Perhaps this is the real reason why I sense this overwhelming need to see Mariko before I die, before I disappear: so that I can give this book back to her and find out at last how the story ends.
We have reached cruising altitude, and the attendants will be serving us refreshments now. I slip the notebook back inside my bag and zip it shut.
Where are we going? I hear Agnes saying in the back of my mind.
Back to the beginning, I tell her.
3
Davenport, Iowa, 1943
The day my father was arrested was the same day Lucy Hobart skipped her second-period class to run away with a fellow she’d met at the soda fountain in the basement of Petersen’s department store the day before. Lucy was fourteen and a grade ahead of me at Sudlow Intermediate, but I knew because she’d confided in a couple of friends in first-period geometry just before she’d snuck away. Those two friends had confided in a couple more in second-period composition, who had confided in a couple more in third-period biology, so that by noon, my circle of thirteen-year-old friends also knew Lucy Hobart had taken off with a nineteen-year-old man. His name was Butch, he had a beat-up Oldsmobile, and he’d been in town to visit a friend but was headed back over the river to Illinois and then Canada so that he could ditch the draft. And now Lucy was with him. In his car. On their way to Chicago and then Toronto.
Some of the girls laughed and tittered at our lunch table about what would happen that night when Lucy and Butch arrived at his place and it was time for bed. Those who laughed did so nervously, their cheeks slightly aflame. Others shook their heads in collective disapproval because surely Lucy would be caught and brought back, shamed and with her reputation ruined. Others, such as my best friend, Collette, were worried for Lucy’s safety, not to mention her immortal soul. And then there were the ones like me who wanted to say, Shouldn’t we tell someone? but didn’t, because we knew that whoever did would lose the trust of the girlhood at school. People who snitched on a classmate wound up friendless.
“It’s not your problem,” I’d told myself at lunch, and during gym class and history, and then as I left the school to head home. “Not your problem,” I’d said when I started to walk past Lucy Hobart’s house and then stopped in front of it.
It was February and a frosty wind was swirling about me as I looked at the windows of the Hobart house, shuttered against the cold. All seemed quiet and serene inside. Lucy’s parents probably hadn’t known yet that their oldest daughter had run off that morning with a man she’d known for less than twenty-four hours. In another hour or so, when she didn’t show up after school, they would begin to wonder where she was. Mrs. Hobart would call Lucy’s friends and ask if Lucy had come home with them. Her closest pals had been directed to respond that Lucy said there had been a family emergency, and so she’d had to leave school early. This was so that Lucy’s disappearance wouldn’t be reported as an abduction. The police would treat her as a runaway, not the victim of a kidnapping, and therefore she’d be not so much their problem as her parents’.
As I stood there, I imagined walking up those glistening porch steps and telling Mrs. Hobart where Lucy was. I could hear Collette whispering to me that Lucy would hate me for it. But I could also hear another voice whispering that Lucy was making a terrible mistake and that her parents, whom I knew to be nice people, didn’t deserve to have their hearts broken like this. The second little voice was my own. I walked up the steps before I could change my mind and rang the bell. No one answered. Mr. Hobart was likely still at work at the front desk of the Hotel Blackhawk. Mrs. Hobart was apparently out. My best opportunity to tell someone had been when I was still at school, and I had missed it.
I was still pondering what I could have done or still could do when, fifteen minutes later, I rounded the corner to my street and my house. Ours was a white and gray two-story with window boxes all ready for their geraniums as soon as winter was over. Papa kept our yards, front and back, in perfectly trimmed condition, which he said was simply what those of German descent did. We took care of what was ours. We took care of it so that we could enjoy it and so could everyone else.
I didn’t notice the shiny black cars—two of them—parked in front of our house.
I came in through the side door like I usually did, to drop off my schoolbag in the little laundry room off the kitchen and to hang up my coat. I knew that when my mother asked about my day, I wouldn’t be able to keep this from her. Nor did I want to. My mother was a tender soul, my father used to say, whose gentleness and honesty made you want to be gentle and honest. I had never lied to her. She was going to ask me how my day was, and I was going to spill it all to her. I would tell her that I tried to tell Mr. and Mrs. Hobart what Lucy had done, and she would ask why I didn’t tell someone at school hours ago. She would make a phone call and then I’d instantly become the girl no one could trust to keep a secret, and I’d likely get in trouble for not speaking up sooner. Telling my mother was the right thing to do, I knew, but my heart was pounding with the knowledge that my life was about to change.
I entered the kitchen, and my first thought when I saw my parents seated at the kitchen table—and a man in a suit standing over them with his arms crossed over his chest—was that they already knew. They knew about Lucy Hobart running away and that I’d been privy to this information since noon and had said nothing.
My father looked up at the man towering over them. “This is our daughter, Elise.” Papa’s voice sounded strange, as though he was nervous but trying to sound calm. Or scared but trying to sound brave. His German accent, usually so subtle as to be barely noticed, seemed more pronounced. My parents were fair-haired, too, like my little brother and me, though more honey brown than blond, and their eyes were gray-blue like mine. They were of average build and stature. Papa wore wire spectacles. They looked like ordinary Americans, and on most days sounded like them. But not today.
“Have a seat,” the man said to me, nodding to one of the empty chairs at the table.
“What’s happening?” I said, though I knew. I knew what was happening was that Lucy Hobart had run away and I’d had every opportunity to tell a teacher at school and I’d said nothing.
“Sit,” said the man, not unkindly, but not nicely, either.
“Do as you’re told, Elise,” Papa said.
My hands were shaking as I pulled out a chair. Mommi’s eyes were glassy as she looked at me, a fake little smile on her lips. She was probably already thinking of how to tell the policeman—for surely that’s who this man was—that I was not yet fourteen. Only a child.
It wasn’t until I sat down that I heard scraping and toppling and shoving in other rooms of the house. Sounds of furniture being thrust about. Of drawers being opened and shut. Of heavy shoes on the upper-story floorboards above my head. I glanced toward the ceiling.