“And, John, if you can’t come, for whatever reason, don’t call me. I’ll be waiting at the gate around 6:30 p.m., and if you’re not there . . . well, I guess I’ll know.”
My tone hardened.
“Under no circumstances can you tell anyone about this call or about my flight to Germany. I mean Kay, too. It can’t go this way. Do you understand? It’s too late.”
“I—”
“No. You must promise. There is no choice.”
“I promise,” he said.
I hung up, feeling the knots in my stomach tug more tightly. I walked over to the window and looked out at my beautiful city.
KAY HAD LEFT a message on my cell phone that morning. How’s dinner tonight? Or tomorrow. I was in the middle of packing the only piece of luggage I would take: my carry-on. Vinni’s photo was safe in my wallet. The book she had been reading on the day she disappeared was inside my black nylon tote. I texted Kay on the way to the airport. Swamped. Teaching tonight. Need sleep. xxx. I hoped she wouldn’t try calling, because I didn’t want her to suspect anything.
John D’Orfini hadn’t called me back, and I was glad. I feared if we talked, he’d want to know more. At the airport, the minutes ticked past 5:00 p.m. My anxiety level rose to high. By six thirty, it was on overdrive. I hadn’t eaten anything all day. Before I had left for the airport, I’d opened the door to Vinni’s bedroom, painted blue.
“Mama’s coming,” I said aloud to no one.
Soon, I would smell Vinni’s scent mixed with mine. I lay down on her bed and swept my hand over the quilt where Vinni would lie. I stroked the seams where the stitching made wave patterns of creams and blues. I hoped she would like her new room.
I stood up and smoothed the quilt on Vinni’s bed. I rearranged a set of candles on the dresser, moving all five to the center to create a circle. After Meta’s call, I had thought of running out and buying things for Vinni, but I didn’t know what she liked.
I didn’t know her.
Five years is a long time.
I CHECKED IN and snaked through the long security lines. I studied my cell phone.
Nothing.
He wasn’t coming.
I sat on the plane next to an empty seat with forty minutes to departure. I closed my eyes. I breathed in and out like the tide at the beach. Slow. Rush. Slow. The plane was hot. Noise from the overhead storage bins ran by me as, one by one, they clicked shut.
Someone tapped my shoulder, and I looked up into the eyes of John D’Orfini.
“I believe this seat is mine,” he said, as he smiled in that slow way intended for tides to switch course.
My heart leaped. “What happened? Where were you?” I said.
“Damn traffic. How do you New Yorkers get used to it?” He sat down and took my hand and squeezed it. “I’m here now.”
I rested my head on his shoulder. Without hesitation, he placed his hand on my cheek. One touch. That was all I needed.
THIRTY-NINE
WE RENTED A CAR AT THE AIRPORT. ALL JOHN D’ORFINI knew was that we had to get to a place called Füssen. He had already mapped our drive from Munich onto Autobahn A7. I suspected he had a list of questions, but all he said was, “Try to sleep,” as he sped down the highway, trying to keep up with the other drivers in their BMWs and Lamborghinis, enjoying the absence of a speed limit.
We checked in to the hotel late. It was thirty-six hours after Meta’s call.
“We’ve been expecting you, Miss Stewart,” the young clerk said, as he passed one key over the counter. “You have a corner room upstairs.”
The room was large. Clean. A view to the sky over the writing desk.
I objected to getting anything to eat. “You go. I’m not hungry.”
“You’re coming with me. I’m not letting you out of my sight.”
We walked outside and into town. It was a warm Friday night. John D’Orfini held my hand. Music and laughter drew us to the town square, where there was a beer festival. At least fifty long tables on both sides filled the square. Women dressed in long chemises and aprons, and men wearing the traditional Bavarian leiderhosen carried trays of huge steins of beer. A band was singing rock ‘n’ roll in English. We stood on the sidelines with dozens of other passersby out on the town on a hot evening. People drank and sang along with the musicians. Only the mood steadied the night—gay and boisterous—as John D’Orfini held my hand and kept me close.
