Текст книги "The Storyteller"

Автор книги: Antonia Michaelis

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Текущая страница: 18 (всего у книги 23 страниц)

THE ICE WAS SMOOTH AND WIDE, AND IT LAY HIDDEN under the snow like a secret thought.

Where the sea met the beach, the waves had piled the ice floes on top of each other, exactly as they had been piled on the opposite side of the bay, in Ludwigsburg, forming strange figures you couldn’t take apart, like a puzzle or a riddle. The three of them had climbed over the piles of ice floes to reach the plain, smooth ice behind them, but somehow Anna felt as if she were still standing between those surrealistic figures, in an inexplicable, multilayered chaos …

“Anna? Anna!” Micha said and pulled her sleeve. “Are you dreaming?”

“Yeah,” Anna replied, “I am … a dream about finding out how everything fits together.”

“But can we start now? You’ve got the skates with you, haven’t you? The ones I can wear?”

She nodded and kneeled down to open her backpack. Abel had walked ahead of them and was standing near the orange buoy, a relic from summer. He was looking out at the horizon. Maybe he had to be alone for a moment.

Anna thought about school while she helped Micha put on two pairs of socks and her old skates. She thought of the others’ faces. Of Bertil’s when he’d come into the student lounge and seen them sitting on the radiator in the corner, she and Abel, silent and together. He’d nodded and said, “Of course. Of course.” Then he’d turned on his heels and left. But in the doorway, he’d turned back and said, “Take good care of yourself, Anna Leemann. Think of the snowstorm and the shadow out in the woods. And don’t believe everything you hear …”

And Abel had looked at her, questioning, but she’d just shaken her head. She would tell him later. Maybe.

The strange thing was that Gitta had said something similar after Abel had disappeared into class. “Good to see the two of you together again,” she said. “Though it’s weird. Neither of you seems happy about it. Bertil told me he plucked you out of that snowstorm yesterday.”

“He found me because you told him that you’d seen me head out. That’s what he said anyway.”

Gitta had nodded. “Take care of yourself, Anna. And don’t believe everything you hear …”

There wasn’t literature class that day, but she’d passed Knaake in the corridor. “I’m on it,” he said walking by her, winking. “But I don’t know what I think yet. One shouldn’t believe everything one hears …”

Had they all gotten together to confuse her? Whom and what shouldn’t she believe?

“Now,” Micha said, closing the last plastic clasp. “With these skates, I’ll be so fast I’ll arrive at the mainland before the thirteenth of March. In the fairy tale, you know.” She held onto Anna’s arm, stood up, and started marching over the ice. Then she took bigger steps, and then she started to glide. Anna watched her glide away. She hadn’t known that Micha could skate; she’d figured she’d have to teach her. But the pink down jacket was all but flying now. Micha threw her arms up into the air and gave a scream of joy and made a pirouette without losing balance, like a true little queen.

“We don’t give children enough credit,” Anna murmured. “They can take perfect care of themselves. But what … what will happen on the thirteenth of March?”

She slowly walked over to Abel, and he looked surprised, too. “I didn’t know Micha knew how to skate.”

“What about you?” Anna asked. “Can you skate?” She bent down and got her own skates out of the backpack. And another pair that belonged to Magnus.

Abel shook his head. “I’ve never tried. I’m just gonna stand here and watch you two.”

“Oh no,” Anna said. “We’re not doing this without you.”

A little later Abel stood next to her on the ice, unsteady on his legs, helpless like a newborn foal, and she laughed. Neither of you seems happy, Gitta had said. But on that day, happiness came creeping back, it was an in-spite-of-everything-happiness, a childish, stubborn happiness, and Anna welcomed it with open arms. She took Abel’s hands and skated backward, pulling him along through the snow, far, far out onto the ice. “You just have to move along!” she shouted. “Your knees! You’ve gotta bend your knees! You’ve got joints there, haven’t you? It’s easy!”

