa?” I whispered to the absence of him, that spot he’d been in but never filled. “Why is everyone attacking you?”

  I walked to his workbench and breathed in what was left of him. He had values. Values Emerson could stand on. Dietrich was a liar and Amabile was fiction, written long ago and far away in a place Grandpa had never been. I ran my hand along his seldom-used bench, touched the surface, his jars of screws, the few tools on the top, and the handles of each drawer.

  Hold on, and don’t let her go. That was Grandpa’s value. That was the sort of man he really was. He held on. He was telling Emerson to do the same.

  I ended with the drawer where his carved flowers were, the roses I’d left behind. I gave it a tug. It caught, then popped loose. Something hit the floor while the roses and tools rolled and scattered. I straightened Grandpa’s drawer, then bent to the floor. Papers lay there, not just papers, but envelopes, white and yellow, legal and large, all bordered by tape that had come loose. I knelt beside letters to and from the army, some old and some recent, and three bulky envelopes I’d seen before, all open. Each one trembled with the hand I slid inside. So did the books…the three small books I fished out…one Moliere and two—Amabile.

  Chapter 39

  A heart knows what a mind doesn’t. She knew, even though everything about him said he belonged to another world, that he didn’t. That erect posture that said service, that flush on his face that said energy and speed, that American boyishness that said stateside, all were hers and gifts to her. Foreign gifts he brought with him the next day.

  “You write?” he asked as he stood at her desk, his accent strong, his words slow, smiling at her and laying a finger on her stories. Stories she’d written for the Games. For the competitors, to entertain them in the evenings. Simple love stories at the bottom of the pile, something more radiant at the top. What she’d written almost overnight since meeting him.

  “Write, yes, but live, more.” She set a finger beside his, on the story she considered his. She said it in his language as best she could, then looked up into that blue-eyed smile and asked, “You run?”

  The flush that said health, the lightness of his hair that said vigor, answered for him, even more than the “I win” he stated as best he could in her language or the “Read to me” he said in his own tongue.

  “Win for me.”

  He smiled. “I already have.”

  I closed the book I’d closed once before. The same one I’d read in Grandpa’s bedroom while the army officers drilled him in the other room. The one Grandpa said he’d burned, but he hadn’t. Not this one and not the other one Grandma had received that day. Not Moliere, either, but his was inconsequential…to me at least, although maybe not to Grandma. I stared at Amabile’s books Grandpa had kept when he said they weren’t Grandma’s type.

  Grandpa was a good man…

  For her? Because of her. Because of which one?

  I slid the book aside on his workbench and stared at its cover as I scooted the other one in front of me. This one looked just as old, just as simple, a thin hard cover with faint ridges where something had been embossed long enough ago it was no longer visible. I could feel it with my fingertips, running them over the indentations and ridges, the title, and Amabile.

  The book creaked as I drew it open, yellowed pages fanning past with the same odor of dusty prose that permeated Non Bookends. These books looked like the sort Grandma would choose, but they weren’t. Oh, Grandpa. I thumbed toward the back and read what Amabile wrote.

  “There’s more,” he said. He laid within her fingers a small gift too dark to see. The lights of the village were behind them, the place where he and others like him stayed. She’d read for them, shared the heart of a German woman in her language while others translated to theirs, a harmony of voices and accents telling her and his love story in a thousand different tongues.

  They had clapped, a tidal wave of applause as each translator finished and the story was done. She flushed in the evening warmth, the heat of what she felt for him on their faces.

  “Come with me.” He’d taken her hand and whispered as in a myriad of languages the village asked for more
. He faded back and waited as she was told to read again. She did. Her voice solo at first, then others following, another symphony of love in a multitude of languages blanketing the night.

  “You inspire me,” he said when they were alone at last. He was so tall, his stride one step for every two of hers, his fingers so long they could have wrapped twice around hers. She laughed in the language they both understood. One that brought her into his arms and her face against his heart. It beat with the pace of a runner. Fast, strong, steady. She felt the breeze as he took the two of them away, felt the strength that held him straight and strong.

