Out of Splinters and Ashes

by Colleen L. Donnelly

  I looked at Grandma, who stared up at the mirror, then at Emerson. I nodded toward Non Bookends’ front.

  “Goodnight, Mrs. Crawley.” Emerson followed me. We wended our way through towers of novels, just like I’d been doing most of my life, except this time I took his hand and held it until we reached the front door.

  “I can’t go any further than this with you, Emerson. Not anymore.” I was Ibsen’s Nora, and I planted a kiss on his cheek and stepped back. Our fingers slid apart, my engagement ring left behind in his hand.

  Chapter 73

  Cate looked different in the subtle light. Dietrich stared across the table at her, studying a face that had begun as nothing more than a bookstore clerk and a woman too small to run.

  Lounge noises whispered around them—the tinkling of glass, hushed conversations, people Dietrich would have been logging every detail of…before. Before Monika, and now Cate. Other faces and other conversations became a muted background to the details of the little runner’s features, the graceful God-given contours framed by hair like Oma’s, and the terrified expression born of shock like his.

  She stared at the diminishing steam rising in the low light above her coffee cup. He twirled his cup of tea. Scotch might have done both of them a lot more good, but she had chosen a comfort drink instead of a comforting one. He did the same.

  “I have to know the truth,” she said at last. She looked up.

  He stared at the hand he wanted to reach across the table and hold. He wanted to give instead of take for a change. He should have read more of Erika Müller’s books instead of Amabile’s. Maybe then he’d know how.

  “I can’t believe I’m coming to you for the truth.” Her face scrunched. He was her enemy, no matter what. The conflict was undeniable, he’d upset her world. “I think I have all of the pieces, but then, I don’t.” She grasped her head with both hands, gazed at the table, then dropped her arms back into her lap. “I’ve fallen into one of Grandma’s stories, like in Carroll’s Through the Looking Glass, some strange world. It’s absurd. I don’t want to believe it, yet it seems more real than what I was living.”

  Dietrich settled back in the cushioned seat, glad they had chosen a private booth far from the din, the shallow but cultured din the hotel’s lounge offered. He wanted to be alone with this woman. He was as frightened of the truth as she was. But he was more frightened of the truth he felt hammering inside as he looked at her.

  “So tell me. Who are you?” She stared across the table at him.

  “I am Dietrich Schmidt, a journalist from Berlin. I am also grandson of Erika Schmidt, the well-known German author of romance while still Erika Müller, before she married my grandfather.” He toyed with the handle of his tea cup. “Also known as Amabile, I’m afraid, the name she used for the last stories she wrote.” Is writing…such as what he’d last left for Cate after the hearing.

  The enemy’s shock was evident as she pressed back in her seat. “And you were or are looking for Amabile’s runner…”

  “I was.”

  It was as if a ghost passed between them, taking the color from her face, the life from her body. “Because you found him…”

  Dietrich spun his cup, staring at its rotation. “I believe so.”

  Grandpa? The question never made it from her eyes to her mouth. He nodded, and they both sat in silence, cocooned by happy voices, suggestive tones, the cheer that came with sparkling glasses of alcohol.

  She had been his enemy too. He stared at her, at the runner he had come here to deny along with her grandfather. Enemies weren’t supposed to have souls, only lists of what they’d done and hadn’t done, so they could be written off—by his words, by his pen.

  “Are you sure?”

  He heard the tremor in her voice, the last thread of hope as it mingled with his memory of her grandfather’s sobs when Dietrich had spoken with him. I’m Dietrich Schmidt, grandson of Erika Müller, Dietrich had said when they let him into her grandfather’s quarters. The old man’s eyes sparked. A grasp at a lifeline like was in Cate’s now. Crawley nearly fell into his chair, trembling with every move. I’m a journalist in Berlin. Dietrich had been honest, to temper the shock he saw in the old man, the faint feeling of knowing, like Crawley’s wife had. Dietrich’s words, the realization of knowing, were nothing in the dawning surge of She’s alive! Dietrich had seen in the sobbing man’s eyes.