“No!” he shouted back. “I don’t have knee joints … I’m sure I don’t! I …” And they ended up in a heap on the ice, and Micha came flying and landed on top, because she couldn’t resist, and, somehow, they sorted out their arms and legs and got up again. They each took one of Abel’s hands; they tried to push him, tried to pull him, tried to leave him alone and tell him from a distance what he had to do—it was impossible to teach Abel to skate. It was a disaster … It was the most wonderful thing in the world.

Anna’s stomach hurt from laughing so hard. She had snow in her hair, snow in her mouth, snow in her shoes … what did it matter? In her head, the sun was shining so brightly she could barely see. Later, she would think that these days—this one and the next—had been their best. She would always remember the light playing in Abel’s and Micha’s pale blond hair. She’d always hear their laughter. It was such happy and unburdened laughter, laughter from a world without dead bodies or social services, a world in which no one ever disappeared.

And then they were lying on the ice next to each other, flat on their backs, the three of them, and Abel said, “In summer, you know … in summer, I want to swim with you, right here. We’ll lie in the water just like this, only the sky will be a different color then. And the water will be warm and blue, and the sailors will pass us on their way out to the island of Rügen.”

“And we’ll eat loads of ice cream,” Micha added.

“Definitely.” Abel rolled onto his stomach. “And then we’ll lounge around on the beach all lazy, and we’ll build sandcastles …”

“With sea grass for decoration and pinecones for inhabitants,” Anna said.

Abel nodded. “When summer comes, there’ll be no more black ship. And no problems. When summer comes, I’ll be eighteen.”

“The thirteenth of March …” Anna began.

“That’s the day we’re going to reach the mainland,” Abel said, smiling.

“And we’re gonna celebrate,” Micha said. “We’re gonna celebrate Abel’s birthday. On that day, he’ll be a grown-up. Just like that, bang … and then he can be my father for real. It won’t be long now, Anna. Next Wednesday.”

Anna wanted to say that she wasn’t at all sure about the laws and that it was probably a lot more complicated than Abel and Micha imagined. But she didn’t say so. She said instead, “There’s hot chocolate in the thermos in my backpack.”

“Oh yeah, and we brought cookies!” Micha jumped up, and they started pushing and pulling and shoving Abel back toward the beach. And then they got rid of their skates and had a picnic between the piled-up ice-floe puzzles.

“Be a bit careful with that hot chocolate,” Abel said to Micha. “Better close that jacket again. We don’t want to wash another sweater. Remember, the washing machine is broken …”

“You said we can still wash things by hand,” Micha said.

“Yeah, we can.” He sighed. “Tomorrow is washing day, like in the olden days, in the days of real fairy tales. But washing takes time, Micha. It takes time. And we’ve already got enough washing.”

“Can’t you get someone by to … repair your machine?” Anna asked.

Abel shook his head. “The thing is old enough for a museum. We’ll have to buy a new one. And I will, some day … but for that, I’d have to use our savings for school, and it’ll take me a while to bring myself to do that.”

Anna thought about the house full of blue air and the washing machine in the basement, which would just be replaced if it broke. When you were ironing shirts on the big old wooden table down there, you could hear the robins at the window.

“While you’re waiting to buy a new machine,” she said, “you could just do your laundry at my house. It won’t take long. We’ve got a dryer, too. You could come by tomorrow afternoon and bring your clothes; we’ll put them in the machine; and in the evening, you can take everything home with you, clean and folded. It would save a lot of time … time that you could use to get some studying done.”

“Oh, please, let’s do that!” Micha exclaimed. “I can look at Anna’s books again and blow into her flute and watch the fire in the fireplace and …”

“And your parents?” Abel asked.

“They might be home,” Anna answered. “And will bite no one.”

