Out of Splinters and Ashes

by Colleen L. Donnelly

  “Looks like a simple fix. I can have it sturdied and back on the wall before she returns.” The mirror was old, it was burned, and it wobbled with the tremor of his hands when Dietrich ran them behind the bottom as he lifted it off its nail.

  Chapter 47

  The fifth lily, the one he placed on the mirror’s left side beneath the first and third, changed what they saw in the mirror’s glass. No more of the past, no more of the present, but more of the future. A place unknown to either of them, they knew it was home as their hands locked and they saw themselves standing in its midst. It was an ethereal home, unlike any place she’d ever imagined, one woven by dreams, where all was perfect and love never faded.

  “Yes,” he said, as he stood beside her, gazing into the glass. “That is how we should be, how I imagined us to be.” And as he turned her direction and looked down at her, his face in the glass stayed the same, peering out at her with a promise—he’d always be with her, just as she saw in their reflections.

  The fifth lily. I stared at the two photographs I’d developed from Non Bookends, Grandpa’s basement closing around me as I did. That lump on the charred frame was on the left, beneath what looked like two dark holes. I let the picture fall to my lap. Surely this was a dream. A nightmare Dietrich had brought.

  Maybe I had been running too much. No, that couldn’t be. I hadn’t been running at all lately. Maybe I’d fainted while running and I was lying in a hospital somewhere unable to wake up. I pinched myself. I pinched hard, wringing the skin until it flared red. This wasn’t a dream. And it was worse than a nightmare.

  I closed the door to my developing lab and carried my photos and Amabile’s book upstairs. I went to Grandpa’s phone and called Emerson’s office.

  “Any news?” I asked when his secretary put me through. Emerson paused on the other end, and in the quiet I imagined that readied look he always had—that I needed him to have. Please, God, please don’t let Emerson let me down.

  “Catharine…” He was tapping: I heard it in the dead air space. “Yes, there is some news.”

  “What is it?” I tapped my foot, trying to catch his rhythm.

  “Miles found out Mr. Crawley…I mean your grandfather…is being kept there. The investigative stage is done and probable cause is being established. Then the trial. Your grandfather won’t be allowed to leave…for an unspecified amount of time.”

  I felt what Emerson wasn’t saying. Your grandfather won’t be here to walk you down the aisle. Your grandfather can’t possibly walk you down the aisle after this because of the tainting and guilt…we can’t allow that. I can’t tout a hero who really wasn’t one.

  “Can he have visitors?”

  There was a pause again. “He can. It’s not like being held in a prison; he’s just being held there for the hearings.”

  I wanted to laugh, explode with a brief ecstatic moment I desperately needed. Something Grandpa would need also. “Will you go with me?” Please…

  The tapping increased, the bounce of a solitary pencil on Emerson’s desk. “I can’t…you know I have obligations…a packed schedule of appearances. Miles represented me to your grandfather, though. He gave him my best.”

  The silence was mine, this time. My tapping stopped. “Miles went there?”

  “Of course. Miles is very thorough. He does his job well, and he spoke with your grandfather kindly and encouragingly. Thanking Miles would be the appropriate thing for you to do.”

  I tried to grasp what I would thank Miles for.

  “Catharine…you’re not really thinking about going, are you?”

  “Of course I am.” Not my best voice.

  “Listen, Catharine, this is about us and my career. As well as your grandfather, of course. But his choices could affect us…”

  I glanced down at the pictures still in my hand. At choices someone made and hung on Non Bookends’ wall. That someone couldn’t be my grandfather. He didn’t live by fiction, and he never went in Grandma’s store. “I have to go see him, Emerson. If you don’t, that’s your choice.”

  Chapter 48

  “Well, so there you are.” Frank straddled his bicycle on the sidewalk in front of my apartment. “You don’t look dressed for running.”

  “I’m sorry. I can’t run now. I’m on my way to…” I was running. But to my grandfather, just like I always had. The sort of run that wore me out more than five miles did. “I have something to do.”