  “I don’t have a confession from him, if that’s what you want. Only concession. I wouldn’t write an article based on concession, as a journalist. But if I were a novelist…”

  A waitress appeared with fresh coffee and a new cup of hot water graced with an unopened tea bag at its side.

  “Thank you,” Dietrich said, and the young woman nodded and left.

  “When? How?” Cate asked.

  “The Olympics. Hitler’s Olympics.” Dietrich had shown Crawley the copy of the photo of him with the team, the only photo out there, as far as he knew. There was probably a copy in Randall’s hands, also. Randall was too keen to let any detail escape. He looked at the world through a microscope.

  “He ran in the Olympics? My grandfather?” Awe, a little pride, cut through the horror on Cate’s face. He felt the energy jump to her legs—the little runner, the Olympic medalist she was related to. Evidently the two had never met, even though they’d lived near each other all of her life.

  “And medaled. Bronze.”

  “Are you sure?”

  Dietrich had intentionally left all of the hard evidence in his room. Cate was too brittle to withstand a hammering of truth. “I don’t know the whole story…” Yet. “But I saw a photo. It’s him. With the team.”

  Cate fell back farther into her seat. He could see the facts spinning in her head. If Crawley was in the Olympics, then he was in Berlin…which meant he maybe wasn’t in Poland the way they’d been told…it meant someone was lying. About something.

  “But his scars…his leg…” She was jumping through the evidence, looking for the lie that would make all of this go away. “He was seen and injured in Poland. Isn’t that harder evidence than a novel and a grainy old photo?”

  “I haven’t looked into your grandfather’s whole military history.” He kicked himself mentally. He had slipped so far from who he used to be. Randall would never have beaten him to any conclusions if Dietrich hadn’t become emotionally involved. The edge that made him the best reporter in Germany felt soft around the perimeter. “If he was in Berlin, then he could still be innocent, at least based on what evidence they have. He could have just handed the Germans the list if he was there, since his looks favored their ideal.”

  Cate’s eyes widened. “I knew it! I just knew it. Why he doesn’t just tell…” It was easy to see the truth dawning in her brown eyes. Evidence that had been conjecture was cementing fast. “Grandma…” she whispered to the table. She looked up. “For her. Because of her. Because he didn’t love my grandmother…”

  Dietrich shook his head, a nod of sorts. A marriage of bodies, but not of hearts. Like Oma’s must have been. He sank back farther into his seat. He hadn’t wanted someone stealing Oma’s heart, then running away. Even with her recent story where her lover came back after the explosion, it would have been more satisfying to believe it was to salvage the mirror. But it wasn’t. Crawley’s tears had told Dietrich that was wrong, even though the evidence hung on the wall of his wife’s store.

  Dietrich leaned forward, resting his elbows on the table. “You won’t see me for a while.”

  She stared at him. He peered at and through her expression, hoping for what he wasn’t sure he could see. He couldn’t think around her any more than she could around him. He couldn’t see the heart of Crawley because of the man’s granddaughter. And Cate couldn’t see her true grandfather while an enemy remained nearby to blame.

  “You’re leaving?”

  Dietrich stood, extended a hand her way. She gazed at it, kept a steady stare on it as he wrapped her fingers in his. The warmth of her
skin felt alive. He’d imagined what this would be like. He pressed her hand and helped her to her feet.

  “I have work to do,” he said to the face staring up at him. Without her distraction and with his rival—Randall.

  The unsteady look she gave him was a goodbye. His feet remained beside the table as his heart and his promises followed her out the door.

  Chapter 74

  “Are you sure, Grandma?” I glanced to my right at Grandma—rigid, fixed on the road ahead, the mirror in the backseat behind us. I took her silence as the best “yes” she would give me and kept driving. To see her husband for the first time, right before the final hearing, with the one thing that could prove one of the crimes he might have committed.

  Whatever they decide felt right—they, not Grandma. “Are you sure you don’t want me to tell you the evidence so far?”

  She shook her head. “That’s none of my concern. Just drive.”

