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Chapter Twenty-Two

“Is she dead?”

“Heavens,” Pennybacker said. He crumpled his face in his hands. “Heavens. How has it come to this?”

“Mr. Pennybacker,” said June. “Is she dead ?”

The State Department man was folded in one of the deeply padded leather armchairs in the Isley Library, the smallest and most personal of the libraries. Behind his rumpled form was a backdrop of Sandy’s language titles, his endless dictionaries, primers, texts in the original, texts with annotated notes, books, bücher, konyveket, hon, knigi, libri. The arm of the chair he sat in still had an ugly dark stain where Sandy had accidentally notated right off the edge of a page onto the leather, and then made it worse by rubbing at it.

“I had no idea this was possible, or I would have…I don’t know what I would have done,” Pennybacker said. “No, she’s not dead. Not yet, anyway. She has broken a leg and a collarbone and something else that I cannot remember right now, but she was conscious, last I heard. The doctors could not believe she had fallen so far and survived. Are you certain which floor she jumped from?”

June said, “The fourth.”

From the balcony her room had shared with the Wolfes’ suite to the bushes in front of the tearoom. The same distance that the rotten balcony rung had fallen. That was how far Lieselotte Berger, twenty-eight-year-old German journalist with scars on her face, had plunged that day.

“She had just learned she had to return to Germany after all,” Pennybacker said. “No, that is the coward’s way of putting it. I had just told her she had to return. That the State Department could not accommodate her request to stay. And then she went up there and…”

It was too raw to even look at full-on, but June could not prevent herself from glimpsing the edges. Lieselotte Berger sitting on the floor of the garage in a grubby maid’s uniform, her hair mussed, three buffoons in stolen dresses. The Irishman listing all the ways they could die in Germany.

“Is this because of Hannelore?” June asked.

“No, no, Miss Hudson. Hannelore is another problem for my devil’s math, yes, but it is nothing to do with her. I was already failing to persuade the Americans to keep Miss Berger. This is how they see it: she spent a year publishing demoralizing little pieces with massaged facts. She claims she was blackmailed; there is no proof. Without it, she is just a young woman willing to send facts about America’s war machine back to press folks in Germany whose nasty motives are not at all in doubt.”

He paused as the door opened. Through it came Sandy Gilfoyle in his wheelchair, pushed by Tucker, accompanied by Hugh Calloway. The scars on his cheeks reminded her of Lieselotte Berger’s symmetrically marred face. For a moment, a trick of the bright spring sunlight seemed to reveal Sandy finally meeting her gaze, but even as her heart surged, she realized it had only been a wishful illusion.

The look June and Tucker exchanged was carefully professional, unfreighted. How miserable to see him in the unsparing light of the day after and realize she didn’t regret their intimacy, but rather, the opposite. Spending the day with him had erased everything she hadn’t liked about his features. She did not want just him; she wanted the person she was with him. All previous desires seemed na?ve. Abbreviated. Reactive.

Wait , he said. Stop.

Pennybacker waited until Hugh closed the door and then finished telling June, “To me, it seemed less likely she was a sophisticated agent of Nazi Germany and more likely a young woman who made several bad decisions at a very bad time to make bad decisions. But unfortunately for her, she is more useful to the United States as a bargaining chip. One particular American civilian detained with our diplomats would have to stay in Germany if she stays here, and the State Department is far more worried about his safety than Miss Berger’s.”

This devilish math. Lieselotte for this other American citizen. Sebastian for Tucker’s career. All the times June had sat in this library, listening to Sandy try out pronunciation on her, not knowing that she was headed toward a future with him wheelchair-bound and silent before all his words, while she received this report on the misery bubbling inside her hotel.

“Agent Minnick, do you have news of her condition?” Pennybacker asked.

“She has a contingent of Border Patrol agents with her at the hospital in Malden,” Tucker replied. “They decided not to move her to Charleston. For our part, we have finished our search of the suite and although we do not suspect any foul play, I think it would be better if the Wolfes, who share the balcony, could be moved to another room.”

“We can find room on a different floor,” June said. She was going to have to go back to the Avallon IV again, wasn’t she? She had not tested the waters for their reaction to Lieselotte’s misery, but it wasn’t difficult to anticipate. What happiness could she offer? She supposed she could show it that walk down Casto Springs’ main street. She didn’t want to give the feeling away, but a woman had just tried to kill herself.

Most people can’t tell the water’s about to turn , Mr. Francis said. That’s what makes us different. We can. That means we can stop it. We can keep it pleasant forever. You know, June, before you, it was a little lonely, being the only one.

“Please let us know where you move them so we can document everything,” Tucker said. It was too formal; too correct. This time, when he glanced at June, she saw Hugh intercept the moment with interest.

“The Bureau and its memos!” Pennybacker said. “Agent Minnick, why don’t you put Mr. Gilfoyle at the window? You have him facing this shelf, which I’m sure is boring him to tears.”

He was trying to be kind, but June heard herself say, “They are his books.”

“Are they really!” Pennybacker rose to stand next to Sandy, politely tilting his head to scan the spines. Always sensitive, he could tell he’d blundered. “Did he read all these languages?”

“Does he,” June corrected. For some reason, her cheeks went warm. There was no reason to be freshly upset about Sandy, and yet. As one of the dachshunds nudged her hand, words continued to pour from her unbidden. “He speaks them, too. He always wanted to understand everything. Everyone. He wanted the real meaning, the intended one. We have so many people from all over the world here. He thought it right silly that we made them translate their thoughts into English for us. He told me he wanted people to just be themselves with him, let him do the translating.”

