“This was after they transferred me from the research facility. Maybe they thought the men would be easier to deal with than the women.”
“Sick bastards,” Zoe muttered. “You remembered his name, so he must have made an impression on you.”
Eva looked at Zoe. “I remember everything about that place, at least the times I wasn’t drugged.”
“Is this hurting you?”
“No. You want to know,” Eva replied. “Karl was a nice man.”
“What did he look like?”
“Um, he was tall, and very strong, since he did pick me up a few times. He had blue eyes and wore really thick glasses. He reminded me a little of Kaiser Wilhelm II.”
“Was he old?”
Eva looked at Zoe with a smile. “No, love, he wasn’t old. He had a beard with a moustache that curled at the side like Wilhelm II’s.”
“Wow, that is a very clear memory.”
“Hmm. He was very gentle with me.”
“Sounds like a nice man. What else do you remember about him?”
“He was married,” Eva said, staring at the ceiling. “I think, because I remember he had a wedding ring around his neck. When I was stronger, Karl would take me out into the garden and that’s how I met Erik.”
“THE Erik?”
Eva smiled. “Yes, that Erik.”
“So that’s how you met Erik. I wondered how you met him. I thought your uncle had introduced you.”
“Dieter did make the introductions after he gave Karl the go-ahead to take me out. Erik was a doctor in the main hospital.”
“He didn’t touch you, did he?”
Eva frowned. “Who? You mean the nurse? He had to touch me; he was my nurse.”
“No, I meant in other ways.”
“Oh,” Eva exclaimed. “No. He did kiss me on the cheek once. He must have thought I was asleep and he kissed me and said ‘stay strong,’ or I may have dreamed it. I don’t know.”
“Sounds like Karl cared about you.”
“I don’t know why, but he did care,” Eva said quietly.
“Evy.” Zoe took a deep breath. “There’s something I need to tell you about Karl.”
“How do you know about Karl?”
“Your cousin Thomas was Karl.”
Eva blinked. She opened her mouth and then shut it. “What?”
“That’s who I met last night.”
“No, can’t be,” Eva said. “No.”
“Yes, it is. Aunty Tessa told me. They wanted to introduce you to him after they revealed who he was, but Thomas came early and everything went to hell.”
“Oh. Are you sure?”
“Yes.”
“How? I mean, how was he there?”
“Tessa wants to come in and explain, alright?”
Eva nodded. “Oh.”
“First, let’s get you sitting up. I’ll get you a shirt and then I’ll call Tessa. After that I’ll give you a bath so you won’t stink.”
“Zoe?”
“Yes, love?”
“I have a cousin?”
“Yes.” Zoe smiled. “He looks exactly like you. Once I stopped wanting to kill him, I got a good look at him.”
“He looks like me?”
“Yes.” Zoe grinned. “Tall, dark hair, light blue eyes. You have the same smile, the little I saw of it. He doesn’t have a beard or a funny moustache like Wilhelm.”
“Oh.”
“And,” Zoe tweaked Eva’s chin, “he has a dimpled chin just like you. Very sexy on you but not on him. I don’t like boys with dimpled chins.”
“You don’t like boys.”
“Exactly. I love my girl that has a dimpled chin. It looks sexy on you.” Zoe said and smiled at Eva who was shaking her head.
Chapter Seven
“Comfortable?” Zoe asked.
Eva wore a light cotton shirt and was propped up in bed, her back braced by the mountains of pillows Zoe had managed to locate.
“Yes,” Eva said quietly.
Zoe knew exactly what Eva was doing. It was what Eva always did when presented with something that was out of her control. She retreated into herself. Zoe sat down as Eva played with the bedspread.
Zoe placed her fingers under Eva’s chin and tilted her head up. “These people won’t hurt you. They are your blood. Tessa is as close as you are going to get to having your mother beside you. Don’t push them aside.”
“Everything just feels like it’s spinning out of control.”
