Wunderland(56)

Flinching slightly, Ava blinked.

Ilse stood in the door frame, her silhouette briefly featureless and black against the bright spill of electric light. As Ava’s eyes adjusted she saw her mother still had on her office clothes: the gray wool skirt and matching jacket she wore on days when she met with the magazine’s chief editor. The sensible midheeled pumps. The only clue that she hadn’t just walked in from work was the fact that her leather gloves were neatly folded on the front-hall bureau and her felt hat hung from the coatrack. As Ava set her own gloves and purse on the bureau, she felt Ilse’s icy gaze raking her back. Her motions unhurried and careful, Ava began undoing her jacket.

“Well?”

Loosening the last button, Ava shrugged free from her sleeves and hung the coat on the rack before turning to face her mother. “Well, what?”

“Your headmaster called me today. At work. He wanted to make sure that everything was all right, since it’s the third time in two months that I’ve excused you for doctor’s appointments.”

Ava allowed herself a small smile. “It’s very nice that he cares.”

Ilse’s face seemed to go a shade paler. “How dare you,” she hissed. “First you forge my signature. Then you come in at this hour—on a school night—reeking of cigarettes. After a day of God-only-knows-what. Have you no decency? None at all?”

Decency, Ava thought. But still, she didn’t speak. Pressing her lips together tightly, she picked up her purse and made her way toward the kitchen.

“Were you with Ulrich again?” Ilse was hot on her heels, her outrage fanned by Ava’s feigned ignorance of it. “You were, weren’t you,” Ilse continued. “I knew it. I told that man this would happen. How far have you gone with him, then? Dear God. Please tell me you haven’t gotten yourself pregnant.”

They had reached the kitchen now. Purse clutched beneath her arm, Ava took a mug from the cupboard, allowing herself a quick, longing glance at the little bottle of herbal digestif and the bigger one of sherry, the only alcohol Ilse kept in the house. Then she turned back to the sink, where she filled the mug with water and carried it to the kitchen table.

Placing the purse in front of her, she sank heavily into one of the kitchen chairs and folded her arms across her chest. Then, and only then, did she lift her eyes.

Ilse stood in the doorway, her gray eyes glassy in the stark kitchen light. Her arms were folded across her chest so tightly Ava could make out the rising muscles of her forearms beneath the fabric of her blouse.

“Well?” she prompted. “Are you?”

“Am I what?”

“Pregnant. Are you pregnant?”

Beneath the audible anger Ava sensed a new note: not just uncertainty, but actual fear. The realization made her shiver slightly, not from fear of her own, but from an unfamiliar and almost dizzying sense of power. Apart from one fleeting moment on the day Ilse fetched her from the orphanage, she couldn’t recall a single time when her mother had seemed afraid of anything. It was almost enough to make her want to simply say it. To say: Yes, I’m pregnant. Just to coax that tiny seed of trepidation into a full-fledged bloom of horror.

Instead she took a sip of water. “No. All we did was drive.”

Ilse’s pale brows lifted slightly. “Drive where? Drive how?”

“In Doktor Bergen’s car. To Berlin.”

“Doktor Bergen drove you to Berlin?”

“Not Doktor Bergen. Ulrich. Ulrich drove us.”

“Ulrich?” Ilse’s face tightened further. “But he isn’t old enough to drive unaccompanied. He doesn’t have his Führerschein.”

“He does now.” Ava shrugged, watching as comprehension dawned on her mother’s chiseled face. It was closely shadowed by disbelief.

“And Doktor Bergen,” she said tightly. “He knew of this expedition?”

Ava dropped her gaze to her mug. The water in it, slightly brown from the rust in the pipes, shivered slightly in response to some unseen vibration. It reminded her of the scene from Godzilla, King of the Monsters! when the giant lizard is closing in, still unseen.

“So let me repeat what you are saying.” Each of her mother’s words was barbed with fury now. “You forged my signature to skip Gymnasium for the third time in the last two months. You let a boy you aren’t supposed to be seeing unchaperoned, and who can’t legally drive, drive you out of the country, with falsified documents, in a car he’d stolen from his father. And you drove to Berlin—Berlin!—and back. In one day.” She gave a short laugh of disbelief. “My God, Ava. You’ve become a criminal! Right before my eyes!”

Ava jerked her head up. “I’m the criminal?” She felt it again now: the queasy stab of foreboding as she’d taken down the name of her father’s division in the East. The raw shock when she looked it up in the little downstairs library. “If I am,” she said bitterly, “it’s your own fault, isn’t it. You’re the one who gave me a criminal for a father.”

“Was?” Ilse blinked at her.

“My father,” Ava repeated. “I know what he did. I found out about it today. That’s why I went to Berlin.”

For a moment her mother simply stared at her.

“Your father was a soldier,” she said at last. “And you know nothing about him.”