Heidelberg Effect (34 page)

“I have something for you, Greta,” Ella
said. She pulled a paper bag out of her mail pouch that was slung
over the lower rung of her dining room chair and handed it to
Greta.

Greta touched the paper tenderly. “It is
from your time,” she said.

“It is. And it’s a miracle it’s still in one
piece but then, I’d say we pretty much got the whole miracle thing
nailed. Anyway, I knew this belonged to you.”

Greta gingerly pulled a souvenir mug out of
the bag. It was a simple white ceramic mug with a slender handle
and the year 2012 painted on the front. The illustration under the
date showed the American flag and the German tricolor, their staffs
intertwined to show solidarity.

“I used to keep my pens in it on my desk,”
Ella said. “Better keep it hidden, tho.’ I don’t want your feet
getting scorched because you have a coffee mug in your kitchen
dated six hundred years in the future.”

Greta held the mug in both hands, her eyes
misting with emotion. “Thank you, Ella,” she said. “You have truly
brought peace to both my worlds.”

Ella jumped up and hugged her. “And you,
mine, Mother,” she whispered. “And you mine.”

The next morning, Rowan and Ella said their
final goodbyes and left Greta at the castle. They walked, holding
hands, to the site of the convent garden where they would seek out
the portal to return them to their time.

Ella turned and looked back at Heidelberg
Castle.

“You know, Rowan?” she said. “What we did
here? It was the best thing I’ve ever done.”

Rowan lifted a curl of her hair and pulled
it away from her face. He held her chin in his fingers and kissed
her on the lips.

“Come on, beautiful,” he said. “We need to
leave before something else happens. I don’t know how all this ends
up but I’m pretty sure the tide swings back the other way before
too long.”

“What do you mean?” Ella frowned and turned
to look at the outline of the castle against the blue sky.

“You do know we can’t solve all of history’s
problems, right?” He looked around the garden and the street that
led to it. “But for this brief shining moment in time…everything is
fine. I don’t think we can really hope for more than that.”

She reached for his hand. “Husband, you are
a very wise man.”

He grinned and leaned in to kiss her again.
“God, I’m going to miss this shit back home in Dothan,” he
said.

Heidelberg 2012

This time when she made the trip, Ella
hugged Rowan tightly and forced herself to remember her fear and
anguish during those twelve hours when he was held captive in the
castle. She let the terror and the agony as well as the certainty
of her love for him wash over her and become her whole world. It
was enough.

They were back.

Ella looked around at her surroundings. She
felt flushed with relief that they had, in fact, made it back but
the sensation was tinged with sadness that her dear friend was now
several lifetimes away. She looked over at the little graveyard
which she knew contained the graves of generations of the Sisters
of Mercy. She couldn’t bear to see if Greta’s name was inscribed on
one of the ancient, worn tombstones.

“Don’t you think it’s weird that people
walking by don’t give us a second look, the way we’re dressed?”
Rowan said. He grabbed her hand to lead her away from the spot that
used to be the little convent garden but was now just an empty lot
on a vacant side street. It was late afternoon and Rowan didn’t
appear to be interested in reflecting on where they had come from
or whom they had left behind. He was hungry.

“For that, I guess we can be grateful,” Ella
said as she hurried behind him on the sidewalk. Their wallets and
bankcards had burned in the convent fire so Rowan stopped at a
supermarket and used the phone to call his office to have three
hundred Euros wired to him and two one-way flights booked to the
States for the next day.

“I could murder a cheeseburger,” he
said.

Ella looked at the modern
city streets and marveled that she and Rowan really were
back.
Life during this time is so
easy
, she thought, as they passed the
grocery stores and restaurants, the dress shops and
druggists.
Was she just imagining it, or
had Rowan disconnected the minute they got back?

“I feel out of place here, don’t you?” she
said as she struggled to keep up with his long strides. “I mean, do
you know what I mean?”