  He pressed his gift into her hand again. “Another thought,” he said, “the only way I can write it.”

  She lifted it close, ran her fingers over its wooden ridges and smoothed surfaces.

  “This one is for the thoughts I have of you that spill around in my head in your language. Words I don’t know, yet understand. I carve them there.” He pointed at the gift. “They come out the same every time. Amabile. My lily.”

  My heart raced more than her lover’s ever could. More than mine did when I trained with Frank or fought with Grandma. I stared across Grandpa’s bench, at the untouched tools, the stack of wood he let sit. Lily. Everything else he worked on, he worked to nothing, whittled it to dust.

  “You made this,” she said. She knew he had. He was an expert with his hands.

  “I will add it with the other to your mirror. There will be more. More thoughts, more lilies, more to share with you.”

  Her mirror. She thought of it hanging near her desk, a solitary lily attached at one corner. And now, another. And soon, more. More lilies, more thoughts, more stories for her to read to the athletes before they went. Except for him. He would stay until they could leave together. They saw it in the mirror. Both of them. Forever. A crown of lilies capping their love.

  Chapter 40

  Randall grinned. Dietrich’s journalistic accomplice had uncovered more information than the military attorneys had…than Dietrich had either. It was on Randall’s face, and he’d done it for a price, not the sort of price hacks asked for, such as a setup with a girl, or even a bottle of expensive liquor. Randall wanted to know why the hurry, why staying one step ahead of the military was so important to Dietrich, and he wanted all rights to everything he found for an exclusive, including Dietrich’s reasons. It was a gamble for both of them, but especially for Randall. That’s what drew the line between good journalists and bad. Good ones were willing to lose. The bad fabricated sensationalism to fill in for their losses.

  “Crawley was in Berlin.” Randall leaned back in his chair. The air was brisk, but they’d chosen an outdoor café far from Dietrich’s hotel, Non Bookends, Randall’s hangouts, and the little runner’s normal routine. The steam above their coffee cups vanished with the breeze, the hot black pleasure disappearing with it. The smoke from Randall’s cigarette did the same, the thick thread at its fiery tip dissipating instantly into a vapor no one could see.

  “When?” Dietrich asked. He did it casually, with the practiced mien that kept him from fidgeting with his cup. So Crawley really was there, likely as Marvin Shanks, possibly as Amabile’s “he.” But surely not as what the military said. If that was the case, Oma would no longer be innocent; she could be Germany’s enemy, and their enemy’s discarded lover. And the US would label her a spy. Dietrich wrapped both hands around his cup.

  One corner of Randall’s mouth kicked up as he wound the tip of his cigarette on an ashtray’s edge, skimming off burned residue, sharpening the flame the way Dietrich sharpened pencils. “August,” he said, focused on what he was doing. “Nineteen thirty-six.”

  Guilty. The time period of Amabile’s fickle runner, also possibly of America’s fickle soldier.

  Randall concentrated on the fiery ash and returned the cigarette to his mouth. Dietrich hated the stench of stale smoke that marked too many reporters’ clothes, cigarettes being common props most of them used. But fresh smoke, such as what escaped after Randall’s long drag, Dietrich craved. Smoking was also a thinking man’s habit. The sort that let facts and details fill the white cloud Dietrich watched vanish too quickly, and with it the words Randall was holding back—how he knew and how sure he was. It was part of the game, part of the win and lose. It could have been the same picture Dietrich had found, but likely more. Dietrich wouldn’t ask and Randall would never tell.

  “The man we saw in court isn’t designed for on-the-front-lines espionage.” Randall looked at Dietrich. “Crawley isn’t built to handle guilt. Not that kind.” Randall spoke into the air, his eyes and thoughts at work, his brilliant mind fitting broken fragments together. “Something else broke that man.” He balanced the cigarette on the ashtray’s edge and leaned back. “A woman.”

  Dietrich let go of his cup, avoiding any falter Randall would notice as he did. Randall was Dietrich’s closest competitor for journalistic skill around the world. Closest, and razor sharp, but not the same. A woman. Randall could be thinking a lover or a spy, or both. Dietrich stared at the cup, tapped a finger on its handle to keep from throwing it to the ground.

