by S. E. Rose
“Fuck,” she mutters. She picks up her phone and dials a number.
“Hey,” she says. “I’m sorry. Yes, I know. Things have been a little…insane. No, we’re fine. Auntie Lara suffered the worst injury. I don’t know yet. Yes. I have to go away for a while, Sonya. I promise I’ll come to see you as soon as it’s safe. No, not yet. I will. Love you, too.” She ends the call and stares down at the phone.
“Who was that?” I ask her.
She sighs. “My best friend, Sonya,” she answers. “I…things have been a little crazy and…well, she’s pissed at me. I mean, she’s worried, obviously.”
“Oh, right,” I say. I realize just how much we don’t know about each other. I’ve never thought about her friends.
We finish packing in silence. A knock on the door from Pete tells us it’s time to go.
“Pete, why are we leaving so early?” Anna asks.
“We’re not leaving from the airport here,” he explains. “We have a long drive.”
“Oh,” Anna answers. Pete and Lucas grab our bags, and we follow them to a waiting car. A third man stands by it.
“This is Hendrick, your bodyguard,” Pete says. Hendrick extends a hand.
“A pleasure to meet you, Logan,” he says.
“Likewise,” I answer but, really, I’m not so sure about the idea of a bodyguard. There’s no fanfare as we get in the car and head off in the opposite direction from where we came. We drive for over an hour until we reach a border. Pete, who is driving, rolls down the window and hands the man at the booth a pile of papers and passports. The man examines them and nods, allowing us through. I wonder what he has shown him because my passport is tucked neatly inside the bag in the back of the large SUV.
I decide it’s better not to ask questions. Anna curls up and falls asleep, but I stay awake, watching the scenery of Europe pass by the car window as we continue to drive. Several hours later, I see signs for Copenhagen. We pull up to the airport and Pete drives us to a side area. He turns before parking the car.
“You are going to the U.S. as Anna Alexander and Edvard Hansen,” he says to us.
“I’m sorry, what did you just say?” I ask him.
“Your fathers had these passports made up overnight. They didn’t want to draw attention to your movements internationally. So, you are a young couple traveling Europe together, and you’re heading back to the States to Pittsburgh. Anna, just say you’re studying there if asked. Logan, you can make up whatever story you like, since you know the area,” Pete says.
“Is this really necessary, Pete?” Anna asks.
Pete gives her a hard look.
“Fine,” she says, snatching the passport from his hand.
“You both understand, we are going off the grid?” Pete asks.
Anna nods. “Yes, Pete. What about you three?” she asks.
“We are college friends of yours that met up here. We’re all heading back to school,” he says.
She gives him a pointed look before shaking her head. We grip hands as we head into the airport. Anna fidgets as we snake through the long security lines. She’s not used to waiting like this. She has her hair pulled up in a bun and no makeup on. She glances around nervously as we are funneled through to the five metal detectors at the security gate.
“Anna, you need to calm down,” I whisper in her ear.
“What if someone recognizes me?” she hisses back.
“Stop fidgeting and no one will pay you any attention,” I say to her.
She straightens up, and we continue inching forward. We finally make it through security, and I sigh with relief as we find our gate and take a seat to await boarding. Three different times I have to place a hand on Anna’s leg, so she’ll stop bouncing it up and down.
She huffs under her breath. “Easy for you to say, I have to pretend to be normal and fly in the cattle car,” she mutters under her breath.
I chuckle under my breath. This is the first time she’s acted like the princess she is. I squeeze her leg, and she stops bouncing it.
“What happened to my little brave underworld spy?” I ask.
She glares at me. I lean over and kiss her lips, and she un-frowns and freezes. I pull back.
“You, OK?” I ask her.
“I just realized that I’m going to meet your grandparents,” she says, her face now sports a comical look of horror.
I pat her leg. “Yes, yes you will,” I say with another laugh.
“Oh, god…I don’t know if I can do this,” she says, her breathing picking up in little puffs as she tries to process what will occur in less than twenty-four hours.