“Not really. Why don’t you give yourself
some time to re-enter the modern age? Meanwhile, how ‘bout focusing
on getting your man something to damn eat?”

Ella looked at him and forced herself to
smile. “Yeah, sure,” she said. “I could eat, too.”

She took his arm and
continued in the direction of her apartment and a huge plate
of
wienerschnitzel
and
pommes frites
. She kept smiling so as not to give away the fact that she
had noticed he said
your man
and not
your
husband
.

The apartment looked exactly as Rowan had
left it. Ella dropped her bag in the foyer, then went and collapsed
on the couch. He stood in the foyer and frowned at the dropped bag.
It suddenly occurred to him that he really didn’t have the first
idea of what living with Ella was like.

“I’m dying for a hot shower,” she said, and
began to pull off her jacket.

“If we clean up first, we run the risk of my
passing out from lack of food.”

“No, problem. The shower will be here when
we get back.” She stood in the living room watching him. “It’s so
different here, isn’t it?” she said.

“Yeah,
good
different,” he said. “Grab some
money and let’s hit that place downstairs.”

Was he imagining things or were things weird
between them?

“They only serve tourist food,” Ella
said.

“I would have thought you’d have had your
fill of eating like a native,” he said.

He thought she gave him a strange look as
she went to find some Euros in one of the kitchen drawers.

Dinner was basic but
exquisite. They ate in a restaurant around the corner from her
apartment. It served largely tourist fare and Ella had stopped
eating there after her third meal in Germany. But Rowan was not yet
tired of meat and potatoes—especially after ten days of eating
mush, mutton and moldy bread. Ella watched him with fascination as
he ate a huge plate of
wienerschnitzel
and downed two
beers. She was so used to looking over her shoulder, it took her
until dessert before she could relax. Two large glasses of
gewürztraminer
also
helped.

“Great to be back, huh?” she said. They had
spoken little at dinner, which surprised her. In 1620, when she had
allowed herself to fantasize about being back in 2012 with Rowan
and not having to worry about being cold, hungry, or burned at the
stake, she always imagined herself deliriously happy. She imagined
that the comforts of life—and Rowan—were all she would need to be
happy. It didn’t bode well that their first day back in 2012 was a
fairly awkward one.

She watched Rowan signal
for the bill and felt a wave of anxiety. Things were
different.
He
was
different.

“Now what?” she asked, trying to sound
light.

“Well, the money should be here by morning.
I had them book the first flights out but that’s not until tomorrow
afternoon.”

“I forgot to ask,” she said. “Where are we
flying to?”

He looked at her with surprise. “Well,
Dothan. Of course.”

Ella felt a chill of excitement in the pit
of her stomach. “Oh,” she said. “I didn’t know they had an
international airport.”

“They don’t,” he said. “We fly into Atlanta
first.”

“Oh, okay.”

“You okay, Ella?” He leaned over to touch
her hand for the first time since they had returned to the future.
“I just assumed by all the major ass-kicking you did in 1620 that
you wouldn’t get rattled by a little thing like re-entering the
twenty-first century.”

Ella took in a big breath. “I miss Greta,”
she said.

The waiter came with the check and Rowan
paid. They walked outside into the cold night air.

“We didn’t have Thanksgiving,” Ella
said.

“Yeah, I thought about that,” Rowan said.
“About the time I was picking the millipedes out of my
oatmeal.”

“There were no millipedes in your
oatmeal.”

“Just being colorful, darlin’.” He put his
arm around her and they walked down the dark street.

As they entered her
apartment building, Ella knew she should be thinking of the
steaming hot shower or the three hundred thread count sheets and
goose down pillow she would sink into tonight. She knew she should
be anticipating the endless café mochas that would be a part of her
life from now on. But all she could think of was,
Am I still married? Am I still Mrs. Rowan
Pierce?
When she knew, almost certainly,
that that was not possible.

Rowan turned on the computer in the living
room as soon as they were in the apartment.

“Really, Rowan?” she asked, standing alone
in the foyer.

