A Trespass in Time (8 page)

            Hugo scooted back over to her and slipped his arms around her to hoist her up onto his lap. She was so surprised at the move that she let him do it. He held up a finger in front of her face in a mock scold.

            “No laughing,” he said, which made her smile.

            When he kissed her, she turned in his arms until she was straddling him on the couch. Within seconds, his hands were under her blouse and bra and cupping her naked breasts. She gasped at how fast she had gotten to this position. What he was doing felt amazing but a creeping feeling told her that there was something not right. Then it came to her: All the night’s alcohol and all the exquisite sensuous throbbing in all the right places couldn’t hide the fact that he wasn’t Rowan. As soon as the thought formed in her head, the wonderful feelings above and below the waist faded to nothing.

            She pushed away from him and pulled his hands from her breasts. “Hugo,” she said.

            “No, you are not going to stop us,” he said, nuzzling her breasts through her blouse.

            “Yes, I am,” she said. “I’m sorry. I’m drunk. You’re drunk…”

            “Not that drunk. I can still perform if that’s what you’re worried about.”

            “Hugo,” she said, moving off his lap. “I can’t do this. I’m sorry.” She moved out of his reach and rearranged her blouse. “I’m sorry,” she said. “I’ll make us some coffee.”

            Hugo sat on the couch looking into space as if stunned that this is how the evening was ending up after all.

            Ella went into the kitchen and plugged in her electric kettle. She dug out two mugs and a jar of instant coffee.

           
Where had all that about Rowan come from?
she wondered. She thought she was pretty much over him. Was she fooling herself? She couldn’t imagine Rowan pushing some half naked, willing girl away. She poured boiling water into the mugs.

            “Milk? Sugar?” she called. “I think I have both.” She opened the refrigerator door to grab the milk and caught the time displayed on the oven. It was three a.m. Rowan would be at the office, probably drinking coffee and planning his day—not screwing some hot Alabama babe. She put the sugar bowl, the mugs and the milk on a tray.

            That would’ve been
last
night.

            She picked up the tray and walked into the living room. She hadn’t heard him leave but she wasn’t surprised to see that he was gone. She set the tray down on the coffee table and ran to the bedroom to make sure. On her way back to the living room, she locked the door and looked at the two steaming mugs on the coffee table…right next to the block of C-4 and the blasting caps he’d run off and left.

Chapter Five

            Ella knew she should have seen the coming storm. Although she knew some things just happen, like a natural impetus independent of the actions or desires of the people involved, she also knew that she was the author of every step that had taken her to this point. She wouldn’t sidestep the responsibility for that now. If she hadn’t taken the Heidelberg job, if she hadn’t let go of Rowan, if she hadn’t been so stubborn about accepting help from her own father, then maybe,
just maybe
the rest of the dominoes wouldn’t have fallen the way they did. But by the time it all came crashing down on her, it was way too late to think she could’ve done anything to have stopped it.

            The end of all hope of happiness began for Ella as a typical Tuesday morning. She walked to work from her apartment, hitting her favorite
Konditerei
for an
espresso
and a sweet roll on the way. She would have preferred something more substantial but she was already running late. It had been two weeks since her visit to Dossenheim. With the exception of Hugo taking great strides to avoid her and being sullen and uncharacteristically curt when he couldn’t, she had managed to put that day almost completely out of her mind. Glimmers of the day’s revelations would come to her when she wasn’t paying attention—taking a shower or waiting for the elevator. When they did, she would feel an overwhelming emotion that she couldn’t name but which was nearly unbearable in its pain. It was like a weight that materialized on her chest, creating such debilitating pressure that she could scarcely breathe.

            When those moments happened, she recited German verbs to distract her.

            That had worked pretty well. Up to now.

            As she hurried up the
Hauptstrasse
toward her office building opposite the
Hard Rock Café
, she caught her reflection in a shop window. She was pleased with what she saw: a young woman with a black peacoat and pashmina around her shoulders, her long dark hair blowing in the breeze. She looked like she belonged here. Definitely not a tourist. And then she saw him, reflected in the glass, standing across the street. He looked so much like Rowan that for a minute her heart lodged in her throat. She had whirled around expecting it to be him.

            She walked the rest of the way to her office, continually looking over her shoulder as if he might appear. When she got off the elevator in her office, Heidi half stood at the front desk and gave Ella an encouraging smile and a thumbs up as she walked by. As pleasant as Heidi normally was, it seemed such an unusual thing to do—even for Heidi—that it was then that Ella realized that Hugo must have told her about her famous Nazi grandfather. As soon as she made the connection, another, fiercer, urge grabbed her—the urge to forget it, let it go, turn away from it.

            As she smiled at Heidi and walked to her office, she knew that Heidi—and others in the office—were watching her.

            Granddaughter of a Nazi war criminal.

            Ella entered her office and closed the door, then stood with her back against it. Her heart was pounding in her chest and she felt a warm flush spread to her face.

            It wasn’t just her poor dead mother’s shame, she realized. This was what she had been trying to avoid thinking these last two weeks. It was the reason she had failed to call or visit or even drop a postcard to that poor old woman sitting in a nursing home in Dossenheim.

            It was because it was
her
shame, too.

            She went and sat at her computer and tried to compose herself, breathing deeply with her eyes closed. She held her hands over her computer keyboard and willed them to stop trembling but all she could think was:
A monster’s blood runs through me.

            It dawned on her how she had deliberately avoided any research online that might take her close to the identity of her maternal grandfather. And she was a professional investigator. She knew it wouldn’t involve much of a search. She knew she wouldn’t need to drill down very deeply to see his picture, hear his voice, discover his legacy.

