now seems like going against his wishes.”
“I can take care of the shop, truly. You have Dad’s other things to sort out.” What to do with his clothes, his shoes, his belongings. Whether to move his shaving brush and razor in the bathroom. All the things to be decided after a death.
“He was very organized, thank goodness.” Anneliese began warming the milk. “I don’t want you to think we have to worry about money. There was insurance; we won’t have to scrimp to make ends meet. I’m meeting with the lawyer about the will.”
Jordan couldn’t even begin to contemplate the official details. “If I can help . . .”
“Between the two of us, we can handle everything.” Anneliese smiled over her shoulder, stirring the milk. “I’m so lucky you’re such a capable girl, Jordan. More than a girl, really—I shouldn’t keep calling you that. Having a grown woman at my side is a great comfort at a time like this.”
The compliment warmed Jordan more than the cup of cocoa Anneliese placed in her hands. “Thank you.” Anneliese sat in the chair opposite, pushing her hair back over her shoulders, and Jordan saw a faint pink line of a scar disappearing around the back of her neck below her collar. “Did you hurt yourself?” Jordan indicated the scar; she didn’t think she’d seen it before.
“Childhood accident.” Anneliese made a face. “I always thought it looked ugly, so I cover it up first thing in the morning. American makeup is a wonder!”
“It’s not ugly. It’s hardly noticeable.”
“That’s what your father said.” Anneliese touched her mug to Jordan’s. “To Dan.”
“To Dad.” Jordan savored the chocolaty warmth—Anneliese’s cocoa was better than anyone’s; something extra she put in it—and found herself appraising her stepmother across the table. “How are you, Anna? How are you really, I mean? You put on a very good face for the neighbors, but you’re also drinking cocoa at one in the morning.”
Anneliese massaged her temples. “There’s a dream I’ve been having for years, since the war. It mostly went away when I came to live in this house, but now it’s come back. Your father was a good antidote to bad dreams, very—” She paused, said a German word, tried to find its equivalent in English. “Very of this earth? I could wake up next to him, reassured. He was solid. Nothing could follow me out of a dream with him there.”
Jordan felt her throat tighten, but it was a good tightness. “I remember him sitting on the edge of my bed when I was little, telling me the bats couldn’t come out of the dream and get me.”
“Is that what you dreamed of?” Anneliese smoothed a lock of hair back. “Bats aren’t so bad.”
“I was only Ruth’s age, bats were bad enough. What’s your nightmare?” Anneliese hesitated. “It can’t hurt to tell me.”
Her stepmother looked as if she wasn’t going to speak, but her hand drifted up under the dark fall of her hair, rubbing the back of her neck, and the words started seemingly despite herself. “The dream always starts beside a lake. A woman is running, straight for me. She’s small and ragged, and I see her hair flashing through the shadows, and I know she wants to kill me.”
“Why?”
“I don’t know why. You know dreams, they don’t make sense. But she’s filled with hatred.” Anneliese shivered. “I chase the woman toward the lake, it’s open there, she can’t hide . . . But she does. She disappears into the lake—it swallows her up, pulls her in like it’s helping her hide. I stand there on the edge, waiting for her to come for me.”
Jordan shivered, herself. Anneliese’s voice was slow, dreamy, as though she were half asleep.
“I wait for a long time, and finally I know it’s all right. She’s gone. I’m safe.” Anneliese lifted her eyes. “And that’s when she rises out of the lake, streaked with blood, and drifts across the water toward me. Her teeth are so sharp, and her nails glint like razors . . . And that’s when I wake up. Before the night witch cuts my throat.”
“That is ghastly,” Jordan couldn’t help saying.
“It is.” Her stepmother lifted her cup, trying to smile. “Hence cocoa at one in the morning.”
“Who’s the woman in the nightmare?”
“No one I ever knew.” Taro laid her long nose on Anneliese’s knee; Anneliese stroked her and said something loving in German. “I think she comes from one of those gruesome fairy tales I heard too young.