  She didn’t flinch at the sterility of the army compound, merely extracted the mirror from the car and marched alongside me into the square building. Our footsteps echoed in the tomblike hallway, announcing a new regiment was approaching, fast.

  “Private Crawley, please.” I showed my ID and Grandma’s, her hands full with the mirror. A nod was our answer, and a young officer stepped up to escort us to Grandpa’s room.

  “You have visitors.” The officer knocked, opened the door, and entered. “Family.” He stepped back out and looked down at us. “You can go in. Keep it short.” He indicated the watch on his wrist.

  I wanted to run—run the other way, and run far without stopping. I couldn’t watch the final dissolution of my grandparents, the conviction of my grandfather by army and family. I couldn’t watch Grandma exact vengeance on the man who had brought war and the wrong kind of love to her door her whole adult life.

  I entered ahead of her, giving her one last chance to change her mind and leave the mirror in the hall outside the door. “Grandpa? It’s me.” I saw the lean, bent form in the shadows arching forward, his weight supported by the cane. “And Grandma.” The form straightened. I tried to stay between them, but Grandma was impossible to stop. She charged around me, into the room, flipping on a light as she did.

  “You can go now,” she barked at the soldier still holding the door. “This won’t take long.”

  He nodded at Grandpa, then shut us in, us and the mirror.

  I saw Amabile’s story all over again as Grandpa spotted the mirror, the deep-down flicker I’d noticed before, but brighter now. Grandma and I disappeared as time took him backwards, his face transforming from old and haggard to young and alive—then to terrified, and lastly to nothing, except guilt. Grandma didn’t raise the mirror as I expected her to, and shake it in his face. She let it hang in front of her, between them, the charred frame and lone lily all he could see.

  I stared at the trembling finger that stretched and touched the blackened wood, scars this man probably deserved exposed at the cuff of his sleeve.

  “I believe this is yours.” Grandma’s voice was low. I’d never seen them this close together before, never seen them face each other. But I’d seen the mirror between them forever without knowing it was there.

  Grandpa withdrew his finger, leaned into the cane, and took a step back, his eyes never leaving the mirror. “I’m sorry, Mavis.”

  “Sorry. Not so sorry, I suppose, you’d like to look in it.” She didn’t lift it so he could.

  He did want to. Even I could see that. The youthful passion flowered for a moment. He shook his head. “No.” He stared down at the frame the way I would a coffin being lowered into the ground, a racking goodbye over the scream for resurrection. He hobbled a step back, then dropped into a chair, the cane landing in his lap.

  Grandma’s chest swelled and collapsed, in and out as she stared down at the man—her husband—hatred filling the room, a hatred so powerful no book, no crusade, no character’s similar plight could make up for it or make it better. I braced myself, ready to snatch the mirror if she lifted it to smash over his head.

  “How did you get it, Mavis?” he asked.

  I watched Grandma’s chest. In and out. In and out. “It came in the mail,” she said, her chin high.

  “The mail?” Grandpa looked up, the blue of his eyes bluer. “When? How? Who?”

  “It came from Germany, years ago, when our daughter was tiny.”

  “Not McCoy.” He shook his head. “And that young man really was…and she is…and there really is…” Color surged through his skin.

  “Then you know who. He was almost who I expected.” Grandma stared at Grandpa, surely seeing the same thing I did but hating it. With one last heave of wind, she marched the mirror to the door and leaned it against the wall, its back to us, so no one in the room could see what we all saw anyway. Grandma came and stood beside me, both of us watching Grandpa evolve before our eyes.

  Everything he might have seen in the mirror, or maybe did at one time, flashed across his face. The past was there, the explosive rebirth igniting him from within. “Anything with it?” He looked up at his wife.

  Grandma snorted, loud enough even the guard should have heard it from outside our door. The purse that had been dangling by its handle from her wrist was in both hands now, clutched against her like a life support. Grandpa evolved, while she devolved, the two of them spiraling through a silent journey of hatred. And love.

  “Nothing,” Grandma whispered at last. “Let’s go, Cate.”

