by Amy Meyerson
Peter sits back, waiting for them to say something. Beck begins by thanking him, to which he shrugs.
“I’m sorry it was so hard to get in touch.” Winkler has already brought his father’s boxes from the attic to the living room. He places one beside the coffee table and lifts the top off. “My father wanted to restore the monarchy until the day he died.”
They pass around photos of the Habsburgs with dates and descriptions on the back. The photographs are disordered, not protected by archival materials that would keep them in mint condition. The photo of Karl and Zita’s wedding has patinaed, the white of Zita’s floor-length veil yellowed from neglect.
“That’s Franz Joseph, the emperor,” Peter says, pointing to a man with a Victorian handlebar mustache standing beside the newlyweds. The Millers file through more photographs of the happy couple with Franz Joseph: one from a dinner at the Schönbrunn Palace, another where a smiling boy with wispy blond hair stands beside the seated emperor.
“That’s Otto, my father’s best friend,” Peter says.
The only other pictures of Franz Joseph are of his coffin, with Karl and his family following the dark wooden box. The empress is cloaked in a black veil. The emperor, baby-faced, dons a mustache thinner and shorter than his uncle’s had been. Crowds of saluting men flank them as they walk behind the coffin. The photograph is labeled 30 November 1916. The end of one era, the start of another one, short-lived, destined to fall.
Christian passes around a photograph from 30 Dezember 1916, Karl’s coronation in Budapest as the Hungarian king. He holds a scepter and wears a crown smaller than the one on Zita’s head. On the bust of Zita’s embroidered dress, Beck spots two brooches. They are out of focus, the diamonds an overexposed white. Neither resembles the hatpin that housed the Florentine.
The Millers continue to mine the box, spotting dozens more photographs of the family from their various stages of power and exile. In several, Zita is praying. In other photographs, boys appear with hunting rifles. The pictures extend beyond the empire to Switzerland and Madeira, dinners at mansions in Tuxedo Park and Quebec, where the royal family lived during WWII. The photos extend beyond Zita, too, to subsequent generations of Habsburgs, young girls and boys in fluorescent ski clothes and satin formal wear.
“Look,” Jake exclaims, holding a photograph toward his sisters. In it, a woman is seated on the floor with four children. She holds a fifth in her arms. It is clearly their great-grandmother, Flora. On the back, the description reads, Kindermädchen mit den Kindern. September 1916.
That’s it, then, Beck thinks. Flora stole the Florentine Diamond.
The next box is less helpful than the first. A few framed portraits of various Habsburg emperors lavished in red velvet. A postcard of Schönbrunn Palace. A tin box filled with bronze pins of the empire’s double-headed eagle. The third box harbors coins and buttons. Beck returns everything to the box, feeling embarrassed that she ever believed the diamond might legally be theirs, that these boxes would be filled with recorded interviews, documenting the fall of the empire, that the emperor would have gifted the Florentine to anyone, let alone a servant.
Beck feels the weight of a hand on her back. “We still have one more box,” Ashley reminds her. “You’re not saving the best for last?” she asks Peter.
Whether he’d intended to or not, the last box is indeed the best. A collective gasp echoes through the room. The box is filled with VHS tapes. The white label along the side of the first tape reads, Kaiserin Zita, Vol. 1, 1978.
“Do you have a VCR?” Jake asks.
Winkler calls to his wife, who emerges from the kitchen, and asks her something in German before she disappears upstairs.
“They might have one in the attic,” Christian explains to the Millers.
While Winkler’s wife opens and closes drawers and closets upstairs in her quest for a forgotten VCR, the Millers continue to dig through the box. There are also volumes two, three, and four of interviews with Zita, as well as a fifth VHS, labeled Otto.
“She gave all these to your father?” Ashley asked.
“Otto did. After Zita died, he urged my father to write a book on her. He’d interviewed her for his earlier books on Karl, and Otto wanted him to write another book about his mother. He gave my dad whatever he had that might be helpful. I thought there was more, but this was all I could find.”
