As White as Snow (10 page)

There had been a time when everything between Lumikki and Blaze had been right, good, and natural. Lumikki often had dreams about that time. Waking up always felt just as violent and wrong.

Why did she have to wake up when the dream was so much better, so much truer?

She had lied. She had told tales that could have been true, but weren’t. She had constructed her story carefully and wouldn’t get caught.

Was lying so wrong after all? If the lie was more beautiful than the truth? If the lie gave the teller and the hearer more than the truth?

The lie became a story, and the story became true.

She didn’t regret doing it.

She wanted to see this story through to the end, to the very last page. She would take the risk that the end might be cruel. Her end.

Lumikki looked at the clock on her phone. It was five already and there was no sign of Lenka. She very well might not be coming. The phone felt heavy in Lumikki’s hand, like it was urging her to call her father, to ask him directly. Lumikki was actually considering it. It would have to be a sneak attack. First, she would just chat with him about the weather and whatever else, and then go at him, hit him from behind by asking whether it was true he had a daughter in Prague. She would be able to tell instantly from his voice if he was lying. Or at least Lumikki assumed she would. Maybe her father was a better liar than she’d ever imagined.

If Lenka was her father’s daughter and if everything Lenka said was true, Lumikki knew much less about her father than she thought. But did children ever know their parents? Really, deep down inside? Usually, they only saw a piece, just a small
fraction. They didn’t know what their parents had been like as children or what they dreamed about as teenagers. And even if the parents talked about those things, the stories were always colored by the simple fact that parents were telling them to their children.

Besides, Lumikki’s family had never talked about anything like that. It just wasn’t their way. Sometimes, Lumikki felt as if she had spent the first sixteen years of her life living with strangers—acquaintances at best.

It was five past five now. Lumikki stood up from the white wooden bench and stretched her legs a bit. She had walked a lot today. She liked walking, since it allowed her to get a sense of the city better than she could by tram, bus, or metro. Lumikki wondered whether she should leave. Her stomach was starting to grumble.

She weighed the phone in her hand. Maybe it was high time to crack their glass wall of silence. Her dad’s number was under P for “Pappa.” Lumikki pressed the button before she could change her mind.

Someone picked up on the first ring. But it wasn’t Dad, it was Mom.

“Peter went out for a walk and left his phone,” her mother said. “Did you have something urgent to talk to him about? I’ll tell him to call as soon as he gets back.”

Lumikki felt a headache coming on the instant she heard the concern in her mother’s voice.

“No, I . . . I just couldn’t remember when it was that Pappa was here in Prague,” she said quickly.

The other side of the line went quiet for a few seconds. Now, of course, her mother was going to claim that he’d never even been to Prague. That was the only logical answer, considering her dad had never breathed a word about the city, not the whole time Lumikki was planning her trip.

“Have the two of you talked about that? I would have thought Peter . . . that he wouldn’t want to remember that. It’s been so many years. Those were . . . bad times.”

Her mother’s voice had changed. It was strange. Lumikki had never heard her mother like that. She sounded sad, but also honest and open. As if she’d forgotten for a moment who she was talking to and wanted to say much more. Her mother’s defenses were much lower than usual. Lumikki had asked the right question.

“Did something happen here?” Lumikki asked, launching another direct question immediately after the first.

There was no turning back now that the door was open a crack.

“No, it wasn’t that . . . ,” her mother said.

Just then, Lumikki heard footsteps on the gravel path. Lenka. She came running up, out of breath, her eyes red, clearly upset.

“I have to go. Let’s talk later,” Lumikki said quickly, hanging up the phone.

The timing wasn’t working. There was this secret being uncovered from two directions, but the revelations were colliding and interfering with each other.

“Jaro is dead,” Lenka announced.

“Jaro?”

“One of our family members. A car hit him and he died instantly. He was the one you saw yesterday in the window.”

Tears began trickling from Lenka’s eyes. Lumikki handed her a crumpled tissue from her pocket, and Lenka took it with the same submissive yet natural gesture with which a child would take a handkerchief from a parent.

Lumikki remembered the man, his narrow shoulders and the grim, piercing gaze of his dark eyes. And as her memory of his face appeared clearly in her mind, she also recalled where she had seen him today. In a café, talking to a young man writing in a notebook. Lumikki had walked past their table on her way to the restroom. She had observed that someone was doing an interview, but hadn’t connected the older man’s face with the one she’d seen in the window. Until now.

An interview and a deadly accident on the same day. Lumikki had a feeling it wasn’t a coincidence.

About five feet, ten inches tall. Hair dark brown, almost black. Eyes brown. Light-colored, slightly worn jeans that looked like they’d seen just the right amount of wear to signal that they were expensive and also like the designer sold them that way. Light-colored shirt, maybe plaid? Maybe not. Lumikki wasn’t sure. Age somewhere between twenty-two and thirty. It was hard to tell with boyish men.