“I know.” Zoe cupped Eva’s cheek. “You have been feeling that way since we saw the vision on the ship. We know what it was now, so there’s another mystery solved. We know that your Aunt Tessa loves you, so that’s not something you need to fear.”
Eva shrugged. “I know I’m impossible some days.”
Zoe smiled. “No, you’re not impossible. It’s just when you are not feeling well, you are grumpy.”
“My back hurts and I’m just feeling sorry for myself.”
“You do not make a good patient,” Zoe gently teased. “I trust these people, Evy.”
“You do?”
“Yes. Even though they withhold information, I do trust them. Give them a chance to explain.”
“Alright.” Eva nodded.
Zoe took Eva’s hand and kissed it. “Be right back.”
She left the room and closed the door. She stood outside for a long moment and exhaled.
“Right.” Zoe made her way to the kitchen, where Tessa was sitting and sipping a cup of tea.
Tessa and Zoe entered the room to find Eva where Zoe had left her and looking a little annoyed with herself.
“What’s wrong?” Zoe asked.
“I have an itch between my shoulder blades,” Eva said.
“Did you try and scratch it with the pillows?” Zoe asked as she looked around. “Is that why half the pillows are on the floor?” She picked them up and laid them on the bed. She gently pushed Eva forward a little and scratched between her shoulder blades. “That better?”
“Yes.” Eva looked up at Zoe with a wry smile. “Thanks.”
Tessa smiled at their interaction. Zoe’s tender and very careful handling of Eva was intuitive. She didn’t make Eva feel like she had to hide anything, even something as simple as an itch. The dynamic was interesting to watch.
Tessa sat down on the bed and waited. “Well, that was quite an evening’s entertainment.”
“I’m sorry.”
“What for, darling? It wasn’t your fault. The only thing you could have done better was turn on the light.”
“Didn’t want to wake you. You had the door open.”
Tessa chuckled. “Oh goodness, no, I’m a light sleeper, but a little light wouldn’t wake me, and Stella would need an atom bomb to fall before she wakes.”
“How’s... um... ”
“You don’t know what to call him, right? His name is Thomas Karl Stiegler Lambros. His father’s name was Karl Stiegler.”
“He really is half German?”
“Yes.” Tessa nodded. “My son’s father was German.”
“I thought you were... um...” Zoe looked embarrassed.
“You mean a lesbian?”
“Yes.”
“Yes, I am a lesbian, but Stella isn’t.”
“Stella isn’t?”
Tessa looked at Zoe. “Zoe, darling, Stella loves the person’s heart, their soul. It doesn’t matter to her if they are male or female. She married Timothy because she loved his heart and soul. I fell in love with Stella because she was the only person for me.”
“Does that mean if a man came along, Aunty Stella would leave you?”
Eva looked like she was about to answer, but Tessa put her hand on her knee. “Let me ask you a question. Do you love Eva because she is a woman, or do you love Eva because of her heart?”
“Not just her heart,” Zoe quickly said. “I fell in love with the person she is.”
“Does it matter that she’s a woman?”
“Um.�
� Zoe looked at Eva, who was smiling at her. “Yes. I don’t feel that way with men, not that I’ve had a lot to do with men that way, but if I did I don’t think I would, maybe I never really...”
Tessa and Eva smiled.
Tessa touched Zoe’s arm. “Zoe, darling, there is no right answer or wrong answer.”
“There isn’t?”
“No. You love Eva because she is a woman and because you are attracted to her.”
“Yes.”
“I love Zoe because she is a woman.” Eva grinned. “All woman,” she added, making Zoe blush.
“Everyone is different. There is no right way or wrong way to love. You just do. I found myself having feelings for Stella when I didn’t know I could feel that way about a woman.”
“That must have been confusing.”
“Were you confused?” Tessa asked Zoe.
“Oh, yeah,” Eva answered for Zoe. “She was stealing looks when she thought I wasn’t looking.”
“Eva Theresa!” Zoe gave Eva an outraged glare.