I get in front of her face so all she sees is me. “Anna, you can do this. You will do this. It will be fine. I promise that they don’t bite,” I say to her trying to prevent the smile that threatens to appear on my lips.
“But…they’re really important to you,” she says. I nod. “What if they don’t like me? What if they think I’m annoying? What if—” I clamp a hand over her mouth to prevent her from continuing with her crazy game of “what if” and she looks up at me in total terror. I can no longer stop the smile that graces my face.
“Anna, you are going to be fine. They are going to love you. I swear, they are harmless, really,” I say, encouragingly.
She sighs beneath my hand and darts out her tongue. I don’t budge. She gives me a look and licks my hand from top to bottom. I lean in, so only she can hear me.
“Are you trying to get me revved up to join the mile-high club?” I ask her.
Her eyes go from horror to annoyance and I release my hand.
“Don’t be an ass,” she hisses.
I smirk. “Remember, Anna? I don’t always play by the rules,” I inform her. She glares at me but doesn’t go back to her worries.
A few minutes later, a voice comes on an intercom and announces that our flight is boarding. Anna’s face goes pale once more.
I pull her up, and she looks at me. I can tell she’s trying to be brave, but she can’t hide her fear. It makes me ponder how she kept her second life a secret for so long because I can read every emotion on her face like it’s spelled out in neon letters.
I watch Anna scan her boarding pass with a shaky hand. I follow her as we wait in the line that forms down the aisleway of the plane. I keep my hand on her shoulder, and when we reach our seats, I turn her. She scoots toward the window seat, and I take the middle one. As all of us mere mortals do, I internally pray for a not full flight so that the seat next to me remains empty.
And then Hendrick sits down. I sigh. So much for my mile-high club fantasies because I know that Anna will not be going to the stamp-sized airplane bathroom with me if the mere thought of a regular airline seat freaks her out.
I settle myself and am thankful for Anna’s small stature since I’m able to manspread over to her side a bit. She’s curled herself into a small ball and has found a small pillow in her carry-on bag that she’s now leaning against. I put my hand on her leg, and she places her hand over mine while keeping her eyes closed.
The flight is completely uneventful. Anna scoffs at the food and opts to eat the roll from both our trays and a half bottle of wine. She promptly falls asleep somewhere over the Atlantic and doesn’t wake again until breakfast is being served. She again only touches the bread but does manage a few bites of fruit. She has a mimosa with her breakfast, muttering something about it being impossible to screw up champagne and orange juice.
She tugs back down the eye mask that she pulled out from her bag somewhere over the mid-Atlantic and falls back asleep for the remaining hour of our flight.
“She’s not fond of flying, huh?” Hendrick says. I look over at him. He’s kept himself busy during the flight. Never sleeping, but reading, watching videos on his laptop, and chatting amicably with a passenger across from us who put on Rocky IV, a movie that he has seen at least fifty times, according to their dialogue. I get a strong military vibe from Hendrick. He’s stocky, tall but not overly tall. He definitely l
ooks like he could be a boxer.
“So, you’re Pete’s cousin?” I ask him. He looks over at me.
“Affirmative. And Lucas, since they are brothers,” he says. And that military premonition is confirmed. It takes me a minute to realize that I never contemplated that Pete and Lucas are brothers. I funnel that away as something to discuss with Anna.
“Which branch?” I ask him. His accent is all American. He gives me a look and leans in so no one can hear us, which I think is ridiculous because all the other passengers are absorbed in their music and movies, earbuds in and thoughts consumed by mass media.
“Army, special forces. Logan, we can discuss my qualifications later,” he says in a low voice. I nod.
“Rocky, huh?” I say. He grins and shrugs.
“Ever run up the art museum steps?” I ask him. He laughs at that.
“A few times, possibly,” he says nonchalantly.
“That was the first thing I always asked to do when we’d visit Philly,” I admit. He chuckles.
