“The groceries were delivered by the store’s owner today,” she said.
There was something in her voice that made me turn around.
“Is that odd?” I asked, worry filling my limbs. Had someone seen me and grown suspicious? Was the house being watched?
“Not really,” she said, and slipped something into the pocket of my cardigan sweater before taking the ladle from me and grabbing a bowl.
I watched as she placed the bowl and a spoon on a tray, followed by a small, blue ceramic teapot, a matching cup and saucer, and a thin slice of bread. She picked up the tray, glanced down at my pocket, and then disappeared out the kitchen door.
Taking a breath, I sank into one of the kitchen chairs and reached inside my pocket, pulling out a folded scrap of paper.
4 compromised, it read.Exit tomorrow. 2pm sharp. Same place as drop.
I exhaled. The grocer had delivered a note from Max. I only had to survive one more night here and then I could leave. But what would Max say about me going to Berlin? Would he help me? Or would he insist I give up my plan and take me back to England?
While I contemplated an argument for taking me to see my sister, the kitchen door swung back open, causing me to jump.
“She wants to see you,” Paulina said, the look on her face apologetic.
“Why?” I asked.
Paulina shook her head. “She didn’t say and...”
“You couldn’t ask,” I said, nodding. “I know. It’s okay.”
I got up from the table and handed her the paper. “I have to leave tomorrow or I may be stuck here with no way out.”
A few minutes later I was standing outside my mother’s darkened room, the sour scent of dying seeping into the hall, while my stomach threatened to give and my knees buckle.
“Gisela,” my mother said.
Her voice was a ragged whisper that made my body go cold beneath the layers of clothes.
“Yes?” I said.
“Come.”
When I was a girl I was never allowed in my parents’ room. It was a grown-up room, I was told time and time again. Not a room for little girls with sticky fingers and dirty shoes. I’d been confused by this, as I was never sticky and my shoes checked constantly. God forbid I track in a speck of dirt. I remember watching guests enter for a party once and watching as Paulina and our other servants allowed them in without checking the bottoms of their shoes for grit. Did only a child’s shoes attract such things? Regardless, my parents’ bedroom remained a mystery to me much of my life. I got glimpses now and again as I passed by and one or the other of them came in or out, but I wasn’t to knock if I wanted to talk to them. I was to ask my nanny and she would relay any messages or inquiries I might have. What I did see in those brief moments though made me think, at least when I was very small, that my mother was a princess, making my father, of course, a prince.
Gleaming wallpaper, a four-poster bed with decadent covers that changed for each season, luminous curtains, and a clean, almost effervescent scent. Like fresh air with champagne bubbles floating through.
I stepped inside the room and gagged as the smell intensified. Urine, sharp and putrid. Sweat. And something else that nearly made me gag. I assumed it was the festering lesion Paulina had told me about.
“Do you need Paulina?” I asked, standing in the doorway, unable to take a step closer, the smell like a wall.
“No. You’re the nurse. You can help me.”
“What do you need?” I asked, praying it was merely a glass of water. Perhaps a cold cloth on her forehead.
“I’ve soiled myself. I need you to clean it up. Me, and the bed.”
“I think Paulina is more suited—”
“Help me, or when that sniveling soldier boy with the greedy eyes comes, I’ll tell him you’re an American spy.”
I sucked in a breath. My mother was horrible in a great many ways, but I’d never once considered she’d willingly put my life at risk.
Steeling myself, I moved toward the bed, the stench growing with every step, my stomach threatening to give.
