by Susan Finlay
“That’s good news, right?”
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
MONIKA LEFT THE neighbor’s farm on the far side of the village of Senden, tired but feeling content, driving through town to get back to her own farm. She halted when she saw friends gathered in front of one of their houses. “We heard it was a boy,” one of the women said.
Seems word always spreads quickly, Monika mused. “Yes, Herr Schmidt was delighted.” Though she had been glad to help her friends, Otto and Anna Schmidt, deliver their third child, at the moment she wanted nothing more than to return home. After three days away, she was eager to see her own family.
“I know it,” Regina said. “Men are always disappointed when their first babies are girls.”
Monika nodded. Her Gerhard had been proud that their first-born was a son. He’d told her it didn’t matter whether it was a boy or girl, but she’d seen his anxious face right before he heard the baby’s sex.
“Will you and Hanna join us for a while?” Hildegard asked.
“Sorry, not today. I am exhausted and eager to get home. I will come back when I can and we can talk then.”
“Guten tag,” several of the women responded in unison as she urged the horses forward, waving goodbye to her friends.
Monika continued through the village on the cobbled road and into the countryside on the dirt road without paying much attention to anything, her mind wandering as it often did during long journeys. She was half sagging over in her seat as the horses found their way home.
Hanna had accompanied her and was herself asleep in the back of the wagon. It was Hanna’s first time to help with a delivery, and it had been planned for several months. Hanna’s pregnancy, though, had made it more important, as far as Monika was concerned. The girl needed to know what to expect when it was her time to give birth. Anna’s delivery had been without complication, but Monika still saw the distress clearly present on her daughter’s face during the actual delivery, only turning to delight once the baby was in hand. Monika still couldn’t believe that her own baby was soon going to become a mother. Was that how her own mother had felt when Monika was pregnant with Max? Probably, she thought.
Finally, Monika lurched wide awake, recognizing the familiar ruts and bumps as the clanking wagon rode up to their barn. Monika sighed with relief at the prospect of returning to her own simple life. As she stopped the wagon, dropping the reins, she glanced at her oldest daughter. Hanna had not only pitched in and helped, but had shown she was quite capable of caring for young children.
Hanna, now awake, jumped down from the back of the wagon, pulled open the double doors, then grabbed the lantern hanging on a hook near the barn door. She lit the lantern and held it up to allow her mother to get a better look around the inside of the barn.
The light was mostly unnecessary since Monika knew every dark wood beam and short wall divider between each horse stall in the large barn by heart. She moved the wagon forward, but almost immediately, her horses began whinnying and then halted.
“What is wrong, Mutter?”
“I do not know.” She jumped down from the wagon to investigate. Her brow furrowed. “It seems our horses have discovered we have company.”
A carriage was parked inside, along with horses she didn’t recognize. Her own farm wagon would still fit, but she’d almost run into the back of the strangers’ vehicle. Lack of sleep from tending a newborn child had made her mind dull. If it hadn’t been for the horses, she would have crashed.
“Who do you think they are, Mutter? We were not expecting anyone, were we?”
Monika shook her head. “Would you give me a hand with the horses?”
“Of course.” She set down the lantern on a wooden stool.
Together, they unhitched the horses from the wagon and removed their bridles. In rote fashion, they guided them to their stall and filled their wooden water trowels and feed buckets.
“Should we rub the horses down, Mutter?”
“No. We will ask the men to do it. I am too tired.” She rubbed her hands together to brush the dirt off, then looked around the shadowy stable again. “Where is everyone? We have extra horses, but some of ours are gone.”
Hanna followed her mother’s gaze. “I do not know. Something is not right. They would not leave while we were away, would they?”
Monika didn’t waste any more time. She snuffed out the lantern, closed up the barn, and strode toward the house with Hanna following close on her heels. Opening the front door, she stepped inside, but there was no one about. The house was silent. Where had everyone gone? Monika called out.
“Oh, Mutter, you are home,” Sigrid said, suddenly rushing out of the kitchen.