She looked at him, and he avoided her eyes. Finally, he covered his face with his hands, breathed in heavily, and then lowered his hands again. “Okay,” he said. “Okay, we’ll come.” He stood up and shook the snow off of his jeans. “I’m doing a thousand new things in spite of myself,” he said. “It’s not easy, you know, to jump over your own shadow.”

“As long as you’re better at it than skating …,” Anna said and stood up too. She wanted to say more, but that wasn’t possible because he was kissing her. Reasonable Anna wanted to draw back: the danger of touch. But unreasonable Anna welcomed the kiss like happiness. Maybe, she thought, it’s better to take these moments when you get them—there might not be too many in life.

• • •

The most wonderful days. There were only two of them. The day on which Abel didn’t learn to ice-skate and the day on which the laundry didn’t dry.

They went to pick up Micha from school together that Friday. The teacher Anna had talked to before was standing in the yard with Micha when Abel and Anna came skidding through the snow on their bikes. It was still snowing, and the streets were as bad as they’d been the day before. “Abel Tannatek,” the teacher said to Abel. “My name is Milowicz. I’m Micha’s teacher. And you’re her brother, aren’t you?”

“Yes, that’s me,” Abel answered, “and we’ve got something we’ve got to do.”

“Wait.” She reached out for him but didn’t dare detain him physically. “I’d really like to talk to your mother. I’ve been trying to reach her for a long time …”

“Are there problems?” Abel asked. He’d taken Micha’s little hand. “Problems in class?”

“No, that’s not it, it’s just … Micha told me her mother has gone on a trip, and it seems to be such a long trip … is it true she’s away, traveling?”

“Yes,” Abel said. “Yes, that’s true.”

“And who looks after Micha?”

“Santa Claus,” Abel growled and helped Micha onto the carrier of his bike. Mrs. Milowicz was still staring after them when they left the schoolyard, her face puzzled.

“How can she understand?” Anna asked. “You’re being unreasonable. I mean, it’s not her fault, is it? She hasn’t done anything wrong … she’s just a teacher and she’s worried.”

“She’s too curious,” said Abel. “Maybe she put the social worker onto us. Maybe it wasn’t Mrs. Ketow after all. By the way, we’re still waiting for the next social worker to turn up. It looks like no one’s taken over Marinke’s cases yet … who knows, we might get lucky and they won’t remember us until after the thirteenth of March.”

Anna had hoped that Magnus and Linda would be late, like they were last Friday, but Fridays weren’t regular days in the house of blue air, and both of them were already home. She had warned them, of course, because of the laundry. She wondered if that was the reason they were there. They both said they’d just happened to finish work early. Naturally.

Anna saw Abel flinch as he hung his jacket on the coatrack in the hall and heard Magnus’s voice from the first floor. He flinched like a frightened dog. Anna put a hand on his arm. “Stay,” she said, as she would to a dog, and felt stupid. She thought of the dog that belonged to Bertil’s family, in the backseat of the Volvo, the dog that bore an uncanny resemblance to the animal in the fairy tale. She could still hear his whining in the snowstorm.

“How nice to have visitors,” Linda said. “I thought we could have lunch together …”

Abel was sitting at the table like an animal ready to jump up and run. Everything he said was distilled, ice-cold politeness, and Anna was close to kicking him under the table, but she didn’t. Micha had no trouble with the situation. She told Linda everything about her school and the friend she’d visited on Wednesday … that they’d built an igloo together … that she wanted a dog when she got older, or actually, a dog and a white horse. The horse had to stand in the middle of a garden full of apple trees, of course.

“Yes, I agree,” Linda said. “That’s where white horses belong.”

Toward the end of their lunch, Abel was sitting in his chair, a little calmer, and his eyes had stopped darting around the living room as if it were a trap he had to escape.

“And now it’s probably best if you just throw your clothes into the machine,” Linda said, “and I’ll see to it that they get cleaned and folded. I think I’ve already been introduced to one of your sweatshirts …”

“Then Linda has a lot to do for her university classes,” Magnus said, throwing a glance at Linda. “And I’m very busy with a mountain of patient files.”

