“Story Girl!”
Ella Nemeth races toward me. I’m standing on a stool instead of reading from one, placing a boxful of new arrivals in their proper place.
As I climb down, Ella twirls to display the pink ribbon around her ponytail, then motions toward a couple in their sixties standing near the door behind her.
The man is dressed in neatly pressed khaki shorts with a button-down shirt, his brown hair graying at the temples. The woman beside him has on a paisley sundress, the hem nearly reaching her tan-colored sandals. Her copper hair is clipped short, her nose the same shade as her hair, as if she’s plagued by a cold.
The woman sneezes into the crook of her arm, confirming my thoughts.
“Who are these fine people?” I ask as Ella reaches for my hand, tugging me toward them.
“Grammy and Gramps.”
“It’s better than Grumps,” the man says with a smile before he shakes my hand. “Peter and Lottie Nemeth.”
“It’s nice to meet you, Mr. and Mrs. Nemeth.”
“Likewise,” he says. “And please call us Peter and Lottie. It makes us feel younger.”
I decide right then that I like Dr. Nemeth’s parents. “Are you from Columbus?”
“Atlanta is our official home, but Ella is our only grandchild, so Columbus is like home for us as well.”
“Josh said he emailed you a few days ago about their adventure,” Lottie says.
I nod. “He told me they found a wooden box in Lake Grundlsee that looked promising, but when they recovered it, all they found inside were milk bottles.”
“I never believed Leo’s story,” Peter says, “but he convinced Josh and my other two sons that Hallstatt and those other Austrian lakes were stocked with treasure.”
Lottie blows her nose. “Josh and his team are arriving in Hallstatt today.”
I already know this but don’t say so, worried that they might wonder about the relationship between their son and me. Dr. Nemeth has been keeping me informed about the team’s expeditions in the surrounding lakes and his search for Annika’s family.
Ella tugs on my shirt. “Are you reading a story soon?”
“No.” I stack the books onto an empty shelf. “We have story time on Saturdays.”
Her lower lip trembles as if this is catastrophic news, and when she wipes her sleeve across her eyes, my heart begins to plunge.
Lottie leans over, whispering to me. “She’s missing her dad.”
Ah. Sad and sweet alike that she misses her dad. At her age, I’d always been thrilled to see mine walking out the door.
And it makes me wonder—why isn’t she missing her mother as well? Dr. Nemeth has yet to mention his wife in our correspondence. If she stayed behind with Ella, where is she today when her daughter’s heart is breaking?
I glance at the empty rug near the back of the store. “Any day is a good day for a story, isn’t it?”
Ella pumps her head slowly at first and then deliberately, rubbing the back of her hand over her eyes again.
“Would you like me to read one right now?” I ask her.
“Yes, please.”
I look up at her grandparents. “Do you have time?”
“Of course,” Peter says, and his wife nods in agreement. This time she’s smiling at me.
I hold out one jean-clad leg and strappy sandal, displaying them to Ella. “I’ll need to get my socks and cape.”
Ella grinned. “You can read without socks.”
“I’m not certain that I can.”
I scan the room, looking over at Brie, who’s working fervently at the counter, and then at the dozen or so children with their adults, flipping through book pages and utilizing the slide. My sister won’t mind if I slip in an extra story or two on a Friday afternoon.
“Why don’t you spread the word to the other children,” I tell Ella. “I’ll meet you at the back of the room in about five minutes.”
Ella rushes to one of the children nearby, and Lottie mouths a thank-you. I retrieve Story Girl’s cape and socks upstairs, and when I return, Brie catches my eye, holding up the store’s landline. “There’s a phone call for you.”
Ella is still busy rounding up an audience, so I step to the counter and answer the call.
“Is this Callie Randall?” a woman asks.
“It is.”
“My name is Liberty—” She hesitates as if she’s trying to decide whether or not to tell me her last name. “A bookseller from Boise called and said that you found some sort of list in one of my parents’ books.”
My heart pumps harder as the chatter and laughter around me seem to dull. “I’m sorry for your loss.”
“My mom and dad have both been gone for several years, but my brother and I have had a hard time parting with their things.”
“I understand.” Not because of my own parents, but one day Charlotte will be gone and I can’t imagine selling anything of hers to strangers.
“We don’t have enough room between us to keep everything, but still it’s tough. . . .”
“Did your parents collect a lot of books?” I ask, hoping Annika was her mother.
“My father was the collector, though most of his books were scientific in nature.”
“Was he a doctor?”
“A veterinarian,” she says. “He was much more fond of animals than people.”
“What were your parents’ names?” Perhaps the question is too personal, especially since she still hasn’t told me her last name, but I can’t think of a more tactful way to ask about Annika.
“Why don’t you tell me first what you found in his book?” She sounds nice enough, just suspicious.
I tell her about the list embedded in the pages. “The name Annika Knopf was inside the cover along with Schloss Schwansee and a photograph of a young man.”
She doesn’t respond, so I ask, “Have you heard of Annika?”
“My father talked often about the castle, but not about the people.”
My heart begins to speed up again. “What did he tell you?”
“My father—” She stops. “I need to speak to my brother before I say anything else.”
“Of course.”
I give her my cell phone number so she can contact me after she talks to him. If she’d known what was in this book, perhaps she wouldn’t have let it go. These special books, I think, should be cherished like the treasures they are.
Then again, what if I was opening something that her parents deliberately closed? It could be that Annika didn’t want her children to know about her past. Who was I to step into their family and rearrange their secrets—if her parents were trying to keep secrets?
Someone tugs on my shirt, and I look down to see Ella. She doesn’t say anything, simply nods toward a small group of children who have assembled in the back corner.
“Pick out a book for us to read,” I say.