            And she didn’t dare go there. She
couldn’t
go there.

            She signed on to her email account and caught herself doing what she had been doing for the last month: looking to see if there was an email from Rowan. Before she even checked, the very truth of her need struck her like a sharp slap. She would always look for him and never find him. She had let him go. 

           
She
had done that.

            She turned away from the computer and buried her face in her hands, her sorrow building like a sickness spreading throughout her body. The sobs shook her body and she realized she didn’t care if anyone could hear her. When she stopped, her head on her arms on her desk, she knew what she had to do.

            She sat up straight at the computer, and wiped her face.

           
I am stronger than this
.

            She opened up her browser and typed his name in the search engine window.

            Two hours later she had learned the truth about Rudolf Vogel. In two hours she had cried every bit of her makeup off and carefully ignored two taps on her office door and three emails from Heidi asking her if she were okay.

            In two hours she learned the whole truth about where she came from and why her mother hadn’t wanted to live.

            As soon as she felt composed, Ella packed up her desk and folded her resignation letter into an envelope addressed to her supervisor. She timed it so that Heidi would not be at the front desk. She walked to the receptionist, handed the envelope to the young girl sitting there and left the office.

            She walked the entire way back to her apartment at a quick pace. Inside, she plugged in her cellphone and turned it to mute, then went to her bedroom where she collapsed on the bed and fell into a thankfully dreamless sleep.

            When she awoke it was after eight o’clock and dark out. She stripped off the work outfit that she had slept in—a silk dress over leggings—and stepped into the shower. She made the water as hot as she could stand it as if the scalding needles could eliminate the terrible images she had seen online that morning.

            She had seen pictures of a handsome man in jodhpurs and riding boots, a cruel smile, an arrogant set to his chin. She had made herself look at the camp he had commanded and the bodies of the people he had murdered. She had looked closely into his face, the face of her grandfather, and could see no trace of humanity or feeling or familiarity.

            He was a stereotypical cartoon. A farce. A cardboard villain.

            Granddad.

            She pulled on a pair of jeans and made herself a ham sandwich which she ate at the kitchen table.

            She got up and poured a light beer into a glass and sat down at the table. There was no way she could stay at that office. Not with everyone knowing. It would be different in the US. Maybe. She pushed the sandwich away and pulled out her phone.

            She hadn’t spoken to him in over a month. She wasn’t a hundred percent sure what she would say to him now. But she knew she had to talk to someone and she didn’t know who else to call.

            The phone rang and eventually went to voice mail.

             “Hey, Rowan,” she said. “Surprise. It’s me. Look, I was just wondering what you were up to. I mean, we haven’t talked in awhile. When you get this message...please call me back…And if you’re screening this call because you’ve got some Alabama hottie on tap there, that’s cool. Except I thought U.S. marshals had to be available at all times. I mean what if I were a Federal witness needing a ride somewhere? Anyway…” Ella took a long breath and glanced at the photo of the two of them. He looked so capable and sure of himself she could feel her throat close up as she fought to stay in control. “Look, not to get all dramatic here or anything but I kind of need you, Rowan.” She felt tears roll down her face when she said the words and started to choke on them. She willed herself to shake it off. “Anyway. Okay, so you know this is me, Ella, right?”

            She disconnected and looked at the phone in her hands.

           
Thanks a lot, Rowan
, she thought.
Where are you when I need you?

            The phone lit up in her hand and she nearly pushed
Accept
thinking it was Rowan when she saw a photo of Heidi show up on her screen. She wasn’t ready to talk to Heidi—or anybody German at the moment. She let the call go to voicemail, hoping and praying that Rowan hadn’t done the very same thing to her five minutes earlier.

            She thought of the voicemail she just left and wondered what Rowan would think of it. What was he supposed to even do? Stupid. She should never have called. Embarrassing, too. Because by the time she got back to the States it would all seem like a major overreaction on her part. She wasn’t sure if she would ever even
see
Rowan again—what with their relationship having come to an ignoble, whimpering, long-distance end—but if she did, her face would be three shades of red in the bargain.

            She stood up. Her need to move and get out of the apartment overwhelming. She needed noise and people and fresh air. She needed to get out. Plenty of time tomorrow to figure out how she was going to get back to the States. She still had a full month left on her lease—and it was paid in advance.

            What a mess of everything she had made. She tugged her leather jacket on and dropped her phone into her bag, double checking that her Taser was there. When she turned to leave the apartment, her glance fell on the photo of herself and Rowan. Why did she even keep it out? To remind herself of how badly she can screw up? She vowed to pack it away first thing in the morning.

            She left her apartment and disappeared into the dark, wet night. It was cold out on the street and she was glad she had the wool scarf wrapped around her throat. She walked up the side street to
Eppelheimerstrasse
. She could see people and cars moving about and felt pulled toward the activity and the noise.

            Why
did
she and Rowan break up? she found herself wondering for the hundredth time.
We’d started out like Johnny and June: hotter than a pepper sprout.
Had
she
quit first? Why was that? Was she just determined to be miserable and alone?

            As she walked down the street, she felt her phone vibrate in her bag. She looked at the screen with every intention of letting it go to voicemail. It was her father.

            “Hey, Dad,” she said, holding the phone to her ear and continuing down the sidewalk. This section of Heidelberg was always busiest at night.  

            “Do you have a moment to talk, sweetheart? I hated how we left it the other day…”

            “Yeah, now’s good,” Ella said. “But I don’t know what else there is to say. It was a big shock, to say the least but it explained a lot. Why the hell didn’t you tell me?”