As the music got louder, I withdrew, scared my heart might stop. With each beat, I grew more anxious, afraid everything might disappear before I could touch it. The unusual ninety-degree weather didn’t help. The music clashed inside my head, moving membranes like fallen dominoes. Too much warm beer escalated the drinkers’ sloppy speech. I eavesdropped on the drunkenness of the German night.
Sleep was impossible. At first, I sat up in bed and leaned against the pillow. I stared out through the black glass of the window. The breathing of my sweet detective provided an easy rhythm. I slipped my body farther under the light blanket. I felt the warmth from his body.
I dreamed John D’Orfini and I were walking in New York City. We walked south along Broadway. We moved one foot in front of the other. Lifting our feet in exaggerated steps at the knee. My left foot throbbed as I limped. Finally, we came to the sixteen-foot bronze sculpture at the foot of Wall Street—a seven-thousand-pound bull the artist had donated to the city as a symbol of strength, power, and hope after the stock market crash of 1987.
As I drifted off to sleep, John D’Orfini’s steady breathing reminded me how much I needed him. Even so, I had doubled up on my Xanax dosage, from 0.25 milligrams to 0.5 milligrams. Hardly noticeable for most women, but I had the kind of system that allowed a drug—any drug—to knock me out. Xanax stirred my unconscious desires into a vivid slide show while I fell into a deep sleep and dreamed of the bull. Only this time, the bull floated in the ocean with a boy on its back. The boy trusted the bull. He held the bull by the horns, and I watched the two ride over the tops of the waves from my seat in the sand. The boy laid his cheek against the bull’s neck. His small fingers held on to the horns as the bull’s nostrils flared. His back legs treaded ferociously to keep the boy afloat. “Don’t let go!” I screamed out to the boy.
I sank deeper into the mattress. I had lifted the boy from the bull, turned him on his back, and let him float. I yearned to be the one clutching the bull’s horns, whispering into the bull’s ear, “Pull me under.” But the boy—what about the boy? Was he still floating? I couldn’t go under. Not now. I struggled to reach the surface.
Wet seeped its way up my legs as I woke to John D’Orfini kissing my face.
“What time is it?” I asked.
“Early. The light is just coming in through the window.”
I looked over to the window, where neither of us had remembered to pull down the shades. The sun broke over the orange-tiled rooftops. Beyond them, the Alps reached toward what could only be heaven. I wrapped my legs around John’s back the way the bull had wrapped his legs around me as I had floated farther and farther into the depths of the ocean.
Sobs. Salty. Sacred.
Tears dampened his cheeks.
“Maddy, I think . . .” He stopped himself.
“What is it?” I asked.
I had seen that look when John D’Orfini had passed from lover to officer of the law.
“I think things are going to be okay,” he said. His hands wiped at my tears. I released my legs alongside his thighs and rolled over to his side. I looked deep into his eyes. Silence.
“I need a coffee,” John D’Orfini said. “I’ll jump in the shower first and then go get you a tea.” Naked, he headed toward the bathroom. Just as he was about to disappear, he stopped and turned to look at me. His strong body, smooth and satisfied, was poised near the door frame.
“What?” I said.
The early-morning light bounced strips of burnt orange against the walls.
“I love you,” he said. “I love you, Madel
ine Stewart.”
For a second, it looked as if he were waiting for me to say something. I couldn’t tell him I loved him. Not yet. I needed to see Vinni first.
I sat up on my elbows in bed. The heat from the morning’s sun slipped through the window and rested between my shoulder blades. “Let’s get Vinni and take her home,” I said.
FORTY
I WAITED OUTSIDE THE HOTEL .
“Come inside. It’s too hot out there.”
“I’m fine,” I said. A message had been left for me at the desk: a driver would pick me up at 10:00 a.m. Meta said she would send her husband, Armen. She explained they were tenant farmers. Together, they eked out an existence caring for the largest property on the outskirts of Füssen. At first, they answered to Hilda’s father, who owned the land. He had bought up parcel after parcel of nearby properties. Telling no one. Filing papers. Hiring caretakers. Amassing a real estate fortune unknown to his daughter, Hilda, until his death.