Mrs. Winkler reappears with a bulky, ancient-looking VCR, and Peter flips through the channels until he finds the right one to connect the VCR. The screen fills with static before a white-haired Zita materializes on the television. She is seated in what looks to be a library, dressed in a black turtleneck, long pearls dangling down her bust. Zita’s hair is cropped short around her wrinkled face, the beauty of her youth calcified with age. When she speaks, her voice croaks, hoarse as though she hasn’t used it in a long time. Kurt Winkler bellows offscreen to announce the date—18 Oktober 1978—and introduces the Kaiserin.
“They are in her apartment in the convent in Switzerland,” Christian tells the Millers.
Beck likes watching the interview without understanding Zita’s words. It allows her to know the empress at a more primal level. The first tape documents when she met Karl, how they fell in love. Peter’s wife wraps her arms around her husband’s bicep as she leans toward the television.
“Have you watched these before?” Beck asks the Winklers.
“Never,” Peter says softly.
Age has not faded Zita’s memory. Her story is chronological and precise.
“She’s describing the coronation,” Christian whispers as Zita’s voice turns lofty, singsong. Midsentence, the video cuts to static and Winkler stands to hit Eject. Ashley and Jake eye each other but say nothing, settling in for a long afternoon.
The second tape is a continuation of the same interview. Christian has forgotten that he is supposed to translate and, like the Winklers, is entranced by the story unfolding. Zita’s face remains stoic, other than the occasional indulgence of a smile or laugh. Still, it’s obvious she’s describing happier times, those halcyon days before they were losing the war and their brief hold on the empire.
Like the first video, the second tape contains nothing relevant. The third one is inserted into the VCR and Jake wants to remain optimistic, but he isn’t. Not about these tapes. Not about Kristi, either.
When the third tape only reveals a confusing chronology of failed peace attempts and Karl losing his grip on the empire, Jake’s stomach grumbles audibly. Beck glares at him, as though he should be able to keep his hunger in check.
“Why don’t we take a break?” Ashley stretches her arms exaggeratedly. “Go grab a bite.”
“You two go,” Beck says. “I’m not hungry.”
Not wanting to fight, Ashley and Jake leave without protest. As they amble toward town, Jake walks without bending his knees, his hip cracking audibly. “Getting old sucks,” Jake says, but Ashley insists it’s just the hangover, lodged into their joints like poison.
“Hey, Ash,” Jake asks. “How do you do it, keep a relationship going for so long?”
Ashley freezes, then remembers he doesn’t know about Ryan. The timing was never right. Also, she didn’t want him to know. As a man, Jake would judge Ryan, even if he was in no position to judge anyone.
“Kristi,” Jake continues. “I’ve ruined everything.”
Suddenly, Ashley feels like she might vomit even though her stomach is empty. When Ryan had said the same thing, curled on their bathroom floor, it had been pathetic, like he hoped she’d find some way of making it not true. When Jake repeats those words now—I’ve ruined everything—they are fatal, predetermined.
“No,” Ashley says. “You haven’t.” And Ryan hadn’t, either—not entirely.
The timing is right, so she tells Jake everything that’s happening with Ryan, starting with the FBI agent. “I was being followed,”
she admits to her brother. “But not because of the diamond.” She explains the target letter, Ryan’s subsequent guilty plea, the $500,000 they still need to collect before his sentencing hearing in a month. On the steep and narrow streets of Krems an der Donau, it strikes her as ironic that Ryan owes the exact amount the Italians had offered the Millers.
“We’re going to have to sell the house.”
“Shit, Ash.” Jake throws his arm around his sister’s shoulders as they turn onto the promenade. After a pause, he asks, “So you forgive him?”
Forgiveness is like training for a marathon. Ashley tracks each day, gauging her progress, but she won’t know what shape they’re in until his case goes before the sentencing judge.
“It’s touch and go,” she tells her brother. “Some days, I feel like I’ve forgiven him, and other days I’m still so mad. I don’t want to sell our house. I don’t want my kids to have everyone at school know their father is in prison. I don’t want to be married to a criminal, either. But I’m not ready to give up on him.”