Monika’s breathing returned to normal as she walked toward Sigrid and wrapped her arms around her. “Where is—” Before she could finish her question, a little boy and an older woman strode into the parlor from the kitchen, with a teenage girl on their heels. Monika raised her eyebrows, staring at the strangers. Something seemed familiar in the old woman’s eyes. She couldn’t quite place who she was, though.
“Mutter, much has happened since you left,” Sigrid said, excitement spilling out in her voice. “These people,” she said, motioning the three, “along with an elderly man and a young woman, showed up here. They needed help to do something. Papa agreed to help them.”
“Everyone went?” Monika asked.
“Oh, yes. Papa, Konrad, Henrik, and Gunter. They left this afternoon, shortly before sunset.”
Monika reeled, and had to steady herself by placing a hand on the ladder-back of a chair. “Did they say where they were headed?”
“No.”
“My mutter said they will be back soon.”
Monika looked at the child with new interest. “What is your name?”
“Tobias Sonnenberg.”
Monika smiled at him, and then looked at the woman. “Is this your grandmother?”
“No, she is my mutter’s great aunt. Her name is Lotte.”
Monika stared at her. Sonnenberg. Lotte. Mein Gott. Could she be Vikktor Sonnenberg’s sister, Lotte Furst? Of course. That’s why she looked familiar. Older, more ragged, but the same eyes. Monika practically fell onto the seat of the wooden chair and clutched at her heart. This cannot be happening. Not after all these years.
Lotte smiled sweetly, a twisted kind of fake smile that Monika had seen before, and then said, “I hope we are not too much trouble, dear. We do not want to burden you.”
Monika didn’t respond.
Sigrid nudged her and whispered, “They are not a burden, are they?”
Monika pulled herself together as best she could and said, “Of course you are welcome. You are not a burden.” She looked at the teenage girl who was with them and then again at the boy who had spoken. “And the girl? She is your sister?”
“No. She is Birgitta’s and Karl’s granddaughter. I’m not sure what that makes her to Max. Cousin, maybe?”
Monika’s heart sped up at the names Karl and Max. She felt faint. They couldn’t be in this time period. Not her Karl and her Max. No one but Gerhard knew about them. While he’d accepted her past life, he surely wouldn’t want them here, interfering with her current life. No. This must be a simple coincidence. Strangers and nothing more. “Max?” she said.
“He is your son,” Tobias blurted. “Max’s grandfather Karl knew my mutter’s grandparents, but I don’t think my mutter and I are related to you.”
Lotte put her hands on the boy’s shoulders and he turned his head, tilting it up to look at her. She shook her head, warning him not to say more.
Monika tried to keep herself upright in the chair, but she nearly lost control when Hanna and Sigrid asked, in unison, “What is he talking about?”
Monika couldn’t speak, couldn’t think how to respond. She stared into the fire in the hearth, then closed her eyes, trying to block everything out.
Lotte said, “Would you girls mind taking Tobias and Anneliese into another room? Your
mother and I need to talk.”
The girls looked at each other, and then Hanna said, “Mutter, what is going on?”
Monika looked up at the girls. In a voice that sounded strained to her own ears, she said, “I will explain later. Go to bed. Please put the boy to bed in Konrad’s bed and the girl in Henrik’s bed for now.”
Her tone and the wave of her hand told them not to argue. Sulking, they all marched up the rough, uneven stairs. She hoped her girls wouldn’t ply the newcomers with questions.
BY NIGHTFALL MAX’S shoulders were tense and sore from his ever-present sorrow. He still didn’t know what Ryan had done on the night Birgitta was murdered. They’d ridden together into the meager town of Günzberg, which consisted of one main cobbled road lined with a dozen or more two-story wattle and daub houses, including a gasthof and an adjoining stable. Max had looked away from the gasthof as he’d ridden past, his stomach twisting and roiling at the scent of food wafting from the building, a reminder of his ever-present hunger. Even the old Bavarian houses, which would normally have brought out the architect in him, made him feel nothing but sadness.