There had been two daughters, but the oldest by six years had run away at the age of twenty to marry a young Hungarian boy, son of a baker, whom her father disapproved of, causing him to shut her out of his will. Year after year, Hilda received checks from her father’s estate lawyers as Meta and Armen continued to work the land. Armen supervised the farm. Meta cared for the house and the gardens. They established a reputation as an honest, hardworking couple. Childless, they embraced the soil, the trees, the wildflowers, and the farm animals with the love others spent on their children and grandchildren. They thought of the land as their own, and they loved it the way you would love what belongs to you.
From time to time, they rented out a small cottage on the far end of the property with two bedrooms and a piece of land in the back of the kitchen suitable for a garden. The Alps circled the property and stood in all their majesty in view from every window. The rental fee from the cottage gave Meta and Armen much-needed additional income. “When they arrived on our doorstep, it was like a blessing. A child on the property . . . what joy.”
ARMEN WAS UNSURE about John D’Orfini, but I insisted. He spoke little English, but he understood my dramatic arm gestures and the firm shake of my head. I’m not sure he saw my lips tremble, but he shrugged his shoulders as John D’Orfini guided me into the car. We drove in silence as the mountains grew larger. Cream-colored cows—unusual to see—slept on acres of green.
Life nudged its way in front of hope. Blue slipped away.
I thought about what I should wear to see Vinni. She was thirteen now. Would she remember how I used to hang the white clothes in the closet? All together. When she was little, she would help me choose what to wear.
She will remember, won’t she?
My long white skirt, tiered into layers, rippled down to my ankles. My sleeveless shirt with the scooped neck and smallpetaled blossom sewn onto the right shoulder hung loose and long, with asymmetrical pointed ends frayed in chic unevenness. Would Vinni notice my flowing skirt? My hair was held behind my ears in a loose ponytail tied with a blue ribbon.
The sun shone bright. The few clouds shifted with springs on their feet. As we drove farther from the center of Füssen, into the surrounding landscape of mountains capped with cream, my heart opened and astounded me. Joy made an entrance. Pain crouched in the corners of the heart. Neither held on tight, but together they created something new. I experienced a wildness unknown but known, close to panting, as Armen drove us deeper into the Bavarian landscape. I could barely breathe.
John D’Orfini reached for my hand. Speech would have taken too much space. My throat dried up as the heat seeped in through the open car windows.
Armen gestured out the window. “The Forggensee,” he said. The lake to our left calmed me a bit. Families had taken advantage of the early heat in late May. Children stood at the water’s edge while their parents rested on their elbows on blankets grabbed from the tops of beds. As we drove, I felt an enormous kinship with the land. The vastness of it. The colors. The Alps, although higher than any mountains I had ever seen, soothed me, as if calling me to rest on their foreheads.
If this was where Vinni had lived for the past five years, could I deal with the pain? Did she recognize the beauty, or was she too torn to notice? My heart cracked open, and sobs spilled from my lips.
“Maddy? What is it?” John D’Orfini draped his arm around my shoulder. Armen looked in the rearview mirror.
“She’s all right. If this is where Vinni’s been . . . look at the mountains,” I said. They were the same as the ones in the background of the photo I hid folded inside my wallet. The photo John D’Orfini knew nothing about.
“We are almost home,” Armen said.
Home.
This had been Vinni’s home for five years. I was sure of it. She had lived where quiet had a chorus. Had this been her blessing? As much as a child can replace one love with another? Is it possible?
My head hurt.
Where is the bad amid all this beauty?
I needed only to see Vinni alive and well. If this were so, I would cut the anchor from my neck.
But panic intruded.
What if she’s forgotten me?
“Stop!” I screamed. “Stop the car!”
I grabbed the back of the passenger seat with both hands.
“Stop, please!”