Anna had to keep herself from grinning. But listen you will, she thought, oh, you will, despite all your efforts to melt into the background. Well, go ahead and listen …

“We got something important, too,” Micha said. “We’re going to hear the next part of a certain fairy tale …”

Anna led the two of them up to her room. All you could see from the window now was a strange and distant memory of the garden. The roses had completely disappeared under the snow, and a single lonely robin was waiting for Magnus on top of the birdhouse.

They sat on the floor with their backs against the big bookshelf, watching the snowflakes gently floating down from the sky outside, and Abel said, “Let’s see … the fairy tale … In the fairy tale, the little queen and her crew are just now starting to walk over the ice. The ice is smooth and wide, lying beneath the snow like a secret thought. But at the shore of the murderer’s island, the waves have piled the ice floes on top of each other. The secret thought had broken into big splinters, interlinking with each other and forming strange figures you couldn’t take apart, couldn’t sort, like a puzzle or a riddle.”

He put one arm around Micha and then, after a moment’s hesitation, one around Anna, and, although it was quite uncomfortable, Anna left the arm there. “It was difficult to walk over the ice. They kept slipping, losing their balance, falling, standing up again, walking on. When the ship had shrunk to the size of a child’s toy behind them and then become nothing more than a tiny green spot, they stopped again and looked through the binoculars, one after another. It had started to snow.

“‘Aren’t those our pursuers over there?’ the asking man asked.

“‘Under the beeches, where the anemones bloom in spring,’ the answering man answered, and the rose girl had the distinct feeling she’d heard that answer before. Possibly, she thought, the pool of answers was limited. There are fewer answers in the world than questions, and if you ask me now why that is so, I must tell you that there is no answer to that question.’

“The little queen saw their pursuers had reached the green ship. The black ship was also stuck in the ice, and now the fat diamond eater and the two haters were on foot as well. But there was another person with them, a young woman who had pulled her blond hair back in a very serious, grave way … like a teacher. She was wearing teacher’s glasses.

“‘Who’s that?’ the little queen wanted to know and held the binoculars down to the golden eyes of the dog.

“‘That’s the gem cutter,’ the dog answered. ‘Do you see the tools sticking out of her coat pocket? Take good care, little queen; the gem cutter, too, wants to own your diamond heart. She wants to grind and polish and form it after her own ideas. But if she manages to do that, you won’t recognize your own heart …’

“‘Look! There!’ the little queen exclaimed. ‘They are climbing aboard our ship! Do they think we’re still there?’

“But shortly after that, from the deck of the green ship, a colorful balloon drifted up into the cold air. A gondola hung beneath it, a gondola designed only for emergencies, and in the gondola, sat the two haters and the diamond eater.

“‘They’re fleeing!’ the little queen said and started to dance in the snow, jumping up and down happily. ‘They’re afraid of the endless ice! Look, the wind is blowing them away from us! They gave up! I guess they will return to their own islands!’

“‘They will,’ the lighthouse keeper said gravely, ‘and I can tell you why. They don’t think we’ll make it. They think the diamond is lost anyway, lost in the eternal ice of this story. There’s only one person who believes that the diamond will survive. One single person who is not aboard the gondola.’

“‘The cutter,’ whispered the rose girl.

“The silver-gray dog nodded. ‘She will keep following us,’ he said. ‘We should hurry.’

“That was when the rose girl remembered something. She reached into her backpack and took out a pair of skates. And then another pair and another pair … the whole backpack had been full of skates.

“Only there weren’t any skates for the blind white cat. ‘And all the better,’ said the cat. ‘Cats are not made for ice-skating. It’s much too undignified. Who’s going to carry me?’

“The asking man asked the answering man if he would like to take turns carrying the cat, and the answering man answered: ‘In the box on top of the bathroom cupboard.’ Another answer, the rose girl thought, that she had heard already.

