Wunderland(121)

The address the operator had given her is on a somewhat quiet pocket of street; a sleek, modern complex with a white-gloved doorman standing behind a security desk. Stepping inside, Ava feels acutely aware of her disheveled appearance.

“Can I help you?” the doorman asks, his expression opaque.

She clears her throat. “I’m looking for Renate Bauer.”

“Is Dr. Bauer expecting you, Miss…?”

Doctor? Ava’s heart skips a beat. Had Renate followed in her mother’s footsteps? “Ava,” she says, not offering her last name, just in case. “And no. Or, not exactly. But I believe she’ll want to see me. I have something of hers that I am trying to deliver.”

“You can leave it here for her,” he says, pointing to a pile of other correspondences and packages.

“I’d rather not,” says Ava quickly. “It’s personal. Private.”

He looks her up and down, his lips tightening slightly. Then he nods. “Just a moment, then.”

Picking up his phone, he punches in a short number and waits. Then he shakes his head and sets the phone back down on the receiver. “The doctor doesn’t appear to be in right now.”

The letdown feels like a physical drop. Ava steadies herself, swallows.

“Can you tell me if a young girl named Sophie has stopped by in the last hour?”

“Not on my watch. I’ve been here since nine.”

“All right,” she manages. “I’ll guess I’ll just wait, then.”

And before he has a chance to say otherwise she has planted herself in a sumptuous leather armchair, beneath a chandelier that glimmers with a thousand rainbow-hued crystals shaped like tears.

She doesn’t know how long she sits there, bag clasped tightly in her lap, legs crossed against the air-conditioned chill. Only that at some point her exhaustion catches up with her, and then she is nodding off. And then she’s sitting on a train with Sophie. They’re in the dining car, and Ava is trying to pour them coffee. But somehow it keeps missing both their cups. “I am sorry,” she keeps saying. “I’m so sorry. I don’t know what is wrong with me.”

“I don’t even know why you’re pouring it,” her daughter says, her voice sharply disdainful. “I don’t want any of that anyway. It’s disgusting.”

Ava glances down at the table to see that she’s been pouring not coffee, but dark red blood. It flows from the silver spout onto the white tablecloth, thick red stripes soaking into the fabric and dripping onto the floor.

“Oh my God,” she says, sickened. “Where is this from?”

“It’s from him.” Sophie points to one of the other tables, and Ava sees Ulrich Bergen slumped over the surface, blood pouring from a bullet wound in his head.

“Don’t you see,” Sophie shouts, leaping up. “You killed him. Just like you killed Oma. And you lied about it. You lie about everything. Everything!”

And then she’s turning and running off down the jolting aisle.

“Wait,” Ava tries to call. “Wait, sweetheart. Wait…”

“It’s too late.” The voice is chill, familiar: turning around, she sees Ilse, sitting where Sophie had just been, her eyes silvery and smug.

“It’s too late,” she says triumphantly. “You’ve missed your chance, just like you always do. You’ve missed it. Missed it…”

“Miss!”

Ava wakes with a start. Standing before her is the doorman, looking embarrassed. Behind him is an old woman with silvered hair and bright pink lipstick. She is wearing a green spring coat and a black beret, holding a bag from Shakespeare and Co.

“Yes,” says Ava, shaking her head groggily. “I’m so sorry.”

“You said you had something for Dr. Bauer?” He nods toward the woman.

“Yes. Oh, yes.” Stumbling to her feet, Ava clears her throat. “Dr. Bauer?” she asks.

“Yes.” The woman smiles, looking politely puzzled. The lines in her face are deep and intricately intersecting, like the folds in a soft, often-folded map.

Ava finds herself laughing: with relief, with shock. With sheer joy. The woman looks alarmed.

“I’m sorry,” she says. “Do I know you?”

“No.” Ava takes a deep breath. “But I’m your niece.”





19.


    Ava


1989

Upstairs, she sits on a miniaturized couch that is almost as overstuffed as the room’s riotous bookshelves. Covering three walls, Renate Bauer’s book collection looks like the setting for some antiquarian whodunit: weathered spines of varying hues, sizes, and degrees of wear packed and piled together so tightly that the effect is one of book-patterned wallpaper. Even the air smells bookish: like lavender and old paper, tinged by a faint hint of strong coffee.

“Do you want ice in your water?” calls Renate Bauer from her kitchen.

“Only if it’s no bother,” Ava calls back. And then: “I’m so sorry, really. I haven’t eaten or really drunk much today—I suppose I’m dehydrated. I’ve been running around trying to find my daughter, who ran out rather angry with me…” She trails off, realizing she must seem even more of a lunatic than she had downstairs, even before she (quite literally) fainted.