Armen stopped the car, and I jumped out. I started running in the direction we had come from with my skirt flying behind me. I ran and ran, crying, “I’m sorry, baby, I’m sorry.” I ran— not like an ordinary mother beast but like a caged mama turned free. Why did I think that being a painter might quiet my inside voice? I was scared. All those years of my father hushing me so I wouldn’t disturb my mother. Was this what Hilda believed she had seen? My busyness hushing Vinni? Had I done everything so wrong?
God help me.
I ran and ran and no one stopped me.
“Gut. Gut.” I said it in German. Wasn’t this how Vinni spoke now?
I pumped my arms at my side like a wild woman, until my feet couldn’t keep up with my head. I tripped and fell onto the ground. I felt John D’Orfini’s arms around my waist.
“What if she doesn’t want me?” I cried.
“She wants you,” my detective said, as he pulled me close to his chest. “Don’t,” he said, but I placed my hand on his mouth. He took it and kissed the underside.
“How can you be sure?” I asked.
He lifted my chin and touched my lips with his.
Armen pulled the car up beside us. He got out and removed his cap and held it in his hand at his side. He pointed down the road.
“There,” Armen said with an urgency. “There is home. I take you home now. Ya?” He gestured with his hand to come.
My palms stung from sliding hard into the earth.
SPACE. SO MUCH space in front of my eyes. It dazzled me. We drove up to a large manor house, passing a brown fence on both sides. The road was covered in smooth white pebbles. More cows, like the ones we had passed on the way, rested in silence. I could see at least three small cottages dotted throughout the property. In the distance, the mountains. Always the mountains nosing close to the clouds.
Trees clustered near the horizon. I shaded my eyes as Armen stopped at the front door to the house that had been Vinni’s home for five years. Blue ceramic pots overflowed with pink and red and lavender geraniums. Matching blue globes— three—were carefully situated on the manicured grass in front of the house. But what caught my attention was the cottage in the distance, to the left of the main house. I stepped out of the car and stared at the window boxes tumbling over with flowers from each of the three sets of windows. There were two on the second floor and one on the first.
“Meta is in the front room, waiting for you,” Armen said. “I will take you.” He stopped in front of me and turned slowly. “Sophie is in school,” he said.
“And Hilda?” I asked. Armen looked away.
John D’Orfini gently placed his hand on the small of my back and guid
ed me up the front steps behind Armen. We moved—all three of us—in what seemed to be slow motion.
“Armen?” Meta looked to her husband liked a frightened cat. Armen shrugged. I could see Meta was worried I was not alone, but John D’Orfini calmed her.
“I am a friend. Please, shall we sit?” His voice softened, and Meta’s face relaxed. He knew it was important that nothing and no one move an inch to the wrong side of the room. He knew how to be careful.
“Yes, sit,” Meta said. “But first I introduce myself. I am Meta Adler.” Her hair was white and thin. Her faded brown eyes looked at me with kindness. She stood with a slight bend to her shoulders, caving inward to a flat chest. Although it was unbearably warm, she wore a long-sleeved cardigan. A white blouse tied in a droopy bow at the neck. Her tan skirt fell beneath her knees near her calves, and she wore sensible, black-laced shoes.
Meta confused me. I didn’t know if I should scream at her, slap her, shake her upside down until her story spilled out, or thank her for making the telephone call. I decided instead to step aside and let her tell it all. One word at a time.
I had waited five years.
Meta lowered her head and began to cry before I had a chance to say anything. Armen stood at her side. I looked at John D’Orfini. Both of us remained quiet. We could hear a clock ticking in the hallway.
“Sophie is in school. She does not know you are coming. I . . . Armen and I thought . . .”
I had had enough. “Where is Hilda?” I asked. “Take me to her.” I picked at the stinging skin on my palms.
“We decided not to tell the child you were coming. We wanted to wait to see that you come. We did not want to give her a shock.”
“Where’s Hilda?” I said in a thin, tight voice.
Meta’s chin quivered. “Hilda died after I called you,” she said. She played with a wrinkled tissue in her hand, squashing it over and over, as if it were large and pliable. She stayed sleeping after she asked me to call you in New York.”
A Matter of Chance Page 27