“So they started skating, and the gently falling snow covered their traces. The silver-gray dog was running next to them, on foot. When he had tried to skate, his four legs had gotten into such confusion that he almost couldn’t sort them out again. And any way, he preferred being a tragic character as opposed to a comic one.

“They skated over the ice for a long time; they skated a long way; they skated through a snowstorm, holding onto each other so as not to get separated. They skated through clear weather and drank hot chocolate from a thermos the rose girl had found in her backpack. After that, the backpack was empty and she wanted to leave it behind, but the silver-gray dog shook his head. ‘An empty backpack would be a trace,’ he said. ‘And all our traces must be wiped out so the cutter can’t find us.’

“And so when the snow had stopped falling and covering their traces, they wiped them out very thoroughly themselves. Still, every time they looked back through the lighthouse keeper’s binoculars, there was a tiny, stubborn figure following them with jewel-cutting tools sticking out of her coat pockets. The cutter. She didn’t seem to have binoculars of her own. So how did she know the right way?

“‘Let’s wait for her!’ the little queen begged. ‘Maybe she’s cold. Maybe she’s afraid of being on the ice all by herself. She is only one, and we are many …’

“‘If she finds us, she will be more than one,’ the silver-gray dog said. ‘Little queen, haven’t I told you about the ocean riders?’

“‘Never,’ answered the little queen. ‘Mrs. Margaret, do you know about the ocean riders?’

“Mrs. Margaret shook her head and lifted her arms, patterned with white and blue flowers, helplessly.

“‘But me, I know about them,’ the lighthouse keeper said. ‘I saw them race by from my window up there in the lighthouse once; I saw them on their horses. Their horses are green like sea grass and white like shells and as fast as the night. They gallop over the water; they fly over the ice. The ocean riders guard the seven seas and see to it that everything is in order there. They never sleep, and when they’re called for, they follow the call … over the waves, through the white foam, through the storm …’

“‘Yes,’ the silver-gray dog said, and he bared his teeth when he said this. ‘Yes, they see to it that everything is in order on the seven seas. But what order means, what the rules are, what is right and what is wrong … that is decided by the ones paying the ocean riders. The red hunter has been paying them, the diamond trader has been paying them, and the gem cutter is paying them as well. But us, little queen, we have never paid them. What could we have paid them with? An apple from the garden on your island?’

“‘A splinter of the diamond,’ the white cat remarked, stifling a yawn, and the little queen started, frightened.

“‘But if we had paid them with a splinter of my heart, my heart would have a missing piece!’ she exclaimed. ‘And I …’

“‘Don’t worry, little queen,’ said the silver-gray dog. ‘Nobody’s going to break a splinter off your heart. For the ocean riders, traveling over the ice is forbidden, and fleeing is against their law. As long as the cutter doesn’t call them, you have nothing to fear. And she will only call them when she is absolutely sure that she’s following the right wanderers. When she’s caught up with us.’

“They skated on all day long. When evening came, the distance between the cutter and them had grown smaller. She wasn’t near enough yet, but just the same, she was much too near.

“‘Could I borrow the binoculars again, please?’ the rose girl asked, but the lighthouse keeper said that he had misplaced them somewhere and couldn’t find them.

“‘I’ve got pretty good eyes,’ the silver-gray dog growled. ‘I don’t need binoculars.’ He narrowed his golden eyes and stared a hole into the thickening dark. ‘All day long … I wasn’t sure whether I was only imagining it, but now I’m sure … red threads. We’re all wearing red coats. One of us has left red threads in the white snow to show the cutter the way. One of us is a traitor.’”

Abel fell silent.

“And? Who is it?” Micha asked, out of breath. He shrugged. “I don’t know.”