Lumikki gnawed on her cheese baguette as she sat by the river and tried to focus her memory. She knew it wasn’t going to be enough. Even if she remembered more, that wasn’t going to give her any way to find Jaro’s interviewer in such a big city.

And why would she even try? Someone who was a complete stranger to her had been hit by a car. It shouldn’t affect her in any way. But it did. Because if Jaro’s death wasn’t an
accident, then it was possible that Lenka was in danger too somehow. And Lenka might be her sister.

Lumikki hadn’t said a word to Lenka about having seen Jaro being interviewed. It was better she not know, at least not yet. There was no point making Lenka any more scared than she already was. And Lumikki could see that she was scared. They’d talked for less than half an hour before Lenka had needed to go back. And most of that time had been taken up by Lumikki doing her best to comfort Lenka, who kept sobbing and repeating illogically that Jaro wasn’t supposed to die yet but that it didn’t really matter but that everything was still going wrong. Lumikki hadn’t managed to get anything more sensible out of her than that.

Lenka had also apologized for not having known what to do to get her family to welcome Lumikki. They still would, though, she was sure of it. Lenka had gone too fast, trying to rush things, even though she should have learned to be patient. All in good time. The family would welcome Lumikki with open arms. Lumikki didn’t tell her how creepy that idea sounded.

Everything got interrupted again, though, when Lenka had to leave. Apparently, she wasn’t even supposed to be outside, but seeing Lumikki had felt so important that she’d snuck out.

When Lumikki had asked whether Lenka had a cell phone, since that would make staying in touch a lot easier, Lenka had said, “Of course not. That’s just vanity.”

They had agreed to meet the next day on Petřin Hill. When Lumikki had asked why they constantly had to keep
changing meeting places, Lenka said that it was good not to get too connected to any one place. Lumikki hadn’t pushed. She’d learned by now how strange Lenka’s behavior was. She was sure that the odd behavior had an explanation and that she’d eventually find it.

Day began to turn to evening around Lumikki. The air was still hot, and she could faintly smell her own sweat wafting up from her sleeveless shirt. Tonight, she should at least rinse it in the small bathroom at the hostel and lay it out to dry overnight. She’d packed as light as possible, and now that was coming back to bite her as her clean clothes ran out. And the thought of shopping with the thousands of other tourists in Prague wasn’t terribly inviting. Besides, this trip was turning into something completely other than your normal relaxing vacation.

Lumikki weighed her options. She couldn’t go to the Prague police, because what could she say?
Hey, this guy got hit by a car and died and I saw him earlier that day maybe talking to a reporter? No, I don’t know anything about him other than that his name is Jaro and he lives in a big wooden house. The people who live there are kind of strange, but I don’t know why they’re all living there together. There’s a girl who lives with them who might be my sister, or actually, my half-sister, but maybe not.
Lumikki would get laughed out the door. Or she’d be thrown in the drunk tank until her hallucinations wore off, or they’d send her out to wander the streets like all the other harmless crazies.

She could have called home and done her best to explain the situation to her father and mother and ask their advice.
Any normal person probably would have. Lumikki wasn’t normal though, and her family wasn’t either. That wasn’t how they handled things. And besides, she was pretty sure that her mother would have collected herself after their previous phone conversation and realized she’d said too much. Worst-case scenario, they might force Lumikki to come home and she’d never get to the bottom of any of this.

So the only option left was to try to figure things out on her own, relying on her own intellect. That’s what she’d been doing for most of her life.

Lumikki struggled to remember more. She had to think of some characteristic of the interviewer that would help her find him. Lumikki knew that her brain was constantly recording even the smallest details. She just had to dig them out. No, the interviewer hadn’t been wearing a ring. So he wasn’t married. That information didn’t really do anything for her. His grip on his notebook had been sure and familiar. This hadn’t been his first interview. He was probably an experienced journalist.

Lumikki closed her eyes and returned in her mind to the moment when she came out of the restroom. She’d passed right by the table. Her gaze had swept along the surface of the notepad. She’d thought how even if she knew Czech, she wouldn’t have been able to read the notes because the man’s handwriting was so messy. It had just been a fleeting thought, meaningless in the moment. But as a counterweight to the messy handwriting, there had been something well-defined in the notebook. Lumikki had noticed it because of the contrast. What had it been?

Think, think,
Lumikki urged herself. A laughing clutch of tourists walked by her. Lumikki kept her eyes shut tight. She couldn’t let her mind relax even for a second because she was right on the verge of remembering.

The upper corner of the notebook page. Something tiny. A logo. Of course. It was a company notebook. Lumikki could see the logo’s orange color and rounded shape. And something else? A symbol? A number. That was it. The number eight. The logo had seemed familiar. She’d seen it somewhere before, but where?