“Well, it’s the best thing to do,” he says. We chat about the movie for a while, and then Anna finally wakes up as the captain comes on and announces our descent into Pittsburgh.
It’s a blur of activity as we make our way through customs. There’s a car waiting for us, driven by Pete of course, who somehow got through customs in record time. We hop in, and he heads out to a rented house near my grandparents’ home. It’s strange being here now. It’s like I’ve crossed through to an alternate universe, and now I’m looking back on the one I can never go to again.
Chapter Six
I stare at the closet door. Inside is a box that contains what may be the only photo of my parents together. My parents. One month ago, I had a different life. Hell, I had a different past.
I listen for any sounds below. I came here with Pete and Hendrick who are waiting in the car. Anna is outside, waiting in the driveway, too afraid to come in. My grandmother is downstairs in the kitchen.
I open the door and pull down one of five boxes of my mother’s things. Things I couldn’t part with but didn’t want to take with me. My grandparents carefully boxed them and placed them here, inside her old room. These boxes contain an illusion. An illusion of who I thought my mother was.
I open the box and reach inside to retrieve a much smaller shoebox. I carefully remove the lid and peek inside. It contains remnants of my mother’s time in Europe. There’s an old journal. I only kept it because she spoke of me, spoke of finding out she was pregnant with me. Otherwise, it only contains old notes, most likely for stories she was working on at the time. There’s a locket. I don’t know why I kept that. That’s a lie. I kept it because of a fuzzy memory from a lifetime ago. It contains no photos. On the outside is a painted eye. It looks like my eye. In all honesty, it creeps me out, but nonetheless, here it is. And lastly, there is a pile of photos. I start searching through them until I find the one that I’m looking for, the only one of my parents.
I stop when I reach it and pull it from the pile. My father stands tall and regal next to my mother. They are speaking about something, not looking at the camera but at each other. I flip it over, it only has E.H. + L.W. and the date which is roughly seven months prior to my birth. For the first time ever, I look at my mother’s belly as though realizing just now that I, too, am in this photo, neatly tucked away inside my mother. I toss the photograph back on the pile and gaze inside the closet.
My mother was a journalist first and my mother second. She was always leaving to go cover a story. Sometimes war, sometimes a murder, sometimes politics. When she came home with me, I was only a few months old. She had told my grandparents she had met a man and had gotten pregnant. They begged her to come home, but she refused, saying they had married, and she would fly them out to meet me once I arrived. But that never happened. Instead, we stood on the doorstep of their small brick, Cape Cod in a suburb of Pittsburgh in the pouring rain, or at least that’s how I’ve been told the story. A story I just learned is largely a farce. I was told my father rejected us. That my mother had to leave and that he never wanted to see me. I think back on my life. It wasn’t bad. My grandparents are loving people. My grandfather did everything a father would have. He relished having a pseudo-son to play ball with and teach chess to and read to at night. My grandmother spoiled me with food. They were my one constant. No matter where I was or where my mother went, they were always there, they are still always here.
I put the lid of the box and walk back downstairs. The smell of my grandmother’s chicken soup permeates the small space of the house. I walk into the kitchen and find her kneading bread.
“Did you find the photos you were looking for?” she asks with a smile.
“Yes,” I say as I lean over and kiss the top of her head. She pats my arm and goes back to kneading the dough.
“Why don’t you use that bread maker I bought you, Nana?” I ask her.
She laughs and shrugs. “The dough feels good on my joints,” she says with a wink. I shake my head and sit down at the old oak table.
“When does Pops get home?” I ask.
“He should be home any minute,” she says. “Will you be able to stay long?”
I shake my head. “No. Unfortunately, I have some business to attend to. I just wanted to stop in and see you,” I say.
“What business is that, dear?” she asks.
I haven’t told them. They have no idea that their grandson is the heir to a European throne or that their daughter was the secret queen of a small country called Montelandia.
“Are you going to invite your friend in, or does she have to stay in the car?” my nana asks with a raised eyebrow.
