Glass Shatters (27 page)

“No, I don’t think so. I grew up in Germany and I’ve only been living in Washington for about one month. Now you’ll pardon me for asking my own funny question, but should I know who Julie is? You mentioned that you were her husband?”

I’m taken off guard. “Julie Hollingberry? She was Rolf’s daughter? We used to come here all the time. I thought you would have known her.”

“Ah.” Eduard pulls open a small refrigerator behind him and brings out two bottles of beer, handing one to me. We tap the bottles together before cracking off the lids. The beer’s mild, tasting slightly of lavender, cool and refreshing against my throat. Eduard lights a cigarette and takes a long drag.

“I’m sorry, but I don’t know Julie. I don’t even know much about Rolf, for that matter, other than that he moved to America and passed away many years ago.”

“So your father—”

“Axel. Rolf’s older brother and apparently Julie’s uncle. He was the one who used to own and manage the bar before I took over.”

“And you grew up in Germany?”

“Yes. Soon after I was born, my parents split up and I stayed in Germany with my mother while my father moved to America to be closer to Rolf. This was when Rolf was very ill, and then my father never came back. Of course, now that my father is sick and dying himself, all he wants is to return to Germany. In times of tragedy, we want what our memories
tell us to want,” Eduard says, taking another drag from his cigarette. “But who am I to judge? You taste the lavender in your beer? The favorite flower of my childhood.”

“I’m sorry about your father.” I don’t know what else to say. There’s a moment of awkward silence as I take another sip from my beer. I try to hide my frustration, my guilt that all I’m really thinking about is myself. Every possible lead becomes a dead end, every obstacle increasingly insurmountable.

“Unfortunately, my father’s not doing very well and isn’t in much of a state for visitors these days, but maybe I can help you in some way?” Eduard tries.

“I’m looking for information about Julie and my daughter, Jess. They’ve been missing for over two years. I know it must seem foolish, to try to find them now, but if they could still be out there—well, is it possible that you have the contact information for anyone else who may have known Axel or Rolf back in the day?”

“One moment.” Eduard shovels through the desk, tossing aside crumpled budget sheets and order forms. He curses to himself through puffs of his cigarette until at last he unearths a well-worn Rolodex. He shakes out the dust and sings to himself as he flips through it, looping, breathy phrases of German. Finally he pulls out one of the cards, the phone number almost illegible through a dark coffee stain. He hands it over to me.

“Jessica, erm, yes, Jessica H.? Does the name ring a bell? I could have sworn my father once said she was his sister-in-law.”

My heart flutters. “Yes! I mean, yes, she was, Jessica Hollingberry, Rolf’s wife. Julie’s mother.”

Eduard smiles. “Great! Well, you will have to give her a call.”

“Do you know anything about where she might live these days? About what happened?”

Eduard stands, lights another cigarette and paces back and forth, his face obscured by a veil of smoke. “Ah!” he exclaims after a moment. “It all comes together. I have been in the States for many years, since I was eighteen, but I used to live in New York City. One time, when I was here visiting my father, I remember helping him pack up a woman’s house. She was moving somewhere further south, Arizona or Nevada or … I didn’t realize who she was at the time, but it must have been Mrs. Hollingberry, after Julie disappeared.”

February 28, 2010

Age Thirty-Two

C
harles hears the moving trucks before he sees them, feels their vibration as they rumble past the house and stop at the corner. It’s been days since he’s really gotten out of bed, almost a month since he’s worked at the lab, a month since his breakdown. Charles’s pajamas are sticky and sour against his skin. His bedroom is littered with discarded food wrappers, the little bits and pieces he’s forced himself to eat. The only thing that keeps him going is Einstein, who rests his squashed, orange tabby head in Charles’s lap.

The curtains are pulled tight, protecting Charles against the sun’s invading rays, and when he stands, stiff and sore, and pushes the curtains aside, he’s surprised that the world has continued to go on around him. A neighbor takes his husky on a walk. A young boy sits bundled up in his mother’s arms. And down the street, in front of Julie’s childhood home, two moving trucks idle outside, their tail pipes pouring steam and diesel fumes into the early morning air. The moving men slouch on the porch, taking notes on a clipboard as Mrs. Hollingberry stands in the doorway, sipping a large thermos of hot tea, wearing something in between a long coat and a robe. Charles watches as the men enter the house and bring out wide card-board boxes, stowing them in the back of one of the trucks. They take furniture as well, couches and floor lamps, canvases wrapped in thick brown butcher paper to protect the paintings inside. She’s moving. She’s actually moving. Charles wonders if Mrs. Hollingberry planned to say anything to him or if she was just going to leave, let him discover the change once a new family moved in.

