Page 30 of A Map to Paradise

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Eva spent the forty minutes heading back into LA preparing her heart and mind to meet head-on what would come next.

If Ernst’s remains had been discovered in ragged woods rather than at the bottom of a lake, the authorities would reopen his case file. Of course they would. They would probably see his crushed skull and have no trouble redefining Ernst Geller’s death as a probable homicide.

A homicide meant there was a killer.

Someone with a motive to kill.

Ernst Geller had been a wealthy man. And who benefitted most from a wealthy man’s death? His surviving spouse.

Louise.

They’d be at her door, ready to arrest at the slightest discrepancy in her recalled events of that day Ernst failed to come home.

She would either tell the truth or she’d lie and say she’d killed him because God knows she wanted him dead.

And it was knowing this was a distinct possibility that had her now desperately wanting Melanie to drive faster.

It no longer mattered to her that much that the men who wanted to talk to her might know she was Russian born, not Polish, nor that they might be prepared to escort her in handcuffs to the airport with her final destination being Moscow.

It did matter to her that this fact might spell additional trouble for Melanie, and yet this didn’t seem to weigh on Melanie as much anymore.

Maybe she, like Eva, was finally ready to live her life in the shimmering light of truth. Yes, suspected communist Carson Edwards had hired a Russian housekeeper for Melanie who was masquerading as Polish. It was true. It also meant nothing.

Living in truth, even if it was difficult, had to be better than living in fear.

As they neared Yvonne’s house, Eva felt as though she was about to complete a circle now, one that would take her back to that moment Papa told her he’d see her again in a place where they would be safe, where they wouldn’t have to run or hide.

The blazing place of truth.

When the car pulled up in front of the little house, Eva intended to turn and wave goodbye to Melanie and June, wishing the best for them. There were boxes of her few belongings in the car’s trunk but she didn’t need any of it.

But Melanie would not hear of it when Eva asked to just be let out.

“For heaven’s sake, I’m not just dropping you off.” Melanie set the brake, turned off the engine, and then swiveled around to speak to Nicky. “You wait right here with Miss June. I’ll be right back.”

She got out of the car before Eva could formulate a protest.

“You don’t have to come with me,” Eva said, once out of the car and walking alongside Melanie to the front door. She was suddenly awash with a desire for Melanie to never know about Ernst. About what she had done to him and with his body…

She was ready to face what she’d done—all of it—but only as the person she’d been before.

“I know I don’t,” Melanie said. “But I’d like to know, too, if these men have been back to see you and why they’re here. And I want to make sure Yvonne’s home and you get in. Plus, you have stuff in the trunk.”

Eva was about to say she didn’t need anything from the trunk when the door opened and Yvonne stood there in front of them, her face an explosion of surprise and smiles.

“Oh my stars, Eva! I’ve been trying to find out where you were! I even called your agency to see if they knew where you were. I was worried when I couldn’t get anywhere, what with that fire and all. I’m so glad you’re here! I have the most amazing news for you.”

“News?” Eva couldn’t hide the apprehension in her voice.

“Those men came back looking for you yesterday.” Yvonne’s smile widened. “I told them what you said. That they could leave a note for you and I would forward it to you.”

“And?” Melanie prompted impatiently when Yvonne paused.

“I peeked at the note after they left,” she continued. “I know I shouldn’t have but I did because they said they were leaving tonight to go back to Minnesota.”

“Minnesota?” Melanie echoed.

“Eva, those men?” Yvonne said. “They are your brother Arman and that man you loved. Sascha. That’s who they are.”

The ground beneath Eva’s feet seemed to tilt and she instinctively reached for Melanie to keep from falling. Melanie’s arm was around her in the next half second.

“That’s not possible,” Eva whispered. To Yvonne. To herself. To the very heavens. “My brother and Sascha are dead.”

“No, they’re not. They’re alive. They were here.”

Eva pinched the soft lining of her underarm. She was dreaming. She was dreaming and she needed to wake up. “It can’t be true,” she murmured.

“But it is! Here’s the note.” Yvonne thrust the note toward Eva but she did not take it. Her arms felt like lead.

Because she was asleep. She was asleep. She had to be. No one survives the gulag. Especially not political prisoners. And especially not Germans.

Out of the corner of her eye she saw Melanie reach for the note.

Melanie began to read aloud. “?‘My name is Arman Kruse. I am here in Los Angeles with my friend Sascha Prinz and we are looking for my sister Eva Kruse, born in Norka, Russia in 1926. You have the name of my sister but your lady says you are from Poland. Please if you are my sister, call me at Hotel Normandie. I apologize my English is not good. I do not speak Polish. Sincerely, Arman Kruse.’?”

Melanie looked up from the note. “There’s a number, Eva. At the hotel.”

