As White as Snow (13 page)

The memory couldn’t be right. Someone might have put a Band-Aid on her knee. Some older friend or cousin. But not a big sister. Lumikki and Lenka had never met before. Seeing the little girls had probably just activated some forgotten childhood memory and Lumikki’s mind was mixing in elements from the present. The human brain worked like that. That’s how people could be manipulated into creating fake memories, like violence and abuse in their childhoods, even when nothing of the sort had happened.

An even more disturbing vision reared up in Lumikki’s mind. A nightmare she didn’t want to see. She was trying to put on a Band-Aid, but there was so much blood that the Band-Aid got soaked right through and turned red. There was too much blood. She watched herself start to cry. She didn’t understand. Why didn’t the Band-Aid make the owie go away?

The funicular jerked to a stop. The jolt was just enough to dislodge the strange images from Lumikki’s mind. But at the same time, it brought back a memory too vivid to be an illusion.

Silhouettes of her father and mother hovering somewhere above, presumably above her bed. She was lying down, feeling
like an elephant squeezed into a ball. That’s what she remembered thinking. Like a heavy ball that couldn’t sense its own outlines. Mom and Dad’s faces were gray, tired, and sad.

“Your big sister . . . ,” they said.

Each separately and both together. For some reason, they couldn’t get any further than that word.

People shoved their way past Lumikki to exit the car. She got her feet moving too, even though the memory weighed them down. The situation in her memory was real. She was sure of it.

She had a big sister.

The family tree she’d been tracing in her mind had been pruned a little too enthusiastically.

“You really don’t know any more than that?” Lumikki asked. Lenka shook her head.

Her family was made up of Lenka, her mother Hana Havlová, her mother’s parents Maria Havlová and Franz Havel, Franz’s brother Klaus Havel, and Klaus’s son Adam Havel.

“And Adam is the head of your family now?” Lumikki double-checked.

She avoided the word “cult” for obvious reasons.

“Adam is . . . ,” Lenka thought for a moment. “Adam is Father. We all call him Father, even people older than him, because he takes care of us like a father. And for me especially he’s like the father I never had.”

“How old is he?”

“I’m not sure exactly. I’d guess about sixty. Why?” Lenka asked.

Lumikki shrugged and avoided the question. She wanted to know more about Adam, but she sensed from Lenka’s twitching and the tension in her voice that the conversation was already on thin ice and more questions might scare Lenka off.

They were sitting on top of Petřín Hill watching the hordes of tourists wandering by and marveling at the iron lookout tower. It looked deceptively similar to its more famous cousin, the Eiffel Tower, but was significantly smaller and somehow more approachable.

Lumikki occasionally glanced at Lenka’s thin fingers. Could those fingers have placed a Band-Aid on her knee a long time ago? What if they had met but Lenka didn’t remember it? Or what if Lenka was lying about never having seen Lumikki anywhere but in photographs? But why? That didn’t make any sense.

Lumikki thought about how they were here, side by side, so close that their knees could have touched, but at the same time, a wall of hidden secrets stood between them. Lumikki hadn’t told Lenka anything about Jiři, the man sent to kill her, or any of what Jiři had told her. Likewise, she was sure Lenka was hiding things from her.

Once upon a time, there was a girl with a secret.

Once upon a time, there were two girls with secrets they didn’t tell each other.

They were from the same family, a family of secrets. Lumikki almost snorted out loud.

“And your mother never talked about Adam?” Lumikki asked.

“No. I already said that. I’d never met any of my relatives. My grandparents died before I was born. I didn’t even know that my grandfather had a brother, let alone that his brother had a son. I don’t understand why Mother never talked about them. She lived with them.”

Lumikki’s ears perked up.

“Your mother lived with the family? Before you were born?”

“Yes. But then she left. I can’t think of any explanation other than that the darkness went into her. Why else would she have left such good people?”

Lenka looked at Lumikki with wide eyes, as if Lumikki couldn’t possibly have an answer. Lumikki shuddered. If Lenka’s mother left the cult and cut off all contact with its members, she must have had a good reason. And then, when she died, they came and plucked her daughter like a ripe apple.

“I asked Adam about it once, but he just said that the past is the past and I should forget Mother. He’s right. Mother belongs to my old life. The important thing is the future, not the past.”

Lenka turned her face toward the sun, closing her eyes and smiling. She had that illuminated expression that made Lumikki so uneasy. She knew there was no reaching this part of Lenka.

“Is there something special coming in the future?” Lumikki asked cautiously. “Maybe the near future?”

Lenka opened her eyes and gave Lumikki a sharp look.

“The only people allowed to know the Truth are the family members who believe. You don’t believe yet. You don’t even believe you’re my sister and you don’t believe the other things either.”

Lumikki thought for a second. Then another. She began to reconsider her earlier decision not to tell Lenka yet about what she remembered, not so directly. Now, though, it looked like Lenka might stand up and walk out of Lumikki’s life without a backward glance. Lumikki couldn’t let that happen. It had happened to her too many times.

Lenka’s voice was pure ice in the heat of the sun.

“It might be better if we don’t see each other again. You’re going home soon to your mother. And your father. Your father. I was stupid to think that he could be my father too. I already have a father: Adam. I already have everything. I don’t need anything else.”