I curse under my breath. That woman doesn’t miss a thing…except when it came to her daughter.
“I wasn’t going to be long,” I explain. She gives me a sharp look.
“Eddie, you came all this way. The least you can do is stay for dinner,” she scolds.
I sigh. “Yes, ma’am. I’ll go get her,” I say as I stand to walk toward the front door.
I’m greeted by an entertaining sight. Anna is not in the car any longer. She is standing next to it speaking to my pops. She points to the tree in the front yard, and he nods enthusiastically. She whistles or bird calls, and he does the same. A small bird flies over to the light post on the side of the driveway, and she snaps a photo of it with her phone and shows him. He nods and smiles at her.
“Come on in,” he says to her. “No point in waiting out here. Besides, if I know my Vera, she will insist you both stay for dinner.”
Anna smiles at him. “I’d like that, Mr. Winters,” she says.
He chuckles. “Please call me Ned or Pops,” he insists.
She grins and links her arm through his. “Well, Pops, it would be my pleasure to stay for dinner,” she says as they begin to walk toward me. I step forward, and she looks up at me. I can see she is unsure if going with Pops was the right thing to do.
“Looks like we’ll be dining here,” I say to her.
Pops leans over and winks at her. “See, I told you so,” he says with a chuckle.
They look like old friends, bosom buddies from another lifetime. I open the door for them, and we all walk back into the kitchen to sit. Nana has put the bread in the oven. She washes her hands and turns to greets us.
“And you must be Anna,” she says with a warm smile as she embraces her.
“It’s nice to meet you, Mrs. Winters,” Anna says, her voice muffled against my nana’s hair.
“Oh no, please call me Vera or Nana,” she says.
She clasps her hands with Anna’s. “Very well, thank you for having me for dinner, Nana,” she says.
Nana is delighted and ushers us with glasses of tea into the living room. She pulls out a photo album, and I groan.
“Nana,” I say pointedly.
She tosses her hand at me. “Pay no attention to him. He almost never brings girls home. So, he’ll just have to suffer through,” she say
s as she sits down next to Anna and begins to show her photos of me.
Ten embarrassingly long minutes later, Anna stops my grandmother. “When was this taken?” she asks.
My grandmother looks down and before she can answer, I say, “At Camp Wittakundi.”
Anna freezes. “Y-you went to Camp Wittakundi as a kid?” she stammers and leans over to get a better look at the photograph. It’s one of the few that I was allowed during my pre-teen/teenage years.
“Oh, yes. Eddie went every year for gosh, let me see, three or four years, Eddie?” Nana asks me.
Anna’s eyes open so wide, I fear for a moment she’s having some kind of heart attack or stroke.
“Anna?” I ask, leaning forward. She turns to me and touches my face as though seeing me for the first time. And then it hits me like a ton of bricks. I’m fairly certain my heart stops beating for a second.
“Suzy,” I say.
“Eddie?” she replies.
I reach out and touch her face, remembering the first love of my life. How did I not see it? I look her up and down, remembering the gangly, young Anna with the huge eyes that didn’t seem in proportion to her body. She had more freckles back then and her hair was a little darker.
“Oh my!” my grandmother exclaims. “I-it can’t be.”
“Oh, yes, it is,” I breathe as I look at Anna. “My Suzy.”
Anna giggles at the use of her old nickname.
“No one’s called me that for eons,” she says.
“But your brothers still call you Suzy Q,” I point out.
She shrugs and grins. “How were we so blind?” she asks with a laugh.
I shake my head. “It’s crazy…it’s…I don’t know,” I say.
“You look so different, but your eyes, I should have recognized them,” she whispers.
“Same,” I say to her. I pull her into a hug as though greeting a long-lost friend.
“Well, isn’t that something,” my grandmother says as she looks back down at the photo album, gazing upon what I swear is the eleventh naked baby photo of me. “Are you going to ask your other friends in for dinner?” she asks me.
