Ella clings to my hand as we board the jet. Or perhaps I’m clinging to her, ready to embark on my very first flight, an entire box of Dramamine stored in my carry-on and my cell phone upgraded to an international plan so I can call my sister or Charlotte whenever I’d like.
Charlotte kissed my cheek an hour ago, after she and Brie escorted me to the security line. “Courage, dear heart,” she said, quoting Aslan, and I saw the pride in her eyes. In two weeks, they both promised to be back at the Columbus airport, waiting for me.
Ella and I loaded up on extra snacks, just in case, and after we find our seats on the plane, she gazes out the window, waiting for the other passengers to board. “Do you think we’ll be able to see the ocean?”
“I’m certain of it, and I read something about seeing icebergs near Greenland too.”
“I’m not going to sleep a wink,” she says with all the confidence of a seven-year-old who knows exactly what she thinks.
“I hope you’ll sleep some. If not, you’ll be too tired to play with your dad when we land.”
“I’m never too tired to play with him.”
“I’m sure he’s never too tired to play with you either.”
She fidgets in her seat. “How long do we have to sit?”
“Awhile, but I brought something for us to read.” I reach into my handbag as if it’s a magician’s hat and pull out three books. Ella picks Bloom, a story about an ordinary subject living in a kingdom of glass, a girl named Genevieve who must save everyone in her land.
As the airplane backs away from the gate, Ella reaches for my hand, and I gladly hold it, checking both of our seat belts before we begin rolling down the runway and then lift off into the air. As we climb higher, the city that confounds me seems so small, minuscule. We have a clear view of the entire place instead of trying to maneuver through all the confusion on the ground.
Once we’re above the clouds, Ella removes her nose from the window, and I release her hand. Together we begin to read about Genevieve’s quest in this fairy-tale world.
“They will never believe that an ordinary girl could do such an extraordinary thing,” Genevieve worried. “What would I tell them?”
“Tell them there is no such thing as an ordinary girl,” said Bloom.
“See, you can read without your socks,” Ella says when we finish the story, as if I’ve accomplished a feat.
“I guess I can.”
She gives a firm nod of affirmation and picks up another book, this one about a treasure hunt.
“If you could hide a treasure, where would you hide it?” I ask.
“Someplace no one would ever find it.”
“A wise choice.”
“Like in my shoes.”
I glance down at the sparkly silver and teal shoes on her feet, Velcro strapping them together instead of laces. “Interesting . . .”
“My mom said that you can tell a lot about a girl by her shoes.”
“I believe you must have had the smartest mom in the world.”
“Smart and pretty,” she says before glancing over at me. “Was your mom smart and pretty?”
“I don’t remember much about her.”
Ella reaches for my hand, and I hold it, both of us lost for a moment in our own thoughts. My mother seems pretty enough, I think, on Facebook. I decide that she must be smart, too. Extraordinary.
“None of us are ordinary girls,” I say.
Ella and I read about the grand treasure hunt, a brain candy kind of book, and as she drifts off to sleep, I realize that I’ve forgotten to take my Dramamine. But after our layover in New York, I fall asleep just fine, waking again on Friday morning when the rays from a Parisian sun flood through the window.
Uniformed French agents check our bags and passports on the ground before I grab a pastry for Ella and a latte for me. Two hours later, Ella reaches for my hand one more time as our plane descends over Austria, this time landing in Salzburg.
The fortress of salt.
Josh beams when he sees his daughter. He swings her in his arms, and then he reaches out toward me.
My mouth drops open. “You’re not going to try and swing me . . .”
He laughs. “I can if you’d like.”
“No, thank you.”
He takes my carry-on bag instead.
Ella chatters about our flight and the Sprite that I let her drink and all the books we read. When she races forward to collect her suitcase from the belt, Josh turns to me again, the intensity in his brown eyes tempered into a welcoming gaze.
“I’m glad you’re here, Callie.”
“Me too.”
“Thank you for bringing her.”
“She’s a joy,” I say, and he grins at my words.
As a taxi drives us to Salzburg Hauptbahnhof, I feel as if I’ve entered another world with the cathedrals and abbey and the faint strains of music that have lingered here for hundreds of years. My own fairy-tale kingdom.
While we wait for the next train to Hallstatt, my cell phone rings.
“It’s an Idaho number,” I tell Josh, taking a sip of my second latte.
“You’d better take it.”
I walk toward a quieter space, away from the crowds, before I answer Liberty’s call.
“I’ve spoken with my brother,” she says. “Neither of us knew about this list.”
An announcement blasts overhead in German, but Liberty doesn’t acknowledge it.
“Did your father ever speak to him about Annika Knopf or the Stadlers?” I ask.
“In the years before my father’s death, he spoke often to both of us about his memories in Austria, but my brother doesn’t remember him mentioning anyone named Annika.”
“What sort of things did your father tell you?”
“He liked to talk about the dances in Vienna and the animals he would rescue from the streets. And the castle, of course. He loved that place as a boy. I asked him several times about the conflict in Austria, but he only wanted to talk about his escape over the mountains and his work for the Allies until the end of the war.”
I glance over at Josh and Ella, and they are huddled together, engaged in conversation. The familiar pang of jealousy rips through my heart. Once again, I’m alone.
I turn away. “Was your father named Max?”
She pauses. “How did you find his name?”
“There was a photograph in the book.”
“Can you text it to me?” she asks.
Seconds later, I send it off. Her voice shakes when she speaks again. “He was a handsome young man, wasn’t he?”
“Very.”
“Do you know the name of the woman with him?”
“Luzia,” I say slowly, hoping that she knows this name. “Luzia Weiss.”
“I wish I knew who she was.”
And the thought occurs to me—if Charlotte is Max and Luzia’s daughter, Liberty would be her half sister.
“I’m trying to find out,” I tell her. “Did Max return to Austria after the war?”
“Once, my mother said, before they married, but he never talked to my brother or me about it. On one hand, I think he was trying to protect his family from the horror, but I also think the memories were incredibly painful. My father wanted to help people and animals alike. What he must have seen during the war—I’m surprised it didn’t kill him.”
“I can’t imagine.”
“After he died, my mother told us a little more of his story. I think she wanted us to understand why he slipped away sometimes in his mind. Fugue is what she called those times, from the Latin word that means ‘flee.’”
Like Charlotte when she slipped away.
“Everything changed for my dad when he was arrested.” Liberty’s voice sounds hollow, as if an echo from the depths of a tunnel. “During Kristallnacht.”
“The night . . . ,” I begin, but the words seem to lodge in my throat.
Liberty finishes it for me. “The night of broken glass.”