  “That girl you went off with doesn’t know anything.” Randall righted in his seat. “She’s got that unsteady look like someone far enough away from the epicenter of a quake they think it’s their fault they’re off kilter, too much caffeine or something.”

  Oma and now Cate. Randall was circling his prey. Dietrich wasn’t here to take care of Cate; there wouldn’t be enough time. He was here for Oma, his family, his reputation. Randall was doing his job, fast and thoroughly, as he was known for, and Dietrich needed. There’d be no distracting him and no thwarting the army if there was a woman tied to Crawley who was a spy. He wanted to curse; stop Randall and tell him to hurry all at the same time. “Crawley’s love life—if he had one—is incidental.” Dietrich leaned back in his chair. “Like I told you, I’m here on another lead I thought Crawley and some others may be tied to. I’ve talked to everyone else, but not him, and the army had him at the trial before I had a chance to. If he’s guilty of something big like this, that changes him as a resource. Der Spiegel is breathing down my neck, and I want to know his chances of being convicted. Fast. Skip any illicit lovers and his personal life. Help me get where the army’s going before they get there, and you get the story.” It was a lie, and it was the best he could do to divert Randall.

  Randall balanced what was left of his cigarette on the ashtray’s edge and fidgeted with it. He was thinking, but with that invisible awareness Randall had. He was scrutinizing Dietrich, watching him as he cleaned more ash from the tip and returned the stub to his lips. Oma wouldn’t escape Randall if she was there, either as a lover of Germany’s enemy or as a spy. Dietrich could read the growing story with each of Randall’s movements—a military crime, an illicit affair, or both.

  Dietrich wrapped both hands around his cup again and squeezed, gave a pretend shiver. Cate couldn’t handle someone like Randall either. “I know what you’re thinking. It would make things easier if the girl knew something about her grandfather’s military days. Or his private life,” Dietrich said. “She might be angry enough she’d spill some little hidden tidbit if we pushed. I already tried that, and there’s nothing there.”

  “Because she doesn’t like you.” Randall snorted, grinding out his cigarette. “She clearly doesn’t, but you’re right. People talk when they’ve got something in their craw, even if they don’t know what it is. Give it the right ignition, and out it comes. Tell her you love her.” Randall laughed. “I checked her out. She’s got a fiancé running for office. The news splash of an illicit affair that could cost him his election—that ought to make her spew something. Anything.”

  “More coffee?” The waitress was smart enough to bring two fresh cups rather than a pot to top off the ice-cold coffee they had. They both nodded and watched as she traded the fresh cups for the old, whisking away the paraphernalia Randall had littered the table with. They watched her retreat i
nside.

  “Pretty thing,” Randall said in the quiet.

  Dietrich stared at the closed door the waitress had gone through. He could have drawn her face, never missing a detail around him. But pretty? He hadn’t looked at the picture as a whole, only the details.

  “Parents moved across the city after family problems, takes pictures, helps out in her grandmother’s strange bookstore. Likes to run.” Randall tapped a finger on the table.

  Dietrich continued to stare at the door. He fought a blush at Randall’s sudden reiteration of Cate, defied the warmth crawling inside his collar at her name. Randall was watching for that flush. He was still fishing, and in Dietrich’s private pond.

  “The granddaughter’s irrelevant. And like you said, she’s off kilter. That fits with her knowing nothing when I asked. All I ask is that you keep to our original agreement—you find out what you can pertaining to the army case before they do.” Dietrich squeezed harder, the fresh hot cup burning his palms. He glanced across the table at his cohort and competitor.

  Every journalist knew that when you stirred the pot of a man’s crime, sludge came up. Randall was stirring, and Dietrich had to keep Oma from rising in the swirl…Cate, too. “Focus on the case before you go digging around in the dirt, so I can get done and head back to Germany.”

  “You’ll get what you want.” Randall grinned. “And so will I.”