on the front page and wait, Jordan thought, glad she had kept Ruth upstairs.
The taxi was waiting. Ian opened the door for Anneliese, like a courteous escort. Anneliese straightened her hat with an automatic gesture, looked at Jordan. Her lips parted.
Say it, Jordan thought. Tell me you’re sorry. Tell me why you did it. Tell me . . . something.
Anneliese’s soft lips closed. She sank into the cab; her gloved hand pulled the door behind her.
And they were all gone.
JORDAN DIDN’T MAKE the mistake her great-aunt did so long ago when her mother lay dying, saying Your mother has gone away in an effort to spare the truth. “Years ago, your mother did some bad things,” Jordan told Ruth simply. “She’s going back to Austria to answer questions about them.”
“When will she come back?” Ruth whispered.
“She won’t be coming back, Ruth.”
Jordan braced herself, but Ruth didn’t seem to want more information.
“Do we have to go back to the lake?” she wanted to know, fingers twined through Taro’s collar.
“Never,” said Jordan. “We’re going to sell that cabin.” Sell it or burn it like Nina had done with her U-2 in the forest, make a pyre of it for all the terrible things that had happened there.
Ruth said no more, her small face shuttered. Jordan didn’t press her, only sent her to bed with a mug of cocoa and sat stroking the blond hair until Ruth sank into sleep. You’ll sleep, but you’ll also dream, Jordan thought, looking at her sister. Poor Ruth, confused all her life by nightmare fragments of memory. Sometimes pulling away from Anneliese, sometimes toward her. I hope she never remembers what she saw. I very much hope that.
But if she did, Jordan would tell her what happened. She’d tell Ruth everything she needed to know, as kindly and honestly as she could. “Good night, cricket,” Jordan whispered at last, tiptoeing out.
It was the first time she’d been down to the darkroom since Anneliese had locked her in. She stopped at the top of the stairs for a moment, smelling her stepmother’s faint lilac scent, then flicked the light and came down the steps. Only to be seized around the waist by a man’s arms, and to hear a familiar voice in her ear: “Come here, J. Bryde.”
Jordan shrieked, whirled, and smacked him all in the same motion. “Tony Rodomovsky, I’m going to kill you—” Raining more smacks down on him where he stood at the foot of the stairs.
“I apologize.” He offered himself up for the smacks, no resistance. “Es tut mir leid. Je suis désolé. Sajnálom. Imi pare rau. Przepraszam—”
“Shut up.” Another smack. “You couldn’t knock on the front door instead of—”
“I only just got back. Seeing the ship off, then settling things in Scollay Square. And I knew you’d be putting Ruth to bed, so I waited here.”
Jordan stood back, palms stinging. “You’re not on the boat,” she managed to say, rather unsteadily.
“Brilliant deduction, Holmes. Why did you think I’d be on the boat?”
“You didn’t say . . .” Jordan floundered. “It’s done here. You’re done. New chase, new hunt—”
He raised his eyebrows. “New girl?”
She kept her tone matter-of-fact. “We both said it was a summer fling.”
“I thought we discussed modifications to the contract. A potential three-month extension into an autumn fling, as per agreement by both parties—”
“Don’t tease,” Jordan begged. “I watched my stepmother walk away in handcuffs, more or less. Soon it’s going to be all over the front page—”
“Which is one reason I’m staying, at least for a while. Nina and Ian can handle the Austrian authorities without me. But there are going to be questions to answer here, especially when Ian’s done with the story and it breaks.” Tony’s eyes were steady. “I said I’d stay to handle them.”
That made Jordan weak with relief. She tried not to show it, but he reached out to push her hair back, smiling under the harsh light with an extra quirk of tenderness, and tugged her close for a slow, warm kiss, then another. Jordan felt her bones loosen in relief. “Oh, God, Tony. I’m so glad you came back.”
She wished she hadn’t said it—he was supposed to be a friend, a lover, not a rock to cling to. They’d only known each other for a summer. But his arms felt wonderfully rocklike and reassuring, and just for a moment she let herself cling.
“Are you cuddling?” He pulled back, felt her forehead with an anxious hand as if checking for a fever. “You never