else was thinking as they chewed on their turkey, but thank goodness that was all in the past. Jordan hugged Anneliese now, inhaling her sweet lilac scent. “How do you always look so cool and collected?” she demanded, taking in the spotless gloves and the crisp cream linen suit that looked like it had come from the pages of Vogue and not Anneliese’s Singer. “I’m as rumpled as an old mop.”
“A young girl looks all the better for a little dishabille. Middle-aged matrons like me have to settle for being tidy and presentable.” Anneliese fished in her pocketbook, producing a fabric sample. “Look at this lovely yellow cotton. I was thinking a sundress for you—”
“Better for you, I look like a cheese in yellow.”
“You do not. When am I ever wrong about clothes?” Anneliese smiled. Three and a half years ago she’d received Jordan’s flame-faced apology only to offer a teary one of her own—they’d cried a little on each other’s shoulders, and never referred to it again. These days whenever Jordan thought about that Thanksgiving, she gave a deep, sincere flinch at her own stupidity and wondered, What was I thinking?
“What brings you in?” Jordan went on. “You never come to the shop during business hours.”
“Dan wanted the auction catalog for his trip tomorrow. He marked a set of Hope chairs—”
“Maybe this will be the last buying trip for a while.” Jordan’s dad seemed to be whisking out the door every other week these days, off to New York or Connecticut in one of the crisp herringbone suits Anneliese had chosen for him. He didn’t put in many hours behind the shop counter anymore, or in the back room where the restoration work was done. Jordan now managed the counter on most days, and in the back room—
“Is Mr. Kolb working today?” Anneliese tucked the auction catalog into her pocketbook.
“Here, Frau McBride.” The door to the back room opened and a frail-looking man with puffs of gray hair above his ears popped out—he always came in early, well before Jordan opened up. “I vas expecting you.” Mr. Kolb’s English was so thickly accented, it had taken Jordan weeks to understand him. “The Hepplewhite table, she needs varnish . . .” He launched into technicalities, mixing German and English. He’d come to the shop a year or so ago, another refugee with the waves arriving from Europe after the Displaced Persons Act, badly rumpled in a cheap suit and flinching visibly whenever a stranger addressed him.
“You won’t find anyone better to help with restoration,” Anneliese had told Jordan’s father when she proposed they sponsor Kolb’s entry to the United States. “Old books, old documents; those are his specialty. He had a shop in Salzburg when I was a child. I’m so glad I had the thought of looking him up.”
“He can’t take the counter, with his English so poor. And he’s very jumpy.”
“He had a bad time during the war, Dan. One of the camps . . .” Anneliese’s voice had faded to a discreet murmur, and the little German had been ensconced in the back room ever since, always with a peppermint in his pocket for Ruth and a shy smile for Jordan.
“English, Mr. Kolb,” Anneliese reminded him as he lapsed into German. “That dealer you told me about, the one who decided to settle in Ames . . . ?”
“Yes, Frau McBride. Final payment made.”
“Excellent. Did he pass that letter along for me to Salzburg?”
“Yes, Frau McBride.”
“For a woman I used to know there,” Anneliese told Jordan. “I’m hoping she might consider coming to Boston. I was so lucky to get here, make a new life. I’d like to help others like me do the same.” Her English was perfect now, no trace of German accent—if anything, she’d begun to drop her R’s like a real Bostonian. She looked so delighted whenever anyone assumed she was born and raised here, she never corrected them. She’d even lopped the second syllable off Anneliese when she took American citizenship; Anna McBride was how she introduced herself now.
Jordan’s father came in, looking cross. “New Yorkers,” he muttered. “Clogging up the street, not knowing how to park—”
“How is it that all tourists who can’t park are automatically New Yorkers?” Jordan teased.
“I know Yankee fans when I see them.” He dropped his hat on the counter, looking dapper in the suit he’d wear to the train station this afternoon. “Anna, did you tell Jordan about—”
“I knew you’d want to.” Anneliese smiled. “Ruth, come