“I told you, Eva!” Yvonne said happily. “I told you I had great news! And why on earth did you tell me you were Polish?”

“I…” Eva began, but she could summon no words. Sascha was alive. And Arman, too.

And what about her papa? Where was he?

Eva turned on her heel. “I have to go.”

“Don’t you want to come in and use the telephone?” Yvonne called after her.

“Do you know where this hotel is?” Eva said to Melanie, who had also turned away from the door and was following her down the two front steps.

“That one will be easy to find. Hotel Normandie is on Normandie Avenue.” She turned to wave to Yvonne. “Thank you!”

The woman was still standing there watching them as Melanie eased away from the curb. June, whose window was rolled down, must have heard the entire conversation.

“I know exactly where that hotel is,” she said.

“You okay, Eva?” Melanie asked when they were five minutes into the drive. She was looking at Eva from the rearview mirror.

Eva didn’t know what she was. She was afraid to be happy. Afraid it was still a dream or that someone was playing a terrible trick on her. Afraid she didn’t deserve this turn of events. Afraid to believe that it didn’t matter if she didn’t.

Fifteen years had passed since she had seen Sascha or her brother. She’d been a teenager then, little more than a child, though at the time she hadn’t felt like one. Now she was a thirty-year-old woman who’d lived through war, internment, starvation, and deprivation. She’d killed a brute of a man and then dug up his disgusting, decaying body. She’d lied to people, deceived them. She’d lived the last fifteen years with recurring nightmares of what she’d seen and what she’d done. On top of that, she’d had everything taken from her—everything.

Was she still the girl Sascha had once loved? Wanted to be with? Would her brother even recognize her?

“Eva?” Melanie said again.

Eva looked up at the eyes watching her in the rearview mirror. “I’m scared.”

June turned around from the front seat. “But you’re not alone.”

Eva swallowed a thickening in her throat and nodded.

They covered the next few miles in silence.

When they arrived at the hotel, Melanie and June did not ask if Eva wanted to go in by herself. They all got out of the car and went inside.

Melanie handed Nicky over to June, and the two of them took seats in the lobby near a window so that Nicky could watch cars coming and going on the streets outside it.

Eva approached the front desk with Melanie right beside her.

Her palms were tingling with sweat and expectation.

“How may I help you?” The desk clerk’s tone was welcoming but Eva could not bring herself to ask for Arman and Sascha. She had not said their names in such a long time.

When she did not speak, Melanie did: “We’re here to see Arman Kruse or Sascha Prinz. They are guests at your hotel.”

“Certainly.” The man consulted a ledger opened in front of him and then picked up the handset of a nearby phone, shiny and black. “And who shall I say is here?”

Melanie opened her mouth to answer but Eva cleared her throat and spoke first.

“Eva Kruse,” she said. “Tell them Eva Kruse is here.”

The clerk made the call. Said her name. Replaced the handset.

“The gentlemen will be right down,” he said calmly, as if it was just a small thing that was about to happen.

Eva turned toward the elevators on the far side of the lobby and began to walk slowly toward them, stopping a few yards from the brassy doors.

She watched the dial above the one that indicated a descent from the fourth floor had begun. Watched the crescent that showed the journey from the floors above to the lobby. Felt Melanie’s presence a few feet behind her.

A happy, melodic sound trilled, and the doors slowly opened.

And then it was as if June’s time machine really did exist because Sascha and Arman walked out of it.

They had aged, too. Just like she had. They had surely seen things no person should have to see, lived through what no one should have to, had maybe done things they thought they’d never do. Just like she had.

But beyond the outward appearance of fifteen years having passed, they were still Arman and Sascha, the brother she adored and the man she loved. She knew as soon as they enveloped her in their arms that Papa had not survived the gulag. Her tears of elation were those of sorrow, too.

Arman pulled back so that Sascha could encircle Eva in his arms unimpeded. He kissed her neck and forehead and cheek and then her lips.

“I’ve been looking for you for so long,” he whispered in German into her hair. “I was afraid…” His words trailed off for a moment. “No matter where I looked I couldn’t find an Eva Kruse from Norka,” he continued a second later. “From other places, yes, but not from Norka. I finally found my mother in Budapest. She said you’d lost track of each other when she remarried but that you’d stayed in Germany. Nobody I talked to knew where you were.”

“I thought you were dead, Sascha,” she whispered back. “Everyone said you were dead, that I should let you go. I tried, but I couldn’t.”

He wrapped his arms more firmly around her and she felt the burden of five thousand days begin to crack and splinter in that tightness.

“Come with Arman and me,” he said. “We are heading back to Minneapolis tonight. We are staying with friends who have family there. You will, won’t you? Please say you will come with me? Please?”

She reached up to touch Sascha’s face.

“I have never left you, Sascha.”