“My contact...” I said and felt my eyes fill with tears.
She nodded silently and stepped back so I could enter.
“I didn’t know where else to go,” I said. “The man who brought me here... I have no way of getting word to him without the contact at the safe house. I don’t know where he is.”
Paulina clasped her hands in front of her, twisting her fingers, her eyes seeming to search the air around me for answers.
She shook her head and crossed her arms over her chest.
“If you stay here, I’ll have to tell her. I can’t hide you. The soldier that comes, he is thorough. A right greedy bastard of a man just biding his time for your mother to pass. I’m positive he counts the silverware each time he comes to make sure I haven’t hidden any away. He will find you. And when he does...”
“We’ll all be in danger,” I said.
But who was to say my mother wouldn’t throw me out? Or tell the soldier about me herself. Her traitor daughter who had faked her death and hid for the past ten years. Her eldest daughter, who would both threaten his claim to the estate’s belongings—and Catrin’s.
But what was my other option? To sleep on the street? To find a closet somewhere in the lobby to hide in? What if a resident found me? They would surely turn me in. And what if Catrin came back unexpectedly in the next two days?
I decided it was worth the risk.
“Tell her,” I said.
32
I sat atthe kitchen table, my hands wrapped around a warm cup of tea Paulina had made me, my stomach queasy from the anticipation of what she would come to tell me after speaking with my mother.
The door swung open and I jumped, spilling tea on my fingers and the table. But I barely noticed, my eyes glued to Paulina’s.
“She will see you,” she said, the crease between her brows deep with concern.
“Was she...surprised?” I asked. “That I’m alive? That I’m here?”
“If she was, she didn’t show it.”
I nodded. My mother had always been a master at keeping emotion from her face. There were times I’d found it impressive, like when I knew she was disgusted by someone, or angry. The way she smoothed away any expression, her features taking on a serene, if not scarily calm demeanor, was remarkable. I imagined the shock of my appearance was taken in with barely the blink of a pale blue eye.
I wiped the spilled tea with a napkin and got to my feet.
“She’s in her room?” I asked.
“She never leaves it.”
As I passed her, Paulina squeezed my hand.
“Don’t let her appearance fool you,” she said. “She is unchanged, fräulein. And possibly worse.”
The banister was smooth beneath my palm and I remembered my hand, much smaller, running over its gleaming wood in what seemed a lifetime ago.
I trod lightly, each step closer filling me more and more with dread. What had I been thinking coming here? And would it be worth it?
But an image of Catrin the day I left filled my mind and I knew there was only one answer.
Yes.
At the top of the stairs I stopped, staring up at the patched hole in the ceiling as I steeled myself for whatever was about to happen next.
Down the long hall I’d avoided as much as possible when I was a child, I stared at the paintings hanging on the walls, the expensive rug beneath my feet, and the vases and lamps and sculptures collected from my parents’ travels around the world.
At the threshold of my mother’s bedroom, I stopped. The door was open, the room beyond dark. The heavy curtains that were usually tied back during the day, offering the same sprawling view of the city that one got from the main sitting room, were closed, the only light coming from a small gap that barely illuminated the space.
