Heidelberg Effect (18 page)

It pleased Ella to see the novices’ delight
at the Nutella. She teased them not to get used to it, since it was
going to be hard to come by when it was gone. They were used to her
not making sense and didn’t question where the treat came from or
why there wouldn’t be more. She gave the instant coffee and some of
the soap to Greta. The coffee made Greta break down in tears which
upset Ella greatly even though she knew they were tears of
delight.

Hell
, Ella thought,
if we’re all going
to die this week, might at least enjoy a cup of damn
coffee.

It was hard to believe she had not thought
of Rowan in the four weeks that she had been away. Seeing his face
so unexpectedly in the photo in her apartment brought the memory of
his warmth and strength come roaring back into her consciousness.
She found herself distracted and miserable with longing to see him
again.

“And you saw no one?” Greta asked her.

“No. But it looked like someone was living
in my apartment,” she said. “That was creepy.”

“You retrieved the items you need for our
problem?”

“I think so. Worse comes to worse, I can
always blow the son of a bitch up.”

Greta frowned.

“Kidding, Greta, kidding. One supreme act of
violence isn’t going to change anything, blah blah blah. We still
need a plan.”

“What can such a plan be?”

“I don’t know yet,” Ella said. “But I’ve got
enough C4 to at least get me thinking.”

Greta looked closely at Ella. “There is
something different about you,” she said. “Are you sure nothing
happened?”

Ella sat down next to her
friend. “A
little
something happened,” she said. “Did I ever mention that I had
a sort of boyfriend?”

Greta shook her head.

“I know. That’s weird, isn’t it? It’s almost
like he didn’t exist while I’ve been here. Only when I went back, I
saw his picture and…” Her throat closed up and she felt close to
tears.

Greta reached over and took Ella’s hand. “My
poor brave Ella,” she said.

“I miss him,” Ella said, rubbing her tears
away. “I miss him so bad right now I can barely see straight. How
can I feel like this when a week ago I didn’t even think of
him?”

“He lives in Germany?”

Ella wiped her eyes with her fingers. “No,
he’s in America. We met before I moved here.”

“And you are in contact with him?”

“Well, we used to phone each other. But I’m
pretty sure he’s got someone else by now.”

“I see.”

“I’m probably just all emotional. It’s just
strange to be there and then here. Plus, I can’t tell you how
worried I was that I was going to slip through the time slot and
end up in prehistoric Germany or something.”

“A realistic worry,” Greta said. She took a
sip of her coffee.

“I’m better now,” Ella said. “It just threw
me to see his picture again.”

“You did not bring it?”

“I thought about it,” Ella admitted.

“Perhaps it’s best this way.”

Chapter Twelve

The next day at the convent was a somber
one. Ella went through the motions of her chores, her mind whirling
as she worked with plans that she created and discarded one by one.
The fact that she had explosives was good but explosives would only
be useful if she had a plan. A really creative, brilliant plan. As
she kneaded the dough, punched it down and shaped it into loaves,
she tried to remember any television plots that might help. She
also ran through the plotlines of favorite movies and novels.

When Greta asked her at
lunch if she would like help in devising the plan, Ella knew Greta
was just trying to pacify her. Ella thanked her but said no, a plan
based on C-4 and Taser plugs would not easily be contrived by a
seventeenth century nun, even if she
had
been born in the twentieth
century.

The rest of the convent was
still in mourning for the two sisters they had lost the day before.
The novices looked terrified as if at any moment they might be
plucked out of their home and taken away.
A very real concern
, Ella thought,
as she helped wash dishes after dinner. She smiled encouragingly at
the younger nuns. Their fear almost radiated off them as they moved
about their chores. Waiting.

Frustrated with her
inability to form a sensible plan that could save them, Ella found
she couldn’t sleep that night. After hours of trying, she grabbed a
wool cloak and slipped out of the nunnery and into the garden.
Careful not to get too close to the place where the door swung open
to her future world, she sat on a stone table in the middle of the
garden under a large olive tree.
I’m no
good at this
, she thought.
I want so badly to help but I don’t have any
ideas. None. Blow up the castle. Only there’s not enough C-4 to do
that.

Feeling a wave of
hopelessness crash over her, Ella gave away to futility and
sadness. Her shoulders shook with her sobs as she wept without
restraint. And as she cried, she realized that she too was
mourning. Only she was mourning for herself because today it
occurred to her that what she had really been trying for, what she
had been reaching and hoping for her whole life long—what she gave
up Rowan for—wasn’t an international job full of adventure and
prestige. What she had
really
wanted all along was love. The chance to love and
be loved. And because she never looked herself in the eye and saw
that
that
was
what she truly wanted, she spent thirty years going down rabbit
holes and blind alleys—just like her father always told her—looking
for something that never existed.

And when the chance for
love
finally
did
come into her life, she had thrown it away. She couldn’t even blame
it on fate or bad timing or anyone else. And when she finally
formed that thought in her head and with it the realization of her
failure, she buried her head on her folded arms on her knees and
cried until there were no more tears to cry.

Rowan stared at the barmaid and pointed to
his empty glass. His cowboy hat sat on the bar next to him. There
weren’t many people in this evening so he didn’t worry about taking
up an extra stool. Besides, he intended to make it worth Olga’s
while. Or whatever her name was. She came over and brought him a
fresh whiskey and soda and sat it down in place of the empty one
she took away.

“I’ll be needing a double next time, ma’am,”
he said.

“I already took the liberty,” she said,
smiling sweetly. “You did not drive, did you?”

He was touched that she wanted to make sure
he wasn’t going to drive drunk tonight. “No, ma’am,” he said. “I
did not.”

“Then the double is on me.”

“
I thank you, ma’am. Will
you join me?”