Charles shakes his head and grabs his coat from the chair. He knows he looks terrible, that his hair is in tangled thickets and that his beard is growing in shabby, stubbly patches. He knows his breath must smell awful and that he should change into something besides his wrinkled pajamas covered in cat hair. He knows that he’s a mess and that with every step he takes, he’ll feel the sharp, biting pain of losing Julie and Jess. He knows these things and yet he cannot let Mrs. Hollingberry just disappear. They’ve hardly spoken a word to one another the past several months. Perhaps they haven’t spoken at all.

When Julie and Jess first went missing, Charles and Mrs. Hollingberry consoled one another, kept each other company through the long nights, were open and honest about their emotions. But slowly they grew apart, each believing the other was somehow to blame. Every day Charles became more convinced that Mrs. Hollingberry had known what was going to happen, that she had seen into the future yet failed to prevent it. Mrs. Hollingberry, of course, vehemently denied this power of foresight, not in all circumstances but certainly in this one, and she harbored the belief that Charles was responsible, accusing him of pushing Julie and Jess away. And then there was the matter of the funeral, a funeral that Charles refused to have. Mrs. Hollingberry couldn’t forgive him for this, for failing to lay their souls to rest. For Charles, a funeral would mean he had to stop looking. And until he found them, he would never stop.

As Charles trudges down the street in the chilly morning air, wishing he had worn something more than slippers, he realizes he has nothing to say to Julie’s mother. He’s still angry, and he imagines she is too. But when Charles sees her up close, standing in the doorway of a house that will soon no longer be hers, he finds that she’s just as diminished as he is. She’s even thinner, frailer than she was before, to the point where she seems capable of breaking at any moment. Her coat is gray and drab, and the makeup she wears is protective, trying but failing to conceal how much she’s aged over the past six months. When she sees Charles, she nods to him, neither smiling nor frowning. They stand next to one another, not saying anything, as they watch the movers take the furniture from the house. Finally, when everything is packed away, Mrs. Hollingberry turns to Charles. She gives his hand a squeeze.

“Good-bye, Charles,” she says.

Charles tries to speak, but instead he remains silent, nods his head. There’s nothing else he can say at this point.

I
CALL
M
RS.
H
OLLINGBERRY FROM THE PHONE IN
Eduard’s office, the plastic curlicue cord twisted through my fingers, the ringing shrill and abrupt, reverberating through my whole body. Eduard has excused himself, ducking into the storeroom to check on the inventory. My breath feels both hot and cold inside my chest. Nobody picks up, just an answering machine. A metallic voice says that the number I’m trying to reach is currently unavailable and to leave a message after the beep. I hear myself stutter as I speak, my tongue a foreign appendage. I manage to croak out that it’s Charles. I ask for Mrs. Hollingberry and give her Iris and Ava’s number if she’d like to call me back. I know that I should say good-bye to Eduard, thank him for his help, but instead, I sneak up to the tavern and slip through the raucous crowds of German tourists.

I head out into the brisk night air. The rain has dissipated but black snarls of thunderheads still loom overhead. The winds begin to howl, screaming like harpies, the darkness sinking in around me. I have no idea where I am. The town has transformed into forest and underbrush, the mulch squishing under my shoes, the tree limbs weighed down with rain, bending in the wind. I look up at the stars peeking out through the clouds, hoping for help, but I don’t know what to do with them, these yellow flecks in the night watching me like eyes. I turn around and blindly select a direction to follow, hoping that it’s the right way. I hear the heaving of thunder, a deep, throaty growl, and then the sky breaks open, the rain pouring down in torrents like I’ve never seen. There’s no keeping the water out of my eyes, my nose, my mouth.

I trudge farther into the wilderness. I squint my eyes for a
light, a house, a car, any sign of town. But I’m swallowed by the trees, the wasteland. The rain grows so dense around me that I can’t see even a few inches forward. I hold out my arms, grabbing in front of me, trying to gain my bearings, and then my foot slides and I catch an unearthed root with my hand. My feet dangle in midair, my body hanging down into a deep ravine, and somehow I’m able to pull myself up, slathered in mud, tears streaming down my face. One more step and I would have fallen to my death.

Shaken, I keep walking as the underbrush thins out and a lake spreads out before me, the water churning, a lone dinghy toppling under the waves. A long, wooden pole leans in the ground, a battered sign reading Birch Lake Pass.