Raven Sisters (Franza Oberwieser Book 2) (25 page)

63

Lilli wasn’t there. They rang and rang, knocked on the door, called her name, but Lilli wasn’t home. Or at least she wasn’t opening the door.

“OK,” Herz said. “Let’s move on. Perhaps she’s with her family. It’s possible.”

The detectives arrived at more or less the same time as Hans Brendler. Arthur had obviously impressed the sense of urgency on him.

“You again,” Dorothee Brendler said as she opened the door. She looked tired and on edge. “What can I do for you this time?”

It was only then that she saw her husband, who had parked his car next to the detectives’ and was slowly walking toward them. Her eyebrows shot up, and she was silent for a moment, a moment in which she hung in the balance between knowing nothing and only wanting to know nothing. But Franza could see she was already beginning to suspect that this conversation would shake another foundation.

“May we come in?” Franza asked. “Is there somewhere we can talk undisturbed? And is Lilli here?”

Dorothee was surprised.

“No,” she said. “There’s no one here. Moritz is at kindergarten, Christian’s at work, and Lilli
. . .
” She stopped. “I don’t know where Lilli is. I hardly ever know where Lilli is. She’s an adult, after all. What do you want with her?”

“Nothing,” Franza said in an attempt to reassure her. “We only want to talk to the two of you.”

Dorothee nodded. “OK. Should we go out onto the terrace?”

They went out. The terrace was covered, protecting them from the rain, a bright, light drizzle that gave the day a surprising glow.

“Can I get you
. . 
. ?”

She stopped as she saw the detectives shake their heads.

“Please sit down,” Franza said.

She hesitated briefly, then sat down, crossed her legs, and stiffened for a moment, looking at Franza with a questioning expression.

“Lilli,” Franza said.

They were shocked. Both of them. It was obvious. They didn’t want to be asked about Lilli. Dorothee gave a slight shake of her head. “What
. . .
what do you mean?”

“I think you know, Frau Brendler,” Herz said.

She shook her head more emphatically.

“No,” she gasped. “I don’t know what you mean! What do you want from us?”

Hans Brendler cleared his throat and laid a calming hand on his wife’s arm.

“Frau Oberwieser,” he said, “Herr Herz, why don’t you just concentrate on your work and find our daughter’s murderer? What has our granddaughter got to do with the investigation? Why can’t you leave us in peace? We’re suffering enough as it is!”

“Herr Brendler,” Franza said. “Lilli isn’t your natural granddaughter. We know that. And of course you know it, too.”

He was about to protest, making a great show of it. But his wife had finally had enough. She was tired and she wanted her life back, even though she knew that would never happen. She needed to rethink her approach. Everything would be changed by this truth that they had denied for all those years, but which had now come to light with unshakeable force. She accepted it now. She no longer had the strength to fight it.

But her husband did. He jumped up. “What are you thinking? I’m going to file a complaint against you! Don’t you know who I am?”

His voice was agitated, and his face was flushed red. “How dare you assert that my granddaughter isn’t my granddaughter! Do you want proof? You can have it—birth certificate, the lot!”

“Oh, I’m sure you can prove it,” Herz said. “I’m completely sure of it. You’re an attorney, after all. Who better than you, Herr Brendler, would know how to bend the law? But as far as we’re concerned
. . .
”

Wow,
Franza thought,
old Herz is really pushing the envelope! Take care, he’ll file a complaint against you before you know it!

She reached out a hand, about to lay it on Herz’s arm to calm him down a little. But it wasn’t necessary. Dorothee Brendler suddenly leaned over to her husband, motioning for him to sit down.

“No,” she said quietly and firmly. “No more. That’s enough. It’s over. Let it be.”

He looked at her for a moment in amazement, and then lowered his head and closed his eyes.

She stroked his hair. His face grew deathly pale and slack. Franza sensed his pain and the long years of deep uncertainty.

Dorothee gave a light shake of her head.