No, no, no,
Lumikki shouted inside, listening to the two-letter word reverberate in her mind. This wasn’t happening. It couldn’t. Not again. She couldn’t keep letting the most important people in her life slip away.

So Lumikki did something completely out of character. She took Lenka’s hands and squeezed them between her own. She looked Lenka straight in the eyes. The distance and chill melted in an instant.

“I do believe you’re my sister.”

Lumikki watched as her words sank in. Lenka’s hands began to tremble. Tears welled up in her eyes. Lumikki had to swallow a couple of times too. It was as if something black and heavy had been lifted off her chest. Finally. An answer. The truth. It was here.

A group of noisy tourists walked by, but the twosome didn’t even notice. The heat and the sweat from the revelation curled the hair on the back of both their necks, but they
didn’t feel a thing. They were so alone that it was like being in their own private world.

Lenka hugged Lumikki tightly. Lumikki returned the embrace. She felt Lenka’s tears on her shoulder, where they mixed with her equally salty sweat. A startling joy filled Lumikki, the likes she hadn’t felt since losing Blaze.

Coming to Prague and finding a sister. It was a miracle. It was a gift. Lumikki had to accept it because there’d never be another chance.

When Lenka let go, Lumikki found herself naturally wiping away Lenka’s tears with the back of her hand. Again she had that déjà vu feeling of having done the same thing before, even though that didn’t seem possible. Maybe sharing the same genes, the same blood flowing in their veins somehow did bring an innate familiarity. Lumikki had never believed in things like that, but maybe it was time for her to reexamine her assumptions. So much had happened. So many big things.

“I want you to come meet the family,” Lenka said.

Lumikki wanted that too. Not because of the family, but because of Lenka, so she could make sure she was safe. And if she wasn’t safe, if the family was dangerous, she could save her sister.

She had a sister she wanted to save. That thought felt surprisingly good to Lumikki.

“But will they accept me?” she asked.

“We won’t give them a choice,” Lenka said and smiled.

Lumikki had never seen her smile so wide before, so happy and free.

Once upon a time, there was a woman with a secret.

Secrets have the intrinsic property that they stop being secrets if they are told to outsiders. The Secret is sacred. The Secret cannot be defiled by sharing it with anyone who does not understand the Secret.

The woman had told. She thought she wanted to live without the family. She fled. She hid her new name and address from the family. She hid her child. Those were the wrong kind of secrets. Sinful secrets. And sinful secrets are always exposed, sooner or later.

That was why the cold river water embraced the woman. It pulled her to the bottom. The water rocked the woman like a greedy lover. It kissed her lips and forced her mouth open. It filled her mouth and nostrils, entered her lungs and displaced
the air. The water wanted her all to itself, to make her part of its cold kingdom where dark stories are told in quiet, lilting voices.

The woman did not enter the water of her own free will or by accident. She was pushed. Sinners cannot float. They must be made to sink.

And the wrong kind of secrets must sink with them.

On the white plate were two boiled potatoes, two boiled carrots, a slice of meat, and a slice of plain bread. Nothing in the meal indicated the use of spices, herbs, or really that anyone had put any effort into making the food taste good or look appetizing. Not exactly Lumikki’s idea of Sunday dinner.

The food was served in the large dining room next to the kitchen. Lumikki and Lenka had been sent straight to the table, but Lumikki’d had just enough time to identify three other large rooms on the lower floor. Rickety-looking wood stairs led up to where the bedrooms were. Lumikki hoped she’d get a chance to investigate the house more carefully, but no one was offering a tour quite yet.

“Dinner won’t wait,” Lenka had whispered.

Lumikki glanced at the others sitting around the long table. There were about twenty of them. The older ones were
probably approaching eighty, the younger ones were just a year or two older than Lenka, who seemed to be the youngest. Everyone’s head was bowed for the prayer offered in Czech by Adam Havel, who sat at the head of the table. The prayer was long and Lumikki didn’t understand a word of it. She took advantage of the opportunity to examine the members of the cult, who were all dressed in white, slightly shabby linen garments. They were slender, even thin, which was no wonder if this was their most elaborate meal of the week. There were no other striking similarities, though—they didn’t look obviously related. However, they did all have on the same placid, slightly listless expression. They prayed intently, eyes closed.

Everything in the house was a little shabby and worn. The old wallpaper was peeling and faded in places. The paint on the floorboards was chipped. The windows were cloudy, in serious need of a wash. The few furnishings could have used some fixing up. There were no pictures or paintings on the walls, not a single decoration or anything else unnecessary that might create a feeling of home. Nothing in the house indicated that anyone lived here. It felt as if they were in a deserted, run-down building. A sad picnic in an abandoned house.

With his beard and bushy eyebrows, Adam Havel could best be described by the word “gray.” His hair and beard were gray and even his skin tone was a little grayish. Determining his precise age was difficult, but he might have been in his sixties, as Lenka had guessed. Lumikki couldn’t look at him without the strange feeling that his grayness was only a feigned lack of pretension. The purposefulness of his every
movement reflected a strong will and a certain menacing quality. He was slim, but the muscles of his arms were well-defined. His hands clasped in prayer looked strong enough to strangle the life from a person.

Suddenly, Adam Havel lifted his gaze in the middle of the prayer and his gray eyes locked on Lumikki. Quickly, Lumikki lowered her own eyes and stared at her lap. There was no reason to make the group’s leader any more suspicious of her.