Ella scans the shelf and pulls out a book as I take my place in front of the audience.
Where the Wild Things Are. Another old story about a naughty child on an adventure, a book that a lot of parents didn’t want their children to read when it was published. Perhaps some parents still don’t want their children to travel where the wild things reside, though I like the journey of this boy named Max, who realizes that home is an awfully good place to be.
I glance over at Peter and Lottie, but they don’t seem the least bit concerned about the selection. So I begin to read about Max meeting all sorts of fierce creatures along the way.
Several years ago, I researched the author, Maurice Sendak, for a blog post. Sendak based the wild things in his book on childhood memories of his relatives—the ultimate writer payback, I suppose. Max is grounded in the memories and imagination of Sendak’s childhood, and the kids in front of me seem as mesmerized by Max’s rumpus as generations before them, trailing this boy through an adventure of epic proportions.
I continue reading about his voyage, how he confronts his fears and, in a sense, tames the monsters who wanted to eat him. They play for a season until he’s ready to go home. “‘And Max—’” I lower my voice so the children lean in—“‘the king of all wild things, was lonely and wanted to be where someone loved him best of all.’”
When I glance up, Ella is grinning at me. Who in the room, young or old, doesn’t want to be with someone who loves them? Nothing wipes away loneliness like genuine love, the promise of it overcoming the thrill of the greatest adventure. Making an adventure a joy, not an escape.
As our hero begins his voyage home, my mind wanders to the adventure of little Fritz in the magic balloon book, another boy who travels around the world until he ultimately reunites with his parents. Perhaps one of the best parts of a grand journey is knowing you have someone to come home to when you’re done.
I read two more books to the children before several parents begin stepping toward the door, clearly ready to head to their own homes. My little audience groans when I tell them we’re finished.
“Come back tomorrow if you’d like to hear more,” I say before they disperse. Then I stand to reshelve the wild things.
Lottie steps forward again. “It’s such a joy to see someone who still delights in a good story.”
I smile—that’s me, I suppose, finding meaning and delight in the musings of someone else’s adventure.
“Max reminds me of Josh when he was young.”
“Really?” I don’t mean to sound shocked, but Dr. Nemeth doesn’t seem like the kind of person who would lose himself in the world of pretend.
“He’s changed a lot since Grace died.”
“Grace?”
“His wife,” she says, seemingly surprised that this is news to me.
I collapse back onto my stool, my legs trembling as the weight of her words bear down. The conversations between Dr. Nemeth and me, they’ve been focused mainly on finding Annika and the missing treasure. He’s had no reason to mention the loss of his wife.
Poor Ella. I never should have criticized Mrs. Nemeth for her daughter’s sadness, like she was my mother abandoning me. Every girl should have a mom to talk to, a woman who cares about what she thinks. Who’s there when her body—or her heart—is hurting.
Who loves her when she feels alone.
“Losing someone changes everything,” I say.
She nods. “Josh is just now starting to live again.”
Ella slips up beside me. “Do you think there are any wild things in Austria?”
“I doubt it.”
She grins. “Except my dad.”
“You’re a blessed girl, Ella, to have a father who loves you.”
When she takes her grandparents to the slide, I lean back against a shelf, processing Lottie’s words. And my heart breaks for Dr. Nemeth. How sad to lose his wife, the mom of their sweet daughter. What appeared to me as cool and calculated is perhaps someone trying to venture back out of his shell.
“Story Girl!” Ella calls, and I watch her lunge down the slide one more time before her grandparents say good-bye.
Hours later, as I’m trying to craft an email to Dr. Nemeth about the woman who called from Idaho, a new message appears on my screen. It’s from Sophie in Vienna.
Unfortunately, I haven’t found any records that mention an Annika Knopf. Austria didn’t have a central birth registry before 1938, but if you know where Annika attended church, you can search for her baptismal certificate, and perhaps a wedding and death certificate through them.
I finally located the photograph that you requested from the Neues Wiener Tagblatt. Attached is the scanned picture along with the caption from the society column.
I click on the first attachment, and the newspaper photograph expands on my screen. Now I know whom this young man is smiling at—a beautiful young lady who’s dressed as if she descended from royalty. The admiration in his face is clear, not a care in the world beyond the woman across from him. I can’t see the front of her face, but her gaze is focused back on him, as if she could spend the rest of the evening dancing in his arms.
If this is Annika . . . why would she cut herself out of the picture?
I click on the second document. Sophie has circled a paragraph for me.
Maximilian Dornbach and . . .
My iPad screen seems to gray, and I blink hard, trying to focus again on the second name.
Maximilian Dornbach and Luzia Weiss, Opera Ball.
Maximilian Dornbach. Max. The king of the wild things.
And Luzia Weiss . . . the name in Charlotte’s book.
My heart races again. Charlotte thought her birth name was Luzia, but clearly this woman was born years before 1938.
Is it possible that Luzia Weiss was her mother?
Stunned, I read the name again, afraid that I might have mistaken the spelling, but the caption is identical to the name written in the book about Hatschi Bratschi.
Charlotte was adopted from an orphanage in France, not Austria, and yet . . .
I surf online for Luzia Weiss and Luzia Dornbach in both Vienna and Idaho, but nothing comes up. Then I search for Maximilian Dornbach in Idaho.
This time an obituary fills my screen.
Max Dornbach. Veterinarian. Resident of Sandpoint. Winner of the AVMA Animal Welfare Award. Father of two children. Husband of Renee Dornbach for almost fifty years.
A hundred questions spring into my mind for Liberty—Liberty Dornbach, I assume. I try to call her back, but she doesn’t answer.
Why is the picture of Max and Luzia in the back of Annika’s book? Did Max know about her list?
And most important to me at the moment, what happened to the woman in Max Dornbach’s arms?