“It can’t be the cat,” Micha said. “She doesn’t have a red coat, only her fur. Or do you think … she might have pulled some threads out of someone else’s coat? She’s probably got sharp claws … The silver-gray dog can’t be the traitor either, for the same reason. And he was the one to discover the thing …”

“The asking man and the answering man are too dumb,” Anna said. “And apart from that, they’re just made up.”

Abel lifted his arms. “But it’s all made up!”

“No,” said Anna. “No. That’s not true. There are only two people who could be the traitor. The lighthouse keeper … and the rose girl.”

Abel stood up. “We’ll see,” he said. “We’ll see what happens and how the story goes on. I can’t tell you yet. I guess it’s going to be sometime till our laundry is dry, even with the dryer … tell me, what would you be doing now … if we weren’t here?”

She thought. “I’m afraid I’d be studying. What would you be doing if you were at home?”

He smiled. “Studying, I’m afraid.”

“You can have my desk,” Anna said. “I’ll sit on the bed with my books. I do that a lot because it’s more comfortable … we should really be doing something to prepare for final exams. They won’t just take themselves. Not really anyway.”

“I’m really lucky that I don’t have finals,” said Micha. “I’ll go downstairs and see what Linda’s doing.”

“Linda,” Abel repeated when Micha had left to hop down the wooden stairs. “Linda. So she’s already on a first-name basis with your mother. Like she’s known her for years.”

“I think,” Anna said, “I think … Linda always wanted a second child, you know. Another child she’d watch grow up and keep safe …”

Piano notes drifted up from the living room, single notes without a real tune; someone was just seeing what happened if she touched the keys. And between the notes, you could hear Micha’s and Linda’s voices.

“Damn finals.” Anna gathered her books on her bed. For a moment she thought that there were a hundred things she’d prefer to be doing right now, but then, when she looked up from her book, she thought that, actually, everything was as it should be: Abel was sitting at her desk, his head bent over a different book, lost in what he was reading, and it looked as if he belonged there. They had slipped into a surreal kind of everyday life: Anna was on her bed, and he was at the desk; they were studying for exams, like a thousand other people in Germany were doing. She smiled and read on, marked lines, words, passages of text; she tried to build rooms in her brain, create drawers, file facts. A safe and absolutely normal occupation … miles away from a dark boathouse.

The piano downstairs had fallen silent; she heard the clatter of baking trays, and the smell of fresh cookies crept to her nose. Linda and Micha were working together in the kitchen.

At some point, Anna got up and walked over to the desk, stood behind Abel, put her hand on his back. He looked up and smiled.

“When I say to the moment flying …” she whispered the words from Faust, putting her arms around him, “… linger a while—thou art so fair.”

“Yeah.”

“Are you still stuck on Faust? I’ve made my way to Herta Müller …”

“Everything I own,” Anna said, quoting, “I carry with me …” She looked at her arms still wrapped around him. “But it’s true, you know,” she added.

He understood, but he laughed away the romance of the moment. “You better not try to carry me,” he said. “I might be a bit heavy …”

“You could take a one-minute break from Herta and kiss me.”

“I could. But after that I’ve got to read on. Final exams …”

“Sure. Final exams …”

Later, Abel took another break, a longer one, but not to kiss Anna. He went outside to help Magnus shovel the driveway. She stood at the bathroom window, watching. It was odd to see them together: Magnus’s broad back in his ski jacket, Abel in his worn, old military parka, which was not made for this weather. They were shoveling equally fast, but not too fast. They weren’t in a hurry; this was not a competition. For the first time in days, Anna thought of Abel’s right hand. He was using it in a normal way again. So Rainer hadn’t broken the joint after all. Anna saw that they were talking. She wondered what about. Maybe about Magnus’s offer of a loan. Maybe about the snow.

“Linger a while,” she repeated, whispering, “thou art so fair …”

And she imagined how things could be later. It was stupid, but the picture just appeared in her mind: she saw Abel and Magnus shoveling snow together … in twenty years, in thirty. Magnus had grown old, his broad back still strong but bent from time, his hair nearly white at the temples. And Abel … Abel was a different Abel, an adult one, one who was absolutely self-confident and didn’t let his eyes dart around the dining room at lunch, as if he were caught in a trap.

