A Small Fortune (19 page)

Thirty million dollars in dividends alone.

I might be able to comprehend several million. It doesn’t seem so outrageous when I think of what the average house is worth in my own neighborhood. Or college tuition for kids and grandkids. But thirty million? The number doesn’t quite register. Not even after I’m fully conscious. Not even after I’m pretending relief upon seeing my husband there to help. Not even after walking out the door on his arm as he steadies me, and then continues to hold tight after it’s clear I can walk on my own. What registers is that my backpack is on my back and I’m clutching the folder in my hand. No one has taken these things from me.

When we reach the corner I stop and feign weakness. Jonathon’s car is against the curb, the door already open, a strange man at the wheel. Jonathon keeps a tight grip on my arm. He’s close enough for me to smell his unwashed skin. It smells of our bed at home, a place that until this moment I’ve forgotten existed. We’re husband and wife. We’re complete strangers. We’re enemies. Has he spoken to me yet? I can’t remember hearing his words inside the bank. Perhaps I blocked them out. No, no, he’s said something, I remember now. “She isn’t well. She didn’t bring her medication. I apologize.”

A look exchanged between Jonathon and Erika. I saw it through the strings of my hair. Erika bore witness to how crazy I am. I flipped the hair from my face and exchanged my own look with Erika, one of concern, one that said I am a premium client and I will need your assistance, a look I’m sure holds much more weight.

Out on the sidewalk Jonathon speaks through clenched teeth. “Give me the folder, Cee.”

I clutch it to my chest.

“I need you to get in the car.”

“All right,” I say.

The last thing I’m going to do is get into a car again with someone I don’t know, even if that someone happens to be my husband.

I place my feet firmly apart, knees bent.

“Ready to go now?” he says.

“Yes. As a matter of fact I am.”

I jab my elbow sharply into his gut, and he sinks forward with a groan.

I bolt across the street, narrowly missing the oncoming Strassenbahn, which blares its horn long and hard, drawing everyone’s attention to Jonathon doubled over in his trench coat.

I stop and stuff the folder into the backpack. Beneath the bottom of the moving train I see the man from the car run to Jonathon’s side. Jonathon remains hunched over with his hands on his knees as more and more legs gather around him. When the train passes I face him from across the street, my scarf tied neatly around my neck.

Jonathon and the man start after me.

I flee for what I know will be the very last time.

That night I barely sleep. I’m still unsure of my next move, still feeling that wherever I go, Jonathon is sure to find me. I can’t just remove Oliver from the safety of Seth’s home without a solid plan of what to do next. I’m rich beyond anything I could have wildly imagined, but it isn’t as easy as paying my way back to Portland. For all I know there’s a warrant out for my arrest.

I keep my backpack ready at my side. By morning there’s no sign of Jonathon. I skip breakfast and catch the train to the nearest Internet café.

An e-mail from Willow—

I tried not to read what he sent but then curiosity got the best of me. Celia. You lucky girl. I look forward to the day when we can sit down over coffee and you can tell me what sort of witchcraft you’re practicing so I can learn to cast the same kind of spells.

Anyway, what have you discovered? Btw, are you writing all of this down? You should. It would make a bestseller some day.

Nothing new here. I haven’t seen Benicio all day. He didn’t answer when I took him breakfast this morning. I assume he’s as exhausted as you were when I first saw you. I’ll go check on him later.

xo,

Willow

One from Oliver—

Dad finally stopped texting. Seth and I just got home a few hours ago. He had me stocking books all day at his store! Actually I didn’t mind. His store is pretty awesome. It’s an old house, kind of like ours, turned into a bookstore with a little coffee shop and a small selection of vinyl records. The place is super busy all day. He’s paying me minimum wage so I guess I just started my first job. Anyway, what am I supposed to do about school? WHEN ARE YOU COMING? Seth wants to know, too, but he told me to tell you it’s not because there’s a problem, just because he wants to know if you’re OK. Gotta go. We’re jamming again. Did you know Seth has two daughters? They’re like nine and ten and they already play bass and guitar
.

All these ordinary words, both his and Willow’s, are poetry to my heart. There’s something so astoundingly beautiful in the unexceptional moments of their lives.