That’s it, Jake realizes. Ashley doesn’t want to lose hope that they can work it out. Jake doesn’t need to make Kristi forgive him. He needs to make her want to believe in him again.
Along the promenade, tourists lounge beneath café awnings. Ashley checks her phone. It’s 8:00 a.m. on the east coast. Ryan is probably fixing the kids breakfast, something elaborate that he whips up from scratch. Her children will miss this Ryan more than the one who was always at the office.
I miss you, Ashley texts her husband. It’s the closest she’s ready to come to I forgive you.
* * *
Christian and Beck continue to sit side by side on the Winklers’ dark wood floor, listening to Zita’s interview. As she drones on, Beck tries to determine what will happen when they return with no helpful evidence. Will the firm force them to withdraw their claim? Will they submit a halfhearted motion for summary judgment, knowing they will not convince the court that the diamond belongs to the Millers?
Abruptly, Zita’s inflection turns cold. Nothing changes in her posture, yet she’s visibly stiffer.
Christian grabs Beck’s forearm and whispers, “She’s talking about Flora, when they left the children in Gödöllö.” The words drip down her eardrums into every vein, coursing through her body.
Zita clenches the arms of her chair and leans forward, teeth bared. Christian holds his breath. “She says they never should have left the kids with that whore of a nursemaid.” He blushes at whore. “And she keeps going.”
Never mind that Flora smuggled the kids to Vienna, back to their parents and safety and the rest of their lives. Did you know she was pregnant? Zita asks Winkler, who could not have known. He’s never heard of Flora before. Unwed and with child?
“Pregnant?” Beck turns to Christian. “How could she be pregnant? Helen wasn’t born until 1925.” Then she remembers Martin, Helen’s older brother. Is it possible that he was conceived while she worked at the palace? If so, was Leib his father?
“There wasn’t anything in the papers,” Christian says apologetically. “Tomorrow, we can check the archives for a birth certificate, know for sure.”
Fear creeps into Beck’s voice. “Was it the emperor’s?”
Pregnant, the empress continues. No husband. A bastard child. The expression on Zita’s face turns contemplative, guilt-stricken. I found her diary after we fired her. The father was our chauffeur, who had been with them in Gödöllö. The one who died when the children fled. I had no idea they were involved, otherwise I never would have left him with them.
Beck’s body relaxes. The child wasn’t the emperor’s.
Winkler’s says something offscreen, and Christian whispers, “He’s asking what happened to her journal.”
The guilt on Zita’s face morphs into anger as Christian translates. I burned it.
“Why would she burn it?” Beck asks, but before Christian can respond, Beck hears the word she’s been craving since she got here. It sounds more graceful in German than it does in English. Mellifluous.
“Florentiner.”
* * *
The following afternoon, when Deborah arrives at the Spiegels’ home, she doesn’t bring Viktor. She needs to do this alone. Viktor has given her instructions on what types of documents to look for, renderings of the brooch that would prove Joseph made the pin, any records that detailed the cost of a sale, anything that conveyed it was free, which would almost certainly mean he gifted it to his lover.
The Spiegels live in a rural part of Berwyn, in a small farmhouse between large parcels of land. Deborah has a bad feeling as she knocks on the door. What will any of these records prove, really? Even if he made the brooch for free, does that mean he gave Helen the diamond, too? And if her search comes up empty, does that suggest that the whole story is speculation, the diamond, the affair, the genealogy?
Heidi invites Deborah into the living room while she brews a pot of coffee. Deborah surveys the photographs on the mantel as she waits. The Spiegels have two children. There’s a photograph of their son behind the counter of Spiegel and Sons, another of their daughter in a graduation cap, waving outside the International Gemology Society campus. Deborah wonders what that must be like, inheriting not just a house or a diamond but a family trade, a vocation. A purpose.
