Wunderland(116)

“What was in the box, by the way? What are all these?”

Glancing up again, Ava sees with dismay that Sophie’s attention has indeed shifted from the laundry to the open carton and scattered letters.

“Nothing,” she says quickly. Shit. “Well, not nothing. But nothing you need to worry about.”

She takes a step back toward the bed. But already it’s too late: Sophie has scooped a handful of the envelopes up off the coverlet. “Renate Bauer,” she reads. “Who’s that?”

“I have no idea.” Ava fights to keep her voice even. What she wants to do is to leap across the room, to snatch the pages from her daughter’s grasp as she’d once snatched dangerous items from her chubby toddler fists (topless bottles of baby aspirin; dusty ant traps; on one heart-stopping occasion an X-acto knife, capped but potentially lethal). But it’s as though gravity has trebled its grip on her body.

“163 Eldridge,” Sophie is reading. “That’s, like, a couple blocks away, right?” She is turning the top envelope over in her hands now. When she registers the return address her eyes narrow.

“They’re from Oma,” she says, a new intensity in her voice.

The word Oma seems to break Ava’s paralysis: she begins making her way back across the room. “Yes.”

“If they’re for Renate Bauer, why are they here?”

“I don’t know.” Reaching the bed, Ava holds out her hand. “Can I have those, please?”

Ignoring the gesture, her daughter continues shuffling through the papery stack. Then she stops again, and Ava sees to her horror that she is studying Bernard Frankel’s note. “Who’s…”

“I said give them.” Leaning across the bed, Ava rips the paper and envelopes from Sophie’s hands.

Her daughter jerks back as though she’s been slapped. “What the hell, Mom?” Stunned, Sophie stares at her mother with her grandmother’s ice-blue eyes. “What is wrong with you today?”

“I’m sorry.” Breathing heavily, Ava begins gathering the envelopes back up again. An ocean seems to be roaring in her ears. “I just—you weren’t listening. But I’m sorry.”

Her daughter is still staring at her now, her lips in a tight, pale line, her eyes narrowed the way they are when she works out math problems.

“LLP,” she says. What does that mean?”

Ava takes a deep breath. “It’s how lawyers sign things.”

“Why is Oma’s lawyer writing you?” Sophie asks slowly.

Standing up fully, Ava faces her daughter, the letters pressed against her chest. She can’t think of a single thing to say.

Sophie’s blue gaze hardens. “Read me the note,” she says.

“What?”

“Read me the lawyer’s note.”

“It’s in German,” says Ava, stalling.

“So translate it.”

“There’s really no need…”

“Read it,” Sophie repeats, in a low, even voice that—just like her late grandmother’s—carries ten times the power of any shout.

Ava hesitates. Then, trapped, she sinks back onto the bed. Clearing her throat, she begins reading, aware that her voice is trembling. “Dear Ms. von Fischer: As your mother’s lawyer and designated executor of her estate, I regret to inform you that your mother—Ilse Maria von Fischer—passed away on the twelfth of April, after a long battle with uterine cancer…

“In April?” Sophie interrupts, incredulous. “Oma died last month?”

“Yes.”

“But…” Her daughter has both hands pressed to her forehead. “But you told me she died in a car crash. When I was a baby.”

“I know I did.”

Outside on the window ledge a mourning dove chooses the moment to release its throaty warble. Ava desperately wishes she and the bird could trade places; that she could sing her bereavement and take flight.

“So…I’ve had a grandmother?” Sophie asks, at last. “For my whole life, until just now?”

The tremble in her young voice is so audible, so devastated that for a moment Ava wants nothing more than to pull the girl into her lap; something she’d done so often, so naturally in years past. (When was the last time? When had Sophie stopped allowing it?)

“There were reasons,” she says desperately. “I can explain. I just…”

But her daughter cuts her off. “I don’t have time now.” Her tone is stony, her face closed like a book. “I have to go. I have to go meet Erica.”

“This is more important than your friends,” says Ava.

“Oh, really?” Her daughter laughs a short laugh that sounds more like a sob. “At least my friends don’t lie to me.”

“Sophie!” Ava races after her. “I wasn’t lying. Not really. I was only trying to protect you.”

“Protecting me by lying to me?” Sophie’s hand is already on the doorknob. “You’ve got a funny idea of protection. Then again, I don’t know why I’m surprised by that.”

Ava stops, stung. “What is that supposed to mean?”

“Nothing. I don’t want to talk about it.” And stepping into the hallway, Sophie slams the door in her wake, leaving Ava frozen in place.