Oliver,

I’m so happy things are going well at Seth’s. He’s a good man. I’ve never met his wife, but I’m sure she must be extraordinary if he chose her.

It won’t be long now before I see you, though from the sound of things you might not want me interfering with the good time you’re having. We will figure something out about school. Don’t worry. Please give my love to Seth and take a big hug for yourself.

Always,

Mom

And then—

Willow,

So much to tell, so little time. Everything under control. Details to come soon as they are ever changing.

xo,

Celia

Ps. thank you so much for letting me know about Benicio. But I think you got it backward. He’s the one who casts the spells, not me.

I’m looking for inspiration. For someone to tell me what to do next. I pedal uphill on a borrowed bicycle from the pension. It isn’t easy, especially after running through town on my bad leg. What gets me up the hill is the boost of adrenaline coursing though my veins.

A large, boxy white building pops into view on the hillside above me. Until then it’s been obscured through the trees and hills. Hagen Pharmaceuticals. I’m close enough now to see Hagen Haus, too, and the trail that once led my great-grandfather to his work. A trail that must have burned every time Annaliese laid eyes on it.

I park the bike outside Hagen Haus, a quintessential Swiss chalet with red begonias exploding from window boxes. I check behind me, as I’ve done all the way up the hill. The single lane slopes down toward Zürichsee. I haven’t seen another soul, but the feeling of being followed weighs heavily on the air.

I step inside my great-grandparents’ home and am smacked with a strange sense of bewilderment. I become disoriented, as if experiencing the ill effects of time travel. The laws of nature have been set adrift and it takes a moment to get my bearings.

A blonde woman close to my own age helps stabilize things by crossing the room to greet me. She speaks little English. I set several euros on the counter for the entrance fee. I don’t have a lot of time. I tell her straight away that I’m Annaliese’s great-granddaughter. I tell her of my mother and grandmother, of the letters that revealed all that’s been hidden from me until now.

The woman cocks her head. And then her eyes grow large and round.

“
Mein Gott
,” she says. “
Wir sind verwandt
!” We’re related!

She steps around the counter and embraces me inside an incredible hug. “Petra Seifert,” she introduces herself while searching my face and hair, my hands, which she holds inside her own. She says there are other cousins who look more like Annaliese than she herself does, though none so remarkably as me. “
Schau mal
.” She gestures to the photographs all over the walls and tells me to see for myself.

The sepia images are haunting. It’s as if someone has taken images of my face and superimposed them onto the bodies of women dressed in long petticoats and gowns, portraits taken at a fair.

“I must call my sister,” Petra tries in English. She picks up the phone and speaks quickly in a dialect I have trouble understanding. I get the gist of it. A granddaughter has come out of nowhere. Looking like the Geist of Annaliese.

Before long Petra and I have locked arms for my personal tour through the house. Upstairs is the desk, microscope, and chair Annaliese sat in while she worked on chemical compositions no one would ever see or use. “At least not in her lifetime,” Petra adds.

I take in the room. The simple white linens and glass doors leading onto a balcony with a view of Zürichsee and the Swiss Alps beyond. Annaliese would have begun her day rising from this bed to such magnificence. But I’m more interested in what Petra meant by
not in her lifetime
.

“Oh my dear, there is so much you don’t know,” she says in German. Several decades ago a chemist who was researching Annaliese’s papers came across something that the others thought insignificant. Some combination of properties, the purpose of which Annaliese had strangely never written down. This wasn’t like her. She was an excellent record keeper. For years historians wondered if the pages might have belonged to one of Walter’s assistants, but they were found with Annaliese’s and the handwriting was unmistakable. But what this particular researcher found when he matched Annaliese’s diaries to the time in which the papers seemed to have been written was that there was something troubling going on in her personal life, an issue with her husband, that they were trying to resolve in the bedroom.

My eyebrows shoot up.

“
Ja? Verstehst du?
”

I nod that yes, I do indeed understand.

Not long after Annaliese worked on this, Petra explains, it was discovered that arsenic was included in their cold remedy, and not long after that, Annaliese left Walter for America.

