Five Tuesdays in Winter(26)

He’d died with less than two thousand euros in the bank. She’d been certain there was another account somewhere— he’d mentioned wanting to set one up after Hanne was born—with savings for her. He’d trained to be a doctor, but instead of going into practice as he’d planned, he’d taken a postdoc residency with a hematologist he admired, which led to another in infectious diseases and another researching the typhus outbreak of 1847. He’d had so much curiosity. There was always the promise of a solid regular salary just ahead, one more year, one last itch scratched. Oda hadn’t minded, not really, not for a long time. She did the books for several of Fritz’s medical school friends who had started their own practices and that brought in some extra money. It also made her feel safe, going over his friends’ numbers. Fritz wasn’t earning that kind of money, but he could be. At any moment he could have an income like that. Instead he died. And there was no other bank account.

Or a life insurance policy—another thing she couldn’t quite believe. She sat in the office of the company where she had hers and asked the man to look again at his computer screen. She was sure they’d filled out the papers at the same time. Hadn’t they had a joint policy? Sometimes names get dropped, she explained to him. It had happened with the same computer program he was using. One of her clients had it. Could she have a look? She expected the man to rebuff her, but he let her come around his desk, seize the mouse, and click away. She explained what she was doing, where she was searching. She never found a policy in Fritz’s name, but a few days later she got a call from that insurance agent suggesting she apply for a full-time position that was opening up there. She was good at her job. She told people her story, the lack of a policy for her and her young daughter, and it moved them. It made them her customers.

Above her in the center of the ceiling a steady banging began, deliberate blows with a hard object against a bare floor. Footsteps. A voice that got louder—muffled words Oda could have understood had they been in German.

Hanne slept through the chaos, the banging, yelling, stomping. Finally they all went down for breakfast, clumping down the stairs for so long it sounded like a family of eighteen, not five. There wasn’t exactly quiet after—they made a racket in the dining room—but Oda was able to return to her book. The racing feeling was fading, disappearing. The words started to make sense.

Hanne rolled onto her back, then over again on her stomach, a sure sign she was coming out of sleep.

“All your page turning woke me up,” she said through her hair.

“It was the people upstairs. They were louder than a marching band for the past two hours.”

“I didn’t hear them. Just you. Can’t you lift the book up so the pages don’t drag against the sheet?”

“I do.”

“You don’t.”

“We need to get up. I don’t know when they stop serving.”

“I’m not hungry.”

“It comes with the room so you’ll eat now.” She never imagined she’d be using this tone on their vacation. “I’m going to take a shower,” she said, before Hanne claimed it. “You can take one after we eat.”

When she returned from the shower, Hanne was dressed. “You took so long. I’m starving.”

At breakfast, Oda threw out some ideas for the day. They could go to the beach or walk into town or out on the breakwater to the red-and-white-striped lighthouse they saw from the ferry. They could go to the public pool or hike up the hill in the center of the island. Hanne made a face after every idea. Oda would have liked to ask the innkeeper what other sullen, ungrateful twelve-year-olds did on the island to amuse themselves, but she feared he’d mention the horseback riding. She worried that even without her asking this he would mention it, so she let him deliver their food and coffee without making any eye contact or saying anything but thank you.

Oda had a clear view of the Australians across the dining room. It was a struggle to get all three children to stay in their seats. None of them could have been older than six, yet none was a baby you could strap down. The parents looked like tired zookeepers, not angry, just overwhelmed by the physical demands. He was a tall, skinny man with a thick batch of blond ringlets and a nose that came to a sharp pencil point. His wife was probably his age, early thirties, but could have passed as a teenager in her sari and long unbrushed hair. She looked like the older girls Oda remembered from school, the girls her brother had liked but could not get, who never had rides home and whose eyes were pink and slitty from smoking pot and whose lips were always red and puffed up, like they’d been kissing all day. The Australians’ children required so much of their attention that they were turned away from each other for most of the meal. But Oda caught one moment when he gave her a spoonful of something from a bowl, and he watched her reaction and smiled after she nodded that it was good.

“How are your eggs?” she asked Hanne.

“They’re okay.”

“Would you like to try mine?” She cut a corner of her waffle and added a strawberry to the fork.

Hanne looked horrified. “I know what waffles taste like.” After a few more bites of egg she said, “You’re being really weird, you know.”

Oda asked for a second cup of coffee, then followed the innkeeper back into the kitchen, startling him when he turned back around with the coffee pot. “I’m wondering if you have the name and number of the woman with the horses. For my daughter. For lessons.”