“I don’t want to do it anymore,” she said. “I can’t. No more lies. Enough is enough.”

She slid closer to him, laid her head on his shoulder, and began to talk, her face averted. Her husband put his arms around her and held her tight. Franza and Felix had to listen hard to understand her.

“I knew right away,” she said. “There was no way I could fail to see. She stood before me in this ridiculous dress, her belly bulging out, and said, ‘Help me. Make it go away. I don’t want it. I can’t cope with it.’”

“Who?” Franza asked. “Who, Frau Brendler?”

Dorothee was silent for a few seconds, took a deep breath, and said, “Hanna. Hanna, of course.”

Silence reigned for a long moment. It was so silent that there was a thrumming in the ears, in the veins, in the air.

Dorothee Brendler finally continued, telling of the hours, the days, which had thrown her life off balance.

“She was away for a long time, Hanna was,” she said. “A really long time—months—and we never heard a thing from her. It was as though she were dead. We were very worried. Gertrud had come home from Greece alone. Tonio was brought back a week later and buried a week after that. And Hanna had disappeared. You just can’t imagine what we were going through.”

She breathed in deeply, released herself from her husband, and leaned back in her chair, her face now a mask of stone.

“I recall I was completely alone that day. We had no help around the house anymore since the girls moved away. I was in the garden—I’d just been mowing the lawn—when a taxi drove up. And she got out, our Hanna. Skin and bone
. . 
. except for that round belly. She looked ill, tired, completely exhausted.”

Dorothee sighed, closed her eyes, and continued. “I went over to the car. She was standing there, an emaciated girl with a swollen belly. She fell into my arms and said, ‘Help me! Or I’ll die! It hurts so much, it’s so hard. Make it go away!’”

Another pause. Dorothee thought for a while, picturing this starving creature with the swollen belly that she carried in front of her like a poisonous ulcer.

“My first thought was she needed a hospital. Of course. But she seemed so tired. I paid the taxi driver and put her to bed. She fell asleep immediately.”

Dorothee looked at her husband, completely calm now, under control, sure of himself. “I called him, and he came and sat down by her bed. We were so happy to have her back with us, that she was alive. She slept for two whole days. In the brief periods when she was awake, we brought her food and drink. I monitored her blood pressure, her circulation. We washed her and fed her like a child. We took time off work to be there for her.”

“Why didn’t you take her to the hospital?”

She thought about it, listening to her inner voice. “I don’t know. I really don’t know. They were exceptional circumstances; the three of us were marooned. We weren’t thinking clearly. We simply took care of her. The baby was lying high. There was no indication that she would give birth anytime soon. I thought we still had time. Two, three more weeks. And she was so happy to be home. She felt safe.”

“What did she tell you?”

“Nothing. Nothing at all. She seemed to have put it all behind her, suppressed it. We didn’t ask. We thought it would all come out when she was ready. In any case, she was asleep most of the time.”

“And then?”

“And then
. . .
” She sighed. “Three days after she arrived, the pains suddenly began. It took us all completely by surprise.”

She shook her head, still surprised by the memory.

“She was sitting with us on the terrace for the first time. She’d just eaten a bowl of semolina, her favorite from childhood. She seemed calmer, but still exhausted. I wanted to talk to her, to take her fear away. We’d decided we wouldn’t take her to the hospital until later, until she really needed a safe place to bring her child into the world.”

She hesitated and turned to her husband. “I’m thirsty. Could you bring me some water?”

He stood, went into the house, and returned with a jug of water and four glasses. She took a drink, continued talking. “But suddenly, so incredibly quickly, it all happened. Hanna suddenly cried out, grasped her belly, and screamed in panic and sobbed, ‘I’m dying! I’m dying!’ And I said, ‘No, no, Hanna, you’re not dying, you’re having your baby.’ She looked at me in terror. ‘But I don’t want a baby!’ she sobbed.”

Dorothee looked at her husband.