“Are you saying that all these years later Annaliese’s formula was used to make Viagra?”

Petra laughs. “
Genau
.” Exactly. “A woman before her time,” she says in English. And then she switches back to explain that Annaliese’s diaries clearly indicate that she was trying to help Walter as much as she was trying to help herself.

I can’t believe what I’m hearing.

“
Ja
,” Petra explains. She later wrote that she believed her husband’s inability to perform stemmed from his inability to tell the truth.

Herr Freymann meets me at the door.

“A visitor for you,” he says in German. A man waiting in the front room. He arrived not long after I peddled away.

I unbutton the pea coat, feeling as if I’ve just stuck my head inside a furnace. I unzip the top of my backpack and hold it down at my side.

Move, move
, I tell my feet. The Freymanns are in the house. I’m safe. I can handle whatever he has to give.

I round the corner to find my visitor sitting in the winged back chair directly facing me, his arms lining the rests, his ankles crossed on the floor. He’s dressed like a European, leather shoes and jeans, his jacket open, exposing the crisp white dress shirt against his lean torso.

His face comes alive when he sees me.

I don’t trust my legs to hold me. I can’t keep my bottom lip from trembling. “You clean up nicely,” I say, oddly, my voice unsteady, my eyes quickly filling with tears.

He stands, and the sunlight catches his amber eyes.

I lock the door to my room and brace my back against it.

“I took the first flight I could get out of Guadalajara just like you,” he says.

“How did you find me?”

“An e-mail from Willow when I got in.”

I slip off my jacket and toss it to a chair.

He takes my hand, and a ribbon of heat travels across my skin.

For a moment it seems all we can do is stare until we’re sure the other isn’t some kind of apparition born of all the yearning.

His hand shakes as he unwinds my scarf.

“Jonathon is here,” I say. “He tried to make me get in a car with him at the bank yesterday. He could turn up any second.”

“It’s quite possible.”

I grab his hand. “Why? What exactly is he planning?”

“I’ll tell you everything I know.”

“You lied to me.” I let go his hand.

He returns to my scarf, unwinding. “There were things I should have told you.” He drops my scarf to the floor. “I will tell you everything right here, right now if you want.”

He caresses my lip with his thumb. His eyes search my mouth. The bruises are nearly gone from his face. Only the small bump on his nose remains.

He slides his jacket from his shoulders and tosses it on the bed. “Do you want to sit down?”

“No.”

So many mistakes have been made. I’ve wanted to be so many things. Benicio, too. But we’ve failed, over and over. I’ve been lost in a fog of apathy and grief. He’s been trapped beneath the weight of decisions he can’t change.

What we need is a second chance.

I reach for him and he pulls me close. The days we’ve been deprived of one another have been like going without food or water. I’m starved for everything he has to give.

We devour one another on the bed, greedy and loud, our clothes snatched from our bodies as if by storm. I clutch his skin. I dig into the blanket when he slides down and spreads my legs and touches me with his tongue. I become aware of everything in the room, my senses heightened to the pulse of every living thing. I squeeze his hair as if through a dream.

When it’s over I lay my head on his chest, but every part of me is still making love to him, my breathing not yet calm. I gaze through the window as Freymanns’ sheep graze on the hillside like fluffs of white clouds floating against the green. Behind them mountains, the color of my eyes, tower like hulking guards.

“It was his plan for me to come here from the beginning, wasn’t it?” I say.

“Yes.”

“This is why you planted the seeds of Switzerland in my head.”

“Yes, but that was before…”

“Is anyone helping him?”

“Yes.”

“How many?”

“Two.”

“Please tell me it’s not the Freymanns.”

He laughs. “No. One is a doctor.”

I press my lips into his smooth chest, tasting the salt of his sweat.

“I’m sorry,” he says.

My eyes swell with tears.

He holds his lips to my hair and breathes deeply.

“Has he been watching me this whole time?” I ask. “Does he know where I am?”

“How did you find this place?” Benicio asks.

“The tourism counter in the train station.”

“All he’d have to do is show the guy your photograph. There’s no doubt he’d remember your face.”

“Easier than that. I told the guy who I was.”