“What do we do now, Dad?” They were paused on the other edge of town.
“I guess we find a place nearby to hide until they come back.”
“What about that farm we passed?” Ryan asked. “Maybe they have a barn where we can sleep.”
“Hmm. That might work. At least we’d be out of the weather.”
They rode out of town, about a mile west, to the farm that had looked deserted. They hid in a copse of trees nearby and watched the place for a couple of hours. No people. No activity. Yet the farm did look cared-for. Perhaps the farmers had gone on travel to sell some of their crop. Max instructed Ryan to pull open the heavy barn door. It squeaked loudly. Max jumped involuntarily and froze, quickly glancing around to see if anyone came to investigate. But he didn’t see anyone other than Ryan. Still, he couldn’t shake a niggling feeling of apprehension that had plagued him ever since they’d arrived.
“I’ll check it out, okay Dad?”
“Maybe I should go in first. I don’t want you to get hurt.”
“I can do it.”
Max was about to protest, but Ryan disappeared into the barn. A couple of minutes later, the boy returned. “It’s clear.”
The pervading smell of hay and horse droppings, as Max entered the barn, brought forth memories of his last time in a stable—the heated argument with his son, the long walk afterwards, and the clunk on his head—which gave him an overwhelming desire to run away, but he forced himself to ignore the feeling. If nothing else, the barn might give them a chance to care for their horses and serve as a fitting place to discuss what had happened at the gasthof’s stables.
Standing in the doorway, he surveyed the interior of the building. It was made of heavy timber throughout, with heavy vertical studs filled with wattle and daub panels, various tie-beams, and a massive curving timber, known as a cruck, from the wall footing up to the outer side of the arcade post to brace the structure. One thing that struck him as odd was a jagged gaping hole in the roof, probably ten feet across, perhaps the result of storm damage, from the looks of it. For Max’s purposes, it was a good thing because it let in considerably more moonlight from which to see than the two small windows in the side of the barn.
Farm tools—some he recognized and some he didn’t—hung from nails or hooks along the walls away from several stalls and pens. Wooden crates, barrels, and bales of hay were stacked in various neat nooks and corners. A couple saddles were draped over railings and buckets sat atop a couple hay stacks. Hearing various whinnies, grunts, and mooing, Max walked around to check out the stalls and pens. Six dairy cows, four adult pigs and about a dozen piglets, three goats, half a dozen sheep, and four horses filled the stalls. Max almost stepped on one of the chickens that apparently had free range. He turned and walked back toward the entrance. Next to the doors, on the wall, were several hoes, pitchforks, a spade, and an ax.
Max turned to Ryan who was behind him. “Okay, let’s get the horses inside. There’s hay and water for them. I’m not sure how long we can stay, but if we’re lucky, we can catch a few winks here, then head out before sunrise.”
They led the horses inside, removed the saddles, brushed them down, and led them into a stall. Max grabbed feed containers and hung them in the stall, while Ryan provided buckets of water from the trough. Having the horses finally settled-in, father and son sat down on a couple crates. The time for a long-overdue conversation had finally arrived, but how on earth could he bring up the topic that had been eating at him, without setting Ryan off?
Max took a deep breath and let it out. “Unfortunately I don’t know any easy way to begin this discussion. I’m just going to come straight out with it. I believe you killed Birgitta. These past couple of days, I’ve been trying to convince myself that Karl was right—that Lotte did it. But not once have you talked about it. Not once have you said you didn’t do it or that you were sad about her death. You have a bad temper and we both know it. Birgitta confronted you about what you and Anneliese did, and you killed her. ”
“Of course you would think the worst of me. It’s always been that way.”
Max sighed. It hadn’t been that way when Ryan was younger, but yeah, lately Max had become more jaded and critical of his son. Even in his last two years of high school Ryan had maintained excellent grades and had been accepted to UCLA, telling his parents he planned to major in Biology and claiming he wanted to go on to grad school and eventually become a doctor or nurse, making both parents proud. However, somewhere along the line, something had changed in Ryan. One day during summer break between his junior and senior years of high school Max had caught Ryan smoking pot. The confrontation had turned ugly, with Ryan screaming at his father, running into his room, and slamming the door.