  “The marathon’s almost here, you know. Twenty-plus miles is a long run.”

  The photo display was due shortly after. I tossed my purse into my car and stood in its opened door while Frank bent forward and rested his elbows on his handlebars.

  “I’ll be ready.”

  “You’re good, Cate, but you’ve got to work hard if you want to win.”

  “Frank, I’ve told you a thousand times I’m not running to win. I run to run.” And the farther, the better.

  “If you want to run well, run to win. If you don’t have a goal, you’ll just pound the pavement.” Frank straightened on his bicycle, legs angled to the sides, his weight leaning back on the seat. He glanced over his shoulder as a rhythm kicked up in the distance, a blur of movement I followed his gaze to see. The dark blur became larger, taller and lither, as it advanced our way. The rhythm had a cadence, a beat that hailed the approach of a winner.

  “Cate! Hello!” Jill circled around her husband, long legs slowing, arms pumping and close to her sides like they should be. A ponytail swung behind her head. Jill’s runs were frolics, happy prances to a finish line instead of frantic hammering escapes. Looking at her was like looking at high school again. From behind, when I’d seen her back sailing over the finish line ahead of me.

  “What are you doing?” I closed the door on my purse and marched to the sidewalk.

  I could hear the rhythm of her feet. Tap-tap-tap, faster than I could think. “Running.” She grinned. “Training.”

  “With your husband?”

  “I never thought training with him was necessary, or a good idea. Until now.” She smiled at Frank. “He wins if I win.”

  “You can run along with us.” Frank grasped his handlebars, his fingers splaying and unsplaying over the brakes.

  “I can’t.” I wouldn’t. I’d never run against Jill again unless I actually wanted to win, and that included their idea of casually running with her. “I have to be somewhere.”

  Jill continued to bounce in place, prancing like a racehorse, ponytail whipping behind her. “See you at the start line, then?” She smiled. I knew what she meant. At the start but not at the finish line when she crossed it well ahead of me.

  I walked back to my car, keeping the run out of my steps, Jill’s Let’s go, and Frank’s Right behind you, making me want to vomit. Frank knew I needed that marathon for reasons of my own, and I didn’t need their imposed finish line choking those reasons. Jill should have known I’d never run it with her there. They were supposed to be my friends. Friends were supposed to love. Enemies were to hate.

  ****

  Grandpa wasn’t being kept in a cell, just like Emerson had said, but he was staying in some army-quality living quarters, everything about the building shouting “military” with its starkness, invisible colors, and straight lines. Grandpa could die of boredom in there.

  “Grandpa?” I tapped at his door, barely feeling the tenuous attempt. “It’s me, Cate.” I listened for his stilted step. “You there, Grandpa?”

  The door eased open, a sallow eye appearing at its edge. “Cate? Why are you here?”

  “Let me in, Grandpa. I’m here to see you.”

  He hesitated, Is she with you? in the eye that peered behind me. “Not the best time for a visit.”

  “Just let me in. Please.” I stared at the eye and the door until the eye disappeared and the door eased open, a gaunt, bent Grandpa behind it. “Thank you.”

  I entered a room just as sterile as the rest of the building—square everything, no rounded edges, no soft
corners.

  A solitary cup sat on the lone coffee table near a worn chair, a fine ring inside like a start line above where the drink was evaporating.

  “What’s going on, Grandpa?” I turned to a long thin arm braced on a cane, his other indicating the only other seat in the room. I wiped a hand across the sofa’s worn cushion and sat.

  “Tea or coffee?” Grandpa asked.

  “Grandpa…”

  He angled himself in front of the chair and eased, almost fell, into the seat, so unsteady and halted I was sure he couldn’t get up.

  “Why are they doing this to you, Grandpa?”

  “I’m accused of trying to leak US information to the Germans. Before the war.”

  “Did you?”

  He stared at his knees, legs so thin he could have fit both into one side of his trousers. “All that matters is what the judge decides.”

  “What does that mean? The truth is what matters.”