Tessa chuckled. “It’s alright, sweetie. The first time is always the hardest. You’re not sure if you are coming or going.”
“How did you tell Aunty Stella?”
“Aren’t we supposed to be talking about my son?”
“Yes.” Eva nodded. “But I want to hear this story too.”
“Alright. It was my eighteenth birthday, and Stella wanted to make it special because she was leaving the next day and I was also going to have surgery to make the visions stop.”
“They can do that?”
“No, they can’t, but by that stage we had tried everything and they were going to do experimental surgery on me to see if they could make them stop. Stella was against this surgery and thought it would do more damage than good, but she wasn’t a senior doctor and her opinion was ignored,” Tessa replied. “She wanted me to have one last day of being me and her rotation was going to end, so she somehow arranged with the porter at the desk to take me out when things were a little quiet.”
“Ooh, that was naughty.”
“It was, and the porter would have been sacked had we been found out. He let Stella take me out, and we went into the gardens. Someone had left the asylum gate unlocked. I suspect it was Stella who arranged that, but she won’t admit to it.” Tessa grinned. “Stella looked at it and said she wanted to show me a little of the spring flowers.”
“Nice move,” Eva quipped.
“That’s my angel.” Tessa chuckled. “We went for a stroll and somehow we ended up at Stella’s apartment, which was nearby.”
“Oh, very nice move, Aunty Stella,” Zoe said.
“Her next door neighbor saw me, and Stella introduced me as her sister-in-law, who was visiting her from Thessalonica. I was Tessa Lambros, married to her brother Dion. We went inside and I won’t bore you with all the boring parts of this story.” Tessa chuckled.
“Zoe likes boring parts in love stories,” Eva teased. “She reads those romantic serials all the time.”
“Eva!”
“Yes, love?” Eva blew Zoe a kiss.
Zoe wagged her finger at her. Eva just smiled.
“You do? I suppose I have to tell you now?” Tessa tapped Zoe on the leg. “Alright, well, Stella told me how she felt about me.”
“And?” Zoe leaned forward.
“And I brought along a drawing.”
“Did you have a vision?”
“No.” Tessa shook her head. “It was just an image of what I wanted to happen. It was of Stella kissing me.”
Zoe sat back and clapped her hands. “Wow. I should have done that.”
“Oh, Fraulein Muller, I have something to show you and this is what you are going to do, now!” Eva mimicked Zoe’s accent.
“What a smarty pants.” Zoe got out of her chair and kissed Eva on the lips. “Behave.”
“I’m behaving, Miss Lambros.”
“You two just make me laugh.” Tessa tapped Eva on the blanket-covered knee. “One thing led to another and I won’t tell you what happened, but we lost track of time.”
“Oh, dear.”
“Indeed. I knew the porter was going to be in so much trouble, so we rushed to get dressed.” Tessa glanced at Zoe, who was smirking. “Next thing we know there is a knock on Stella’s door. I actually thought we had been found out.”
“Were you found out?”
“No, it was just the next door neighbor. She wanted to tell Stella that there was a fire at the asylum and asked if we had heard about it.”
“Wow.”
“Yes, indeed. Stella told me to stay inside and not move. She ran to the asylum and it was pandemonium. Fire had engulfed half the building. Stella stayed to help those who made it out. She came back in the early hours of the morning totally exhausted.”
“What had happened?”
“We don’t know how, but the fire ran through the wards and trapped many of the patients. They burned to death.”
“Oh, what a horrible way to go,” Eva said quietly.
“Poor souls, they were there for severe mental problems, and for them to die in such a way... it was horrible.” Tessa said quietly. “Many of them I knew.”
“Had Stella not broken the rules, you would have died.”
“Yes.” Tessa nodded. “Stella told me when she came back that Karl had tried to save as many as he could and went in time and time again to rescue people. That was Karl, my friend.”
“Karl was a very courageous man.”
“He was. Unfortunately, every time he went into that burning building, he inhaled smoke, soot, and all the other poisonous gases fires produce. Stella told me that was worse than being burned. He passed away from smoke inhalation.”