“Natürlich
,” she said as she placed
a glass on the bar next to his and poured a shot of Tequila. “Are
you alone?”

“I am alone,” he said, draining his
drink.

“Not married?”

“No, ma’am,” he said. “Not even close.”

“Are you a cowboy?”

“Guess I’d pass pretty close to it in
Heidelberg,” he said, pushing his empty toward her for a
refill.

“You are sad about something, I think.”

“You are very good at your job, darlin’.
Yeah, I’m sad.”

“I can be very good at helping you not be
sad.”

“Well, actually, I think I’ll just let the
whiskey handle that,” he said. “No offense.”

“The whiskey will only make you sadder,” she
said. “This much I know.”

“I reckon you’re right,” he said. “I guess
at this point I just don’t give a shit. I hope you’ll excuse my
language.”

The bartender sipped her drink and then
pulled a business card out from under the bar. She wrote her number
on it and pushed the card across the bar to Rowan.

“When the whiskey does not work, I hope you
will come back,” she said. “You must fight love with love. This
much I know.”

“Good to know.
Danke schön
.” Rowan
pocketed the business card and tapped his empty drink glass.
“Meanwhile, if I could trouble you…”

By the time he left the bar at closing time,
he knew he was solidly drunk. And that was perfectly fine with
him.

The night before, when he
knew he had missed Ella by mere minutes, he had run out into the
street as if the night and the silence of the buildings could
direct him in some way. Not knowing which way she had gone, he had
run without thinking toward the
Altstadt
.

Now, drunk and defeated, he
wove down the noisy party street that was
Altstadt
in 2012. The night before,
at this spot, he thought he’d seen a shadow move on the old stone
road leading up to the castle ruins. Tonight, he found himself
drawn again to that place.
Stupid
, he thought.
If she wasn’t here last night, she sure as shit
ain’t going to be here tonight
. And
besides, there was no
here
, here. It was just the
beginning of a stone walkway. He stumbled up the dark walkway, then
leaned against the stonewall beside it and pulled a cigarette out
of his pocket. His Glock semi-automatic was nestled in his shoulder
holster and he felt it pressing into his chest as he lifted the
lighter to the tip of the cigarette. He took a long drag off the
cigarette and felt the chill of the November night seep under his
thin jacket.

“Where are you, Ella?” he said to the air,
the night, the castle stones. “Where are you, girl?”

Suddenly, he felt something move deep inside
him. It was a rush of warmth and lust and emotion all at once which
seemed to engulf him. He staggered away from the wall and tossed
the cigarette down. Inconceivably, drunkenly, he was overwhelmed by
the feeling that Ella was there. He looked around and up and down
the empty walkway.

She is here!
Rowan pushed himself off the wall, opening his
arms wide as if to embrace the air or the feeling of her nearness,
his heart full as an ocean of longing washed over him. In anguish,
he called out: “Ella! Where are you?”

In a rush of movement and nausea that made
him think he was passing out, Rowan took two more steps and found
himself in front of a garden gate under a full moon. He fell on the
gate and struggled to right himself. The gate swung inward with his
weight and he fell into a small bed of vegetables.

“Aw, shit,” he said picking himself up and
feeling the mud on his knees. “Son of a bitch.” In the recesses of
his quickly sobering mind, he could hear someone moving in the
garden. And then he heard the one thing he never would have
believed he would hear.

“Rowan? Is that you?”

He looked up to see Ella dressed in a nun’s
habit coming toward him at a dead run.

She flew down the narrow garden path to the
gate, the sharp stones biting into her bare feet, and launched
herself into his arms. Her need to touch him and be held by him was
as fierce and real as anything she ever felt. She hit him so hard
that they both fell to the ground. She grabbed his face with her
hands in the moonlight to look into his eyes and make sure it was
really him.

“If wanting something so bad can make it
appear, then I just brought you here all the way from Dothan,
Alabama,” she said.

“Ella, girl,” Rowan said. “Is it really you?
I can’t believe I found you! Dear God, what are you wearing? What
happened to you? I can’t believe it’s you.”

He held her arms in his hands, his eyes
welling and searching her face in shock and disbelief.

“I can’t believe you’re here,” she said,
still sitting on top of him. “I can’t believe you’re really here.”
In spite of her best attempts not to, she started to cry.

“Hey, beautiful, don’t cry. It’s going to be
all right. Everything’s going to be all right.”

“How did you get here? How did you know I
was here?” Ella said. She wiped the tears from her face.

“I didn’t know,” Rowan said. “Ella, what’s
going on here? Was that you in your apartment yesterday?”

“Yes! Was that you who nearly caught me? Oh,
if I’d known it was you!” And she started to cry again.

“Whoa, there, whatever it is, it can’t be
that bad, Ella. I’m here, aren’t I?”

She nodded and put her hands out to touch
his face again. “I can’t believe it,” she repeated, shaking her
head in wonder. “But you really are.”

“Can we stand up? This mud is better for the
plants than it is my khakis, you know what I mean?”

They got to their feet and he wrapped his
arms around her. They stood silently, just holding each other until
Rowan finally pulled away.

“What are you doing in a
broken down old garden in the middle of the night?” he asked. “Are
you
living
here?
Why aren’t you in your apartment? Why did you quit your job? Why
didn’t you call me back? Or your father?”

“Oh, my God,” she said, pulling out of his
embrace. “You don’t know.”

“Don’t know what?
What
don’t I
know?”

“Rowan, there is no easy way to tell you
this so I’m just going to tell you and let it sink in, okay?”

“Okay.”

“We are no longer in 2012. We are in a
different year in history. We’re in the year 1620.”

“What the hell, Ella?”

Ella sniffed at the collar of his jacket.
“Rowan? You been drinking tonight?”

“Doesn’t mean I went insane.”