  Grandma didn’t let go of her purse, so I grasped the mirror’s charred frame and followed her through the door. Grandpa said nothing as we did. He left us to our brittle march back to the car, Grandma’s shoulders drooping lower as we went.

  I laid the mirror in the trunk, instead of the back seat, and slammed the lid shut. “You all right?” I came around the car to where she leaned against her door. It was a stupid question, following a war she’d been right in all along. She bore the scars of that battle, many from me.

  “McCoy…” The hardness she was warranted in her eyes became glassy, shiny enough my reflection swam there.

  “The enemy, in my opinion. Grandpa’s commanding officer. He brought these charges.” Preferred them. Over charges against himself. One set of charges Grandpa may still be innocent of. Maybe…

  The sheen in Grandma’s eyes deepened.

  “We don’t have to stay for the hearing. We can go.” I put a hand on my grandmother, seeing and feeling the hot and the cold of a woman who had finally confronted her enemy. A strong woman made weak.

  She released the clutch hold she had on her purse and fished around inside it. Gray and white came out, a neatly folded square she balled in her fist as she snapped her purse shut. “Let’s go back in,” she said. Grandma was armed for anything…even tears.

  ****

  We slipped into a courtroom of faces familiar to me but strangers to her. The seats where Miles or Emerson would have sat were empty, freed now from us, their enemies, to stand on values of their own. I trailed Grandma past them down the aisle, letting her choose where we would sit—new seats, unmarked with memories of a fiancé who hadn’t cared and his emissary who cared even less.

  Randall’s nod was more of a smirk as I stole a glance where Dietrich always sat—had sat. I turned my back on the leer and on Dietrich’s empty seat.

  Grandma and I sat without speaking, her stony coldness and my rock hardness impermeable to the hushed voices and footsteps moving behind and around us, to the opening and closing of the courtroom door. Yet I listened for him amongst them—my enemy. While we watched for the one who had destroyed the woman beside me.

  The room quieted as Grandpa was led in and then McCoy from the opposite side of the front. Neither looked at the other, and neither looked at us. With minimal formality, McCoy’s attorney presented his final argument on why my grandfather was a traitor, filling in as best he could around the lack of real evidence. Grandpa’s attorney capitalized on that lack when he finally stood,
turning Grandma’s knuckles white as she clamped down on the wad she’d pulled from her purse with one hand and her purse’s handle with the other. The white spread as Grandpa’s attorney mentioned the missing list over and over. I glanced to my side, a half glance at Grandma’s profile, at the war on her face, the lift of her chin, the set of her jaw, and her fists holding on.

  “Do you need a better handkerchief?” I whispered, nodding at the off-white crumpled in her fist. It looked worn, for someone who never cried. She glanced down at her hand.

  As suddenly as they had started, they were done. We looked up to Grandpa being led to the left through a door and McCoy to the right. I stared at the empty area in front of us that waited for a decision, shutting out the sounds around and behind me, refusing to hope for a German accent, German footsteps. Refusing to cry like I wanted.

  “Soooo…” Stale cigarette smoke filled the air as Randall’s face appeared from behind Grandma, at her far side. I nudged her with a warning elbow, pinched her sleeve, and leaned the two of us out of the smoker’s encroachment. “ ‘I’ll be a father to him and he will be a son to me, unless he breaks the laws of man…then he will undergo man’s punishment…’ Man’s more likely harsher than God’s, don’t you think?”

  I peered around Grandma and wished spitting was acceptable as I glared at Randall. “You read the Bible?” I gripped Grandma’s arm.

  “Well read, well written.” His smile morphed once again into a smirk. “I’m good at my job, so let’s pray this judge is good at his.”

  “I doubt you ever pray.” I leaned back in my seat. I held tight to Grandma and stared straight ahead. At nothing, at where the judge would eventually appear. I hated Randall. Hated the images he was creating in my head. Maybe I hated all reporters and journalists.

  “I mean, without tangible evidence, a judge who tripped over his dog this morning, burnt his mouth on hot coffee, or argued with his wife might come back with any sort of retaliation…I mean judgment. Harsher than warranted.”