“Oh, wow,” Eva whispered.
“So here I was, alive and well, and the asylum burned to the ground. Some bodies were so burned you couldn’t tell who was who.”
“Did you decide not to go back and tell them you were alive?”
“Well.” Tessa looked down at her hands for a moment. “As the morning wore on I felt sick. I had been feeling unwell during the week and I hadn’t told Stella because she wouldn’t have taken me out. I was throwing up and feeling awful. Stella decided to keep me at her home. She came home the next day from the normal hospital where she was also working with a grim look on her face.”
“Did she get found out?”
“Oh, no.” Tessa shook her head. “Stella had drawn some blood and taken it with her to be tested to see what was wrong with me. She told me I was pregnant.”
“Oh, wow.”
“That made matters far more serious than just taking me out of the asylum without authorization. What would we do? If she took me back, we knew that I would never see my child. I knew my parents would never keep the child.”
“Were my grandparents so heartless?”
“No, darling.” Tessa squeezed Eva’s hand. “Your grandparents were not heartless in any way. They loved me. They wanted me to get better and they thought I was suffering. I thought I was suffering. It’s not like what happened to you at all. You had no say in the matter and were forced against your will.”
“You weren’t forced?”
“No.” Tessa shook her head. “I wanted to be there. I thought that this was something that could be cured, but I also loved the life that was now growing within me.”
“So you decided to keep the pregnancy a secret?”
“Yes. Stella was going to move to Thessalonica to work after her time at the asylum, so we decided to do that immediately.”
“That’s where Thomas was born.”
“Yes, at home.” Tessa smiled. “The minute I saw him, he looked so much like my older sister that if he had been a girl, I would have named her Daphne. I named him Thomas.”
“My grandfather was called Thomas.” Zoe smiled.
“Yes. We named him after Stella’s father and gave him his father’s name as well. So that’s how Thomas came into the world.”
&nb
sp; “How did you find out that your visions were real and not an illness?”
“Sister Irene.” Tessa smiled at Eva. “Irene is a very special nun, a little odd, a little bossy, very direct but very wise. Stella had gone to a Catholic church and she was worried about our son and me. She would rather pluck her eyes out than go into a church, but she was out of ideas. She was approached by one of the nuns and they started to talk. It was then that the nun revealed she knew all about us.”
“Did that alarm Stella?”
“By that stage Stella was used to the unexpected.” Tessa chuckled. “Stella had seen far too much unexpected things to be worried about a nun.”
“Have you told Thomas about his father?” Eva asked.
“Of course. When he was old enough to understand, we told him how brave his father was and that he should always be very proud of him.”
“That’s beautiful,” Zoe said quietly.
“When he grew up, Tommy wanted to follow in Stella’s footsteps and help people who suffered shell shock and other mental illnesses.”
“How did he come to Aiden?”
Tessa sighed. “One day Thomas was looking for some papers and he accidentally found some of my art. By then he was well aware of what electroshock therapy looked like, so he asked me about them.”
Tessa got up from the bed and came around to the other side. She got into bed, rested her back against the headboard, and took Eva’s hand. “I told him that a young woman was going to be suffering. When I drew that artwork, I thought it was my sister. You and your mother are so alike that it’s difficult to tell you apart at the same age.”
Eva looked down at their interlocked hands and took a deep breath. “When did you realize it wasn’t my mother?”
“When I continued to have the same vision and I knew my sister was no longer alive. That’s when I knew that it had to be her daughter. It wasn’t until Sister Irene had a vision herself that we knew where you were.”
“Wow.” Zoe got up and sat down on the other side of Eva. She took Eva’s hand. “Why didn’t you do something about it?”
“Visions are just visions of what may be. They don’t tell me the date or the location. I didn’t know when that was going to happen. Nor did Irene. She is a very determined woman, and along with her brother Johan, they were able to find out you were in Aiden.”
Awakenings (Intertwined Souls Series Book 4) Page 6