Five Tuesdays in Winter(29)

Hanne read to them about the ducks, then the ants. Then a story about a little boy in the city who collected animals on the roof without his parents knowing.

“I have a barn. Here. With lots of animals,” the girl said when that story was finished. “Do you want to have a look?”

“Yes, I do,” Hanne said.

“Here, here it is!” a boy said.

“I want to show her!”

“Here, look at the big fat cow!”

“I want to show her!” The little voice broke.

“You show to me, Muffin.” Muffin? Was that really her name? “I close my eyes and you take me.”

Close your eyes, Hanne used to say to her, I need to show you something special. How many times had she led a blind Oda or a blind Fritz by the hand into another room or across a playground? Like we were horses, Oda thought now.

“Okay, this way, this way,” the little girl cooed. “Okay, turn in here.” Their voices dwindled in the far room and Oda went back downstairs.

Hanne would have children someday. She would have her own family and these future people were the ones she would give her heart and her affection to. Oda would be the old lady they were forced to see on holidays then laugh about in the car on the way home. This right now was probably the closest they would ever be.

Oda tried to sit in her chair, but it wasn’t like when Hanne went riding. She could hear footsteps, chatter, laughter. She could distinguish Hanne’s deeper, slower voice from the children’s, though she could not understand what they were saying. At the little girl’s age, Hanne had loved cinnamon toast.

She went downstairs. Breakfast was over, the kitchen cleaned up. The innkeeper was gone, perhaps off on his bike. She cut four slices of her own bread, toasted and buttered them. In a cupboard over the stove she found cinnamon and mixed it with a few packets of sugar from a table in the dining room and shook the mixture onto the toast. She brought the slices on a plate up to the third floor.

“These smell good,” Hanne said.

It was an apartment up here, with a living room and two bedrooms and light coming through many large windows. Hanne led her into a little galley kitchen. If she and Hanne ever came back here, this was the place to rent. But of course they would never come back.

“Yummy!” the older boy said. “Thank you for such a splendid treat.” It was hard to believe this was the miscreant at the breakfast table each morning.

“Is it going all right, Hanne?” she asked in German.

Hanne nodded. Oda could tell she didn’t want her to break the spell of English. But Oda didn’t want to reveal to her or these children her rusty recall or her poor accent— she didn’t have Hanne’s musical ear—so she left.

She tidied their room a bit and sat back down in the chair with her book. She felt something warm on her feet. It was the sun, two squares of it lying across the floor. Out on the water it began to dance.

The Australians didn’t come back at eleven thirty. Or twelve. At twelve fifteen she heard the phone ring up there, but she couldn’t hear any conversation. Perhaps Hanne would need help making their lunch. Perhaps they would need some of her bread. Halfway up the stairs she heard the banging of the first morning. She guessed it was the big fat cow.

“Now it’s twelve nineteen!” It was the older boy.

“Stop. My mother is below.”

He didn’t stop. “I don’t have to do anything you say. You haven’t even babysitted before.”

“I did.”

“No, you haven’t. I heard your mum say.”

“She doesn’t know. I did before.”

“Where. Are. My. Parents?” He gave a whack of the cow with each word.

The two other children were fighting over something.

“Stop it you both. Stop. Muffin has first, then you.”

“She’s had it all morning!”

“Where. Are. My. Parents?”

“You just like her because she’s a girl. All girls everywhere are like that. They hate boys.”

“I don’t know where they are.”

The banging grew louder. The children were screaming to be heard above it. Hanne tried to placate them one at a time with no success. Oda knocked but no one heard.

“Stop it! You must stop!” Hanne was yelling, too, now. “I will tell if you stop.”

They stopped.

“Come sit,” she said. “I have to tell you something I do not want to tell you.”

Oda’s insides went cold.

The children fought about who would sit where on the sofa. Above the arguing Hanne said, “Your mami and papi, they have died.”

“No, they have not.”

“Yes, they have.”

“Like animals die?” the little girl said in a squeak.

“You’re lying,” the older boy said.

“The phone call,” Hanne said.

“You said it was the innkeeper calling about our grocery order.”

“I didn’t know how you to tell.” Her English was breaking down.

“They went to the caves. Just for a little while.” His voice grew higher and higher.

“They have a bad guide who tooks them wrong. Too much water.”

“They drowned in a cave?”

“Yes.”