“He took her in his arms, his Hanna, soothed her, and suddenly she was a little girl again. She had only known him as her father, no one else. I said, ‘I’m calling an ambulance,’ but he’d already lifted her up. She was groaning, moaning, and the pains were coming at short intervals. He said, ‘We don’t have time to get to the hospital. We’ll take her into the house, into her room. You’ll have to deliver the baby, you’re a doctor.’”

She took another sip of water and put the glass back down pensively. “I’m an internist, I have nothing to do with midwifery, but she was lying there moaning and screaming in her bed. What could I do? Of course I helped her bring her child into the world. It was difficult. She was so unyielding—everything was hard and tense inside her. She was so terrified. But then the baby was there. Suddenly, she was there.”

She smiled and tears began to fall, to run down her cheeks. She let them.

“At last the baby was born, a little girl. She was strong from the very first moment, wonderfully strong. She screamed bloody murder. She’d been determined to come into the world at any price. She’d roamed half the world with her mother and she’d been suppressed almost completely from Hanna’s thoughts, her feelings, her awareness. She must have sensed that Hanna didn’t want her, that Hanna rejected her; she had to let her do that so they could both survive, and then
. . .
and then she was there. And she saved her mother’s life, I’m sure of that to this day. Without her, Hanna would have stayed somewhere, died, vanished. If that baby hadn’t brought her home.”

Her voice fell to a whisper. “A wonderful child. A wonderful girl, our Lilli. Right from the start.”

She looked long at her husband and took his hand.

“He helped me,” she said. “We looked after the baby, we looked after Hanna. You helped me.”

They smiled at one another through tears, and they held hands.

“When it was finally over,” she continued, “Hanna fell back into a deep sleep. She was fine physically, but she slept and slept as if she hadn’t slept for weeks—for a day, a night, and another day. I can’t remember exactly. And there we were with her daughter and no idea what to do.”

She reached for her glass and closed her eyes, unable to say any more. Her husband saw it and took over.

“Gertrud came. She brought baby food, clothes, diapers—everything you need. I phoned her and she came immediately. She looked at Hanna, she looked at the baby, she picked the baby up. It was as though she had always had her. They fit so well together. I can’t say it any other way. They fit so well together.” He fell silent, a sad smile on his face. “It made her happy to be holding that baby. Yes, she suddenly looked
. . .
at peace, full of clarity, full of certainty. Like she never had been before. And the baby was also calm.”

“What about Hanna?”

They looked at one another in silence.

“Hanna went to pieces,” Dorothee Brendler finally said, quietly. “She couldn’t find a way back into her life.”

She recalled how Hanna awoke from her exhaustion and fell into an even deeper one. The images rose up in her mind.

Hanna had been away too long, been on the move too long. Too much had happened; she couldn’t fit back into her old life.

“It’s just a matter of getting used to things,” her parents had said in the beginning, when they laid her daughter down with her. She’d looked at her with distant eyes and said, “Take her away! What am I supposed to do with her?” and pushed her away. The baby began to cry. Gertrud picked her up, and she became calm.

Dorothee and Hans stroked her hair gently, looked at one another, looked at Gertrud rocking the baby, began to wonder
. . .

Two days went by.

“We have to register the birth,” Dorothee said one morning as they were sitting to breakfast. The baby was asleep in her crib in Gertrud’s room. “It’s unforgivable that we haven’t done it yet. Too much time has already gone by.”

Gertrud suddenly said, “I want her.”

Dorothee stared at her daughter. Her husband gathered himself first. “What? What do you mean?”

“I want her,” Gertrud said again. “I want Hanna’s baby. I’ll be the best mother she could have, you know that. Hanna doesn’t even want the baby. Just look at her. She belongs in the nuthouse. She’s not in any position to look after her child. She starts to cry when she’s anywhere near her. I want her. Give her to me. Let me have her.
You
owe it to me.” She looked at her father. “You owe it to me.”