  Grandpa looked at me then. “It does,” he said, and started to say more, but stopped and stared at his knees.

  “I’m coming for the hearing, and nothing you or the army says can stop me. I’m family. And I’ll do whatever it takes to see you walk away from this, free and clear.” My tone was rangy, my words quick and sharp in the bare box of a room. “You must have something, some sort of proof you’re innocent.”

  I kept nothing from my military days. It bothered my wife. I tried not to think about the mirror, its charred lily, the whole one I’d found in his workbench drawer. “Something, Grandpa. Anything…” The same thing Dietrich had asked from me. Except he didn’t care.

  Grandpa shook his head, the travel of his gaze from his knees to the wall in front of him giving me hope he was pondering anything there could be. Could have been. Anywhere. The slow wag of his head told me he had come up with nothing. Or maybe he hadn’t tried.

  “You have nothing left from your service days that might help? Even a friend who could vouch for you? Any proof you were never in Germany?”

  “What I have left of the service is in plain sight.”

  I stared at him, at the fragments left from a military man. At the scars peering from the cuffs of his sleeves, at the cane he kept a hand on.

  “What happened, Grandpa? I want to hear it from you.”

  He ran a hand down the leg of his pants, wrapping long fingers around what little there was of what had been broken. “Fire. Everything that mattered got burned.”

  Burned, like his arms, like everything else he’d gotten rid of…or nearly got rid of. Burned like the mirror in Non Bookends—and all of the lies if Grandpa was never in Berlin. “And your leg?”

  “An accident,” he said, letting go of it and straightening.

  “Why has Grandma been so angry all these years?”

  The answer to my question never made it to his mouth, not in an argument or an agreement. He was letting her choices stand…like the judge’s. I came to my feet, bringing my purse with me. I stared at him, at the back of his head as he studied his lap. “Grandpa, if you won’t explain thoroughly, how can anyone know what’s true? How can anyone help you?”

  “ ‘Not to the swift, the race; not to the strong, the fight; not to the righteous, perfect grace; not to the wise, the light.’ ”

  He sounded like Dietrich. And like Grandma.

  “I’m fed up with hiding behind other people’s words.” I slung my purse over my shoulder. “Grandpa, tell me this…were you a runner?”

  “I wasn’t fast enough.” So I’d heard.

  Chapter 49

  The mirror’s charred frame and ragged silver ran through Dietrich’s mind. Cleaner than expected as he’d pretended to sturdy it before returning it to the wall. He twirled the note on his hotel suite’s table that Randall had left for him. “Trial at 1:00 p.m. Thursday.” Tomorrow.

  “Hello, Oma.” He hid his relief when she answered. This was his third call, Oma not answering the first two, sending his thoughts running their own race at what may have happened to her, whether Monika had visited Oma, or whether Oma may be on a plane heading to New York.

  He fished the burned lily that matched the one on the mirror from his pocket, set it on top of Randall’s note, and spun both.

  “No, Oma. I haven’t had time to check flights. I won’t be here that long anyway. How about Spain? It is beautiful. Warmer right now than here. We can go there as soon as I return.” Since he’d likely be jobless by then anyway.

  His grandmother had never asked for anything. Never argued or put up a fuss. He spun the lily harder, sending it near the table’s edge. The last place she needed to be was in New York near a trial suggesting a young German woman loved an enemy, or worse, was a spy.

  “I’ve decided to start writing again.” Oma was coming here after all, but through her words. Curses stirred inside, English curses. They sounded uglier than the profanities he’d grown up with.

  He glanced across the bed to the other side of the room, at the table and lamp where he kept Amabile’s books.

  “What sort of story?” He stared at their dark covers, simple wrappings around stories that needed to end. Please say “silly romantic tales that couldn’t possibly be true.”

  “The words aren’t strung together yet. But I feel them.”

  “Erika Müller has returned?”

  She said nothing. He strained to hear Amabile in her silence.

  “I will edit for you. Proofread. As soon as I get back. We’ll do it on the beach in Spain.”