“Nonsense,” she whispered. “Thirty years? You don’t stay with the person you meet at seventeen … What kind of fairy tale are you living in, Anna Leemann?”

And still the picture seemed right.

“Look at that,” Linda said, stepping up behind her. “They do get along, after all.”

“There are fresh cookies!” Micha said and held a plate out to Anna. “And we have to stay. Linda just realized that the dryer is broken! Totally broken! We’ve already hung the clothes on the line in the basement … I’ve been standing on a chair helping … and tomorrow, everything will be dry for sure, but tonight we’re allowed to sleep here. What do you think of that?”

“I don’t know,” Anna said slowly as she turned toward Linda, “what Abel will think of that. Is the dryer really broken?”

Linda shrugged and nodded. Anna went down to the basement and tried to turn it on herself, but Linda and Micha were right. The machine was silent; it didn’t work. Anna unplugged the cord and plugged it in again—without success.

When she came back from the basement, Abel was brushing the snow off his parka while Micha was dancing around him, still balancing the plate of cookies, singing, “We’re staying, we’re staying, we’re staying overnight! We’re drying! We’re drying! We’re drying on the line!”

Abel lifted his arms defensively. “Will you stand still for a second?” he said. “Micha. We can’t stay overnight. We have our own home, and it’s not here. We can come back tomorrow and pick up the damn laundry then.”

“Damn is a word you’re not allowed to say,” Micha declared, folding her arms. “And did you look outside? It’s snowing again, and I’m sure there will be another storm! Please, Abel! Please!” She put down the plate on the floor and clung to his leg. “Please, please, please! Only this one night! I still want to play the piano a little bit and decorate the cookies and everything!”

“Do you have to go out tonight?” Anna asked in a low voice.

Abel covered his face in his hands. This time, he left them there longer, and she saw him try hard to make a decision. She actually thought she saw him curse silently behind his hands.

“I’ll just end up saying yes again,” he whispered. “I’ll end up saying yes to so many things, I’ll forget the difference between yes and no—and I’ll lose my mind.” He looked at Anna. “Keep my mind for me. See to it that nobody steals it. I might have to go out tonight. I don’t know yet.”

Was he waiting for a call? She didn’t ask. He was not an answerer after all. He was everything else. A seller of white cats’ fur. A storyteller. A stranger, still.

“You can sleep in the guest room,” she said. “The two of you. There are two beds.” And, in a much lower voice, “The key is in the door at night, inside. Take it with you so you can get back in. You’re not a prisoner. This is not a trap … just a broken dryer.”

• • •

And then they sat at dinner like one big family. The lamplight was warm, and the kitchen smelled of potato casserole. And Micha talked with her mouth full about how she had baked cookies and how she could almost play the piano already.

And Linda smiled. And Abel wasn’t fidgeting in his chair like he had been at lunch. Once, Anna took his hand under the table and pressed it very quickly, and he pressed back.

“Abel can make potato casserole, too,” Micha said and put her fork down. “He can do anything … pancakes and pasta and cake. Even birthday cake. With candles on top. We’ll have one pretty soon and maybe with strawberries because it’s nearly spring. Or we can have frozen strawberries. Abel can make strawberry cake!”

“He seems to be a real saint, that brother of yours,” Magnus said drily.

The conversation stopped.

“What’s that supposed to mean?” Anna hissed. “Why the sarcasm?”

“What’s sarcasm?” asked Micha.

“Sarcasm is when someone says the opposite of what he means,” Abel said in a low voice. “So, in other words, I’m no saint. I’m the opposite of a saint. He’s right. And the opposite of a saint doesn’t belong here, I guess …” He pushed back his chair, his hands on the edge of the table, and Anna put her hand on his.