On the end of the mantel, Deborah spots a photograph of Joseph and a man who must be Daniel’s father outside their former storefront on Jewelers’ Row. Another of Joseph and a woman, heads angled toward each other, against a solid backdrop. It takes Deborah a moment to realize this is their wedding portrait. They look comfortable together, at ease, not necessarily in love. She lifts the photo off the mantel and stares at Joseph’s wife’s plain but appealing face. Through the image, Deborah can sense her aura, dependable and stable. It’s difficult to imagine a woman like that coming undone.
A throat clears, and Deborah turns to find Heidi holding two cups of coffee. She returns the photograph to the mantel and, before she can apologize for snooping, Heidi motions her toward the attic.
“We don’t have much time,” she says as they mount the stairs.
The attic, smelling strongly of mildew, is unfinished and over one hundred degrees on this early-fall day. In the far corner, several boxes are stacked with the Spiegel’s Jewelers logo printed on the side. If the paperwork is in one of these boxes, there’s no promising it hasn’t been gnawed by a squirrel or hasn’t disintegrated to dust.
Heidi sets her coffee cup on the ground and opens the first box. “I’m afraid our filing system isn’t the most organized.”
Calling it a system is generous. While the boxes have decades inscribed on the tops, they are filled haphazardly with notebooks, receipts, ledgers, orders, and appointment books.
Viktor told Deborah that the brooch was midcentury, post war. By 1960, Joseph Spiegel was dead. She decides to start with a box from the 1950s.
Only the paperwork inside doesn’t match the dates on the box. Decades of ledgers and sketchbooks are intermixed, until the ’80s when Daniel took over and implemented a record-keeping system, organized not just by date but by type of sale and document. Then the twenty-first century hit and all records were stored on hard drives, even renderings, which were no longer drawn by hand. This would be so much easier today, typing Helen’s name into a computer and accessing every exchange she had with Spiegel’s Jewelers.
“Ooh, is this it?” Heidi asks, holding up a sketch of a bouquet of violets, set in yellow burnished leaves.
“Those are violets. We’re looking for an orchid.” Deborah wishes she’d brought a photograph of the brooch. Heidi holds out another sketch. “Those are buttercups... That’s a rose... That’s a sunflower... Those are poppies... That’s a pansy... Those are grapevines.” Deborah didn’t realize flower pins were such a trend.
Heidi hums as she flips the pages of a sketchbook, narrating ever
ything she inspects. “This ring was three thousand dollars in 1952. Can you imagine? This must be three carats... Huh, this guy never paid for his cuff links. I wonder if there’s a statute of limitations on unpaid bills.” She laughs, calculating over sixty years of interest. “Cal-ee-bray sapphires,” Heidi says. “I’ve never heard of those before... Oh, look, a duck!”
In her head, Deborah chants Om, trying to summon her inner peace. It’s difficult for Deborah, who’s never been particularly gifted at attention to detail, to focus on the faded calligraphy of Joseph’s ledgers, while Heidi is quacking like a duck.
“This is it!” she squeals. “An orchid.”
Deborah heart races as she looks at the sketchbook. The drawing is indeed an orchid, but a dendrobium not a cattleya. Deborah shakes her head, and Heidi looks annoyed. A landline rings downstairs, and Heidi leaves to answer it.
Deborah flips through page after page of sales and repair jobs, scrap metal purchases, renderings for custom pieces. Heidi does not return. The flower pieces are her favorite, not just because of the orchid brooch. Deborah loves flowers, how their beauty is fleeting, the way their smell turns from sweet to putrid. Maybe that should be Deborah’s next business, flower arrangements. With his connections, Viktor could get her into jewelry shops, engagements parties, weddings. Viktor. She wonders what he and the children are doing. He’s agreed to watch them in exchange for a home-cooked vegan dinner, which the children will scrunch their faces at, pleading for pizza.
Preoccupied with Viktor’s square jawline and crisp blue eyes that look aqua against his white hair, she’s flipped through an entire ledger without reading the names and dollar amounts. As she turns back to review the pages she’s glossed over, she glimpses a few letters—Auer—and then it is gone.