Saying it out loud made her realize that it was just another form of luxury. For all that Sandy had butted heads with Mr. Francis, they did have that core in common. They hadn’t talked about his father at all, the last time she saw Sandy in person, nearly a year before. He’d shown up alone, not to see the Avallon, but her. They’d chattered nonstop in the kitchen of her basement apartment, the staff canteen, her office, the prep rooms outside the Grotto. Sandy knew what the job entailed; he fit himself into the shape of her spare moments. They had talked about Robert Prager, the war, why sacrifice for the sake of sacrifice wasn’t noble at all. But they’d also talked about silly things, relating hilarious tales from her life as a general manager and his life translating and training in the navy. Mr. Francis’s death had still been in the future—plenty of time for them to reconcile—so there was no need to rehash old arguments about whether his version of hospitality was an outdated one. The rekindling of her affair with Gilfoyle was in the future, too, so no need for Sandy to say, Goon, you know how he is, why are you doing this to yourself? They’d just prattled on about everything and nothing long into the night, and then he’d kissed her cheek and set off to do good in the world. She loved all the Gilfoyles very much, but she liked Sandy the best. What a funny thought to have.

How frustrated Mr. Francis had been with him, at the end.

Sandy hears the water, Mr. Francis.

I know. He hears, but he refuses to listen.

The sweetwater was the only language Sandy never tried to learn.

“Very impressive,” Pennybacker said, and sounded like he meant it. “Did he plan to use it here in the hotel?”

“No,” June said. There was so much more that she could say—that she wanted to say—but she was in control of her words again now. She could feel Tucker looking at her. She would not look back. She was only barely maintaining her veneer as it was; if she looked right at him now, she would be June, not Hoss. “He wanted to do more in the world.”

What do you do here, June? Sandy had asked her. What do all these people do here?

We make a few folks very, very happy , she replied.

Is that enough these days?

It had been.

Hugh broke in, kindly. “He did.”

Incredible, June thought, that Toad spent every day with this feeling inside herself, that she came to work each day and cleaned rooms after Pearl Harbor, with her son dead and her husband gone. Incredible that the war had not taken her body and soul in a world where a German U-boat had just drowned two dozen men within sight of the Massachusetts shore. Where Pennybacker was negotiating to save Hannelore Wolfe from possible euthanasia , where Sandy just stared at all the books he used to read aloud, where journalists murmured that everyone knew what they were saying about Francis Gilfoyle. Where Tucker Rye Minnick did his business, she did her business. Keep the old chin up. Keep the old chin up. Keep the old chin up.

For a moment, June thought she hated it. Everything about this job, this hotel. She remembered that sweet, free water beneath the church at Casto Springs, and for a moment, she felt a howling miserable envy, so violently strong that she wondered at how long it must have been inside her, unspoken, unacknowledged.

“Hertha,” June said. “I want to find Hertha.”

Pennybacker asked, “What is Hertha? Why do I know this word?”

“Erich von Limburg-Stirum’s fiancée. The pilot’s fiancée.”

“Oh, yes, yes, yes, I’m sorry. My mind is not in the right place. I had already brought his situation to the State Department’s attention before. They haven’t found her; she is one woman in a land of women.”

“I don’t believe that,” June said. “Not when I’ve got the Bureau in my walls. You jaspers have files on everyone. If it was a priority, you’d have Hertha here, between the State Department, the FBI, whatever other men in suits you have at your disposal to swarm—”

Pennybacker interrupted, “Hold up, hold up. Miss Hudson, why the urgency? Does this have something to do with Miss Berger? Has something happened to Mr. von Limburg-Stirum?”

Something had happened to June Hudson. Something had happened and it was time for these diplomats to be out of her hotel; it was time for them all to get as far away from the sweetwater as quickly as possible. Diplomats, Border Patrol agents, and Tucker Rye Minnick. She could feel the Avallon slipping away.

“Hertha’s German,” June said. “That’s what Erich tells me. German citizen. Erich says she was in New York. I have hotel contacts up there, too. We can find her. If she agrees to go back with him, then your wretched math is satisfied, isn’t it? And Hannelore is taken care of? Hertha is one more German going, so one more German can stay: Hannelore. Then we’re all done here, yes?”

Pennybacker peered at her for a long moment, as if she had spoken in a language he had only a fleeting knowledge of, and then he said, “It would be a very neat solution, if she can be found. Yes, I think things could happen very quickly if that was the case. It would be nice to give someone some satisfaction.”

There had been a time when every guest at the Avallon got satisfaction.

June turned to go, then stopped herself. “Wait…what were you going to say about the Swiss? Forever ago, you told me you had something to say about them.”

“Oh. That,” Pennybacker said. “I decided it was not mine to give away.”

There was a time when she would’ve pressed on this; the granular details of his uncertainty would have felt enormously important. She would have devoted an entire day’s work, an entire department’s staff, to discovering the small unhappiness and then solving it. But today she felt as wrung out as if she’d only just crawled out of Avallon IV.

She did not want to go back into the Avallon IV. She would not go back into the Avallon IV. This place, this place.

“Let’s get to work,” Pennybacker said. “I think we’ve more than overstayed our welcome.”