  There was almost a laugh on her end. “You are a masterful writer, courageous for truth, but you lack the sort of heart it would take to edit what I say. You write marvelously what you know in your mind. I write what I know from my soul. Beneath every great and even darkened mind there beats a heart. What the mind can’t unravel, my stories sometimes can.”

  He touched his face. It felt cool, likely pale. Someone’s stories had done enough; for Oma’s sake, he couldn’t allow more. “I will be home soon. We can go to Spain immediately. You can write there.” Away from Monika, away from Amabile, away from the army, and away from enemies who never should have been loved, even on a page.

  Oma wished him safe travels. He could hear her heart even in her simple goodbye.

  His hand touched hers in the glass. The marred and ruined visage of a mirror nearly destroyed didn’t take away the truth. Their hands still touched in the broken reflection. His and hers. Touched. Clasped. Pressed together until they were both there in what remained of the mirror. Together in an embrace that would never end.

  The words roiled in his gut.

  He stared at the charred flower. It could have been the one on the mirror. The mirror he’d seen two hands in, in the brief moment he’d looked into it. Hands that clasped and drew close, bringing him and her together where he could see them—Oma’s and another’s…then Dietrich’s and…surely not.

  Chapter 50

  “Come with me.” I’d stopped in Non Bookends before it opened. “Grandpa needs you.” I needed her. I needed one of my grandparents to admit out loud any awful things that may have happened so we could face them together and make everything okay. “The trial begins at one. I want to be there early so we can get in and get close.” Maybe even talk to Grandpa, but I wouldn’t say that. “Okay, far. Not close,” I conceded to her pallor.

  Grandma looked too white in the dim light of her home-away-from-home. Noise came from the small aluminum percolator, calling her attention to the tiny stove. Gray hair hung down long on her back, strands catching on what was left of the rows and tufts striping her old chenille robe as she lessened the heat under her coffee.

  “I keep telling myself to get one of those newfangled coffeepots to set out in the store—for my customers—cream, sugar, and prose. That’s how coffee is best served.” She poured a cup for herself and one for me. I stood from her cot where I’d been sitting and went to the small dinette that seated two.

  “Thank you, Grandma.” I sat on the vinyl seat and wra
pped my hands around the cup, squeezing it, sending warmth to her bleached complexion.

  She sat in the chair opposite me, her hands in her lap, staring at the steam collecting above her cup. I could see the war inside—like the war in her books, except personal…close, hand-to-hand. “I won’t go.”

  I took a sip, the coffee searing my lip, but I didn’t flinch. I was still going. For her maybe even more than for him. I stood, took my cup to her single sink and washed it, then set it to dry. Picking up my purse, I stopped at the edge of her table, speaking the only language she had ever spoken to me. “ ‘How many times did it thunder before Franklin took the hint? How many apples fell on Newton’s head before he took the hint? Nature is always hinting at us. It hints over and over again. And suddenly we take the hint.’ ”

  “Frost.” Grandma didn’t look up. I squeezed leftover coffee warmth into her shoulder and left.

  Chapter 51

  Verdammt. Dietrich’s language. I mouthed the curse as I was escorted past him and that nasty American reporter friend of his, to the front of the hearing room where Grandpa would be. Dietrich caught my eye. Verdammt, I mouthed the German vulgarity again, the soldier escorting me glancing down, a reminder to behave as Grandpa’s sole support.

  I settled alone into a row, the seat hard and cold, its back straight and uncomfortable. An enormous clock at the front of the room ticked time from past to future, from here to there, the way my hammering feet had tried to drag my grandparents for years. A door opened and army officers filed in from the right, three of them, McCoy stolid in the middle.

  “Sorry, I’m a little late.”

  An expensive aroma swirled in the air as I whirled to the side. “Miles?”

  “I meant to be here earlier. I just couldn’t get free.”

  I glanced behind him, hoping…

  “If you are looking for Emerson”—Miles’ aroma came close, his head tipping my way—“he sends you his love and support and is sorry he couldn’t make it. He’s very busy.”