Later, Ryan had told his mother Jenny that Max had made the whole thing up. Jenny had been angry with Max for quite a while, defending her son. Then later, during his senior year, while volunteering at a hospital after school and on weekends, Ryan had almost ruined all of it all by trying to steal drugs from the hospital. If his mother, a nurse at the same hospital, hadn’t caught him in the act and quietly returned the drugs, he would have gone to jail, facing criminal charges and ruining his future. Fortunately, no one else knew, except for the three of them—not even Ryan’s twin sister Lisa. Ryan had gotten so angry with his mother when she caught him in the act that he’d run off and stayed away from home and school for three days. Lisa was told he was with their father. Luckily for Ryan, Jenny had once again come to her son’s rescue and given him an excuse for missing school and his volunteer duties.
“Your mother was always too easy on you. Guess that’s why you and she get along. I’ve always been the bad guy, trying to make sure you stayed out of trouble.”
“Yeah, right. Like you care.”
“I do care. Ryan, even if you killed Birgitta, you’re still my son and I’ll stand by you. I’ve thought a lot about what you said. As much as it pains me, I know you’re right about one thing—I haven’t been a good father. I let down both you and Lisa. Let me try to make it up to you. I don’t like what you did. It’s a terrible thing. But you must have had a good reason. I won’t turn you over to the Feld gendarmes. Just promise me you won’t ever do anything like that again.”
“Thanks for nothing. You just don’t get it. I didn’t do it, okay. I wasn’t the one who stabbed her.”
Max ran his hand through his hair and then opened his mouth to speak, but his mind was too busy processing this new information to put together logical questions. Finally, he said, “What are you saying? Are you saying you know who did it? Did you witness the murder?”
“No. I don’t know what happened.” Ryan turned away from him, but not before Max saw his pained expression. Max’s mind reeled. Oh my God, he’s protecting someone! All of a sudden he had an epiphany: Anneliese. Had the girl and Birgitta quarreled? Why hadn’t
he thought of that? But kill her own grandmother? It was possible. Even if Ryan wasn’t sure Anneliese did it, he might try to protect her because he was, in a way, responsible.
“We’ll figure it all out later,” Max said. “Right now, let’s try to get some rest, okay? I believe you. ”
Ryan turned back around and nodded.
MAX AWOKE WITH a start and glanced around the barn. Pink rays from the rising sun shone through the hole in the roof, illuminating the interior. Rubbing the last vestiges of slumber from his eyes and then removing straw from his accumulating beard, Max sat up and listened for anything unusual. A horse snorted. A chicken scrambled across the floor, followed by a door squeaking. Ryan rolled over, then sat up and whispered, “What was that?”
Heavy breathing and footsteps—at least two pairs—and horse hooves plodding across the floor. Max held his breath. He and Ryan were inside one of the unused stalls, next to their horses, for the moment out of sight of whomever had entered. On the other side, if he remembered right, was nothing but a few crates and bales of hay. Unless they got up and looked around the corner, they couldn’t see the barn door from their location.
Max struggled to remember the layout of the building. He remembered a couple items hanging from nails on the outside of the stall walls. Standing up, he reached out and searched for some defense in case he needed something. His left hand touched steel, but as he tried to grasp for it, someone grabbed his hand. The man standing there spat out a slew of German words, none of which sounded particularly friendly.
Max tried to remember some of the German words Sofie and Birgitta had taught him. He said, “Wir wollen nichts tun. Wir wollen Freunde sein.”
“Nein. Nicht Freunde. Betreten verboten!”
Max tried to jerk free, but the man tightened his grip and another man was suddenly inside the stall and pulling Max out. The next thing Max knew, he heard a loud thud and a groan, and the man dropped to the floor. Turning, Max saw Ryan standing close, wielding a wooden pail.