“Babe, just give me a minute, okay? I’ve
only got about a million emails to take a look at. I won’t be long.
Why don’t you take your shower?”

There was a time not long ago when he would
have found it unthinkable the idea of her taking a steaming hot
shower alone.

“Good idea,” she said.

After the longest shower of her life, Ella
wrapped herself up in her fluffiest towel and returned to the
living room. Rowan was still on the computer.

“Going, going…” she said as she came up
behind him and kissed his ear.

“Gone,” he said, still utterly focused on
the computer screen. “Nice bath, babe?”

“Lovely. Missed you, though.”

“Okay,” he said, obviously not listening to
her.

“Everything okay at home?”

“Just a lot going on since I’ve been away,”
he said. “Marshal shit.”

She felt her throat
tighten.
How was all this going to
end?
she wondered, as she walked slowly
into the bedroom.

She pulled back the duvet on her bed,
crawled in and switched the light off. As soon as she did, her
sadness gave way to intense exhaustion. She was asleep within
seconds. She didn’t hear the shower go on or the sound of footsteps
minutes later at her side of the bed. She was awakened by the feel
of Rowan’s rough beard against her cheek and the faint scent of the
beer he’d had for dinner on his breath.

“You’re not going to believe this,” he said,
leaning over her in bed. “You know how your grandmother was married
to the Nazi and all?”

“Could hardly forget it,” she murmured,
forcing herself to try to awaken more fully.

“Didn’t you say your Aunt Erica mentioned
she had an older sister besides your mom?”

Ella yawned. “She probably meant an older
cousin or something. There were just the three kids. Erica, my mom
and the boy, Hans.”

“Maybe not.”

Ella sat up in bed. She was fully awake
now.

“Turns out your grandmother
was married
before
she met the dirtbag,” Rowan said. “I found out her first
husband, Johann Reicht, died in 1934.”

“That’s what you were doing on the
computer?”

“That and some other stuff.”

“My grandmother was married before she
married Rudolph Vogel? And had a kid with her first husband?”

“A daughter, yeah.”

“So Erica was remembering
correctly. It
was
a sister. What was her name?”

“I don’t know. It doesn’t say.”

“Well, when was she born?”

“It doesn’t say that either.”

“Well, what
does
it say?”

“Just the date she disappeared.”

Ella looked him, the truth dawning on her.
“Rowan.”

“Yeah, I know, babe.”

“Oh, my God.”

“If it really is her, what would that make
her?”

“My half-aunt.”

“Pretty cool.”

A few minutes later, he slid into bed next
to her, pulling her against him. She turned in his arms until they
were facing each other. The day had been long and hard, full of
exciting revelations, disappointments and loss. Ella nearly
trembled at his touch.

“I love you, Rowan,” she said. He slid his
strong, warm hands down her back, then cupped her bottom and pulled
her to him.

“I love you, too, Ella,” he said.

She opened her eyes. “As a wife does,” she
whispered.

“I should certainly hope so,” he said,
kissing her lips gently and then with urgency. His hands gripped
her short hair and pulled her head back. He kissed her throat and
took one of her breasts in his hand while he lowered his mouth to
the other.

Twenty minutes later he was sound asleep and
snoring faintly. She could see by the bedside clock that it was a
little past two in the morning. She moved beneath his arm and
repositioned herself to spoon with him.

She wondered for a moment what Greta would
be doing. She wondered if it was worth the risk to ever go back to
1620 and visit her. She shook that idea off as mad, and knew that’s
how Rowan would see it. She reached behind her and took his hand in
hers.

“I was worried,” she whispered. “I couldn’t
imagine what you were doing on the computer that was so
important.”

In the silence that followed, she realized
that he wasn’t snoring any more.

“I wanted to check out my hunch about
Greta,” Rowan said softly, his breath tickling the back of her
neck, “but I also wanted to get things set up for us back home. I’d
like my folks to be there this time and I’d like for it to be in a
church.”