Gretel (27 page)

“Have a seat, Mrs. Morgan,” the officer ordered.

Anika walked to one of the chairs and sat down, the dust exploding into the air and clouding her face. At this stage she’d resigned herself to do as she was told, at least until the request became unreasonable. When that time came she hoped to still have the resolve to put up some iteration of a fight, whether verbal or otherwise. She still left room for hope that the officer’s intentions weren’t sinister, that he really did just want to ask her questions and get some answers about her disappearance. Maybe he didn’t trust her, she thought. Maybe her case had caused him to snap, and now his fanaticism was leading him to inappropriate, or even illegal, procedures. That certainly made him a bad System officer, but it didn’t necessarily make him dangerous.

But that didn’t change the fact he was being less than truthful about something. About that she had no doubt.

The officer locked the door behind them, walked toward Anika, and stood behind the couch, facing her. “Mrs. Morgan,” he said, his tone now very official, “my name is Officer Oliver Stenson. I was assigned to your case soon after you were reported missing by your family.”

Anika leaned back in the chair and placed both arms on the rests, assuming a look of comfort that contradicted the feelings inside her.

“After your father told us you’d gone missing along the Interways, a team of several officers was dispatched that day to find evidence. What we found instead was…”

“My father?”

Officer Stenson stared at Anika for a moment, confused. “Yes, Mrs. Morgan. Your father, Marcel Gruen.”

“Yes, I know my father’s name, I was curious that my father called you and not my husband. Or my daughter. My father wouldn’t have known that anything was wrong once I left him. How would he have known to call The System?”

Officer Stenson glanced away, searching, as if the explanation lay somewhere on the warehouse floor. He looked back at Anika and then smiled. It was a full, toothy smile, one Anika hadn’t seen before.

“Perhaps your husband called your father and then he called us,” Office Stenson said, “I suppose I can’t be certain of the telecommunication pattern exactly. Are you suggesting that I’m lying?”

Anika locked the officer’s gaze, resisting any displays of the fear she felt. “I didn’t mean that at all. It’s just that it’s odd to me. My father reporting me missing, that is.”

Officer Stenson dropped his stare and started walking toward a door at the back of the warehouse. It seemed to Anika to be an interior door that led to some unseen backroom of the building. The door appeared solid metal on the bottom with a framed mirrored window on top. A one-way mirror she supposed, of the kind she’d seen in police movies.

“I’ll return in a moment for questioning,” he said flatly, “please wait for me here. The door to the outside is locked securely. In case you were wondering.”

“When do I see a doctor? You said I would see a doctor. And I need to eat something. And can I at least have water?”

“Of course. I’ll bring you something now. The doctor should be arriving shortly.”

With that Officer Stenson walked into the back room of the warehouse and closed the door behind him. Within a few seconds Anika could hear talking behind the door. Though she couldn’t make out the words being spoken, the conversation seemed somewhat confrontational. There was a moment of quiet, and then the door opened slowly and a taller, much older man emerged from the back room. It was the last man she’d seen before she was seized and tortured.

It was her father.

Gretel lay motionless in her bed, the sheets to her chin, searching the ceiling above her as she considered the picnic and what Petr had said to her on the bank. Her mind was exhausted of explanations, and Gretel was now virtually certain she’d never mentioned the engagement to Petr. Which left only one explanation: someone else told him.

Gretel quickly eliminated the Klahrs as the source, since they had never offered any personal information about Petr to Gretel, and she couldn’t imagine them acting any differently when it came to her private affairs. On the one or two occasions when Gretel had asked something about Petr, they either didn’t know or told her to ask him. That’s how they were: very respectful of a person’s personal business.

So who? And why?

Gretel was startled by a knock on her bedroom door. “Who is it?”

“It’s me.” Odalinde. “You’ve been in there quite a while Gretel. I figured you would be on the lake by now. Are you feeling okay?”

“Yes, I’m fine.” Gretel tried to keep the irritation out of her voice but fell short. “I just didn’t sleep well last night, that’s all. I’ll be out in a minute.”

This was the price of routine and dedication, Gretel thought: once you falter even slightly, everyone’s eyebrows shoot to the ceiling.

She willed her feet to the floor and within ten minutes was twisting the knob of the front door. She made no eye contact with Odalinde, but could feel the woman shifting glances toward her.

“Do you think you’ll be on the lake long today?” Odalinde asked for the first time ever.

Gretel paused at the threshold and then turned toward Odalinde, squinting, confused by the question. “What?” she asked.

“I was just asking if you planned on spending a lot of time rowing today, or if you would be home a little earlier.” Odalinde’s voice was eager, nervous.

“Why would you want to know that?” Again, there was no bite in Gretel’s reply, only confusion.

Odalinde frowned and her eyes softened. “Remember earlier when I said there were some things I needed to tell you and your brother?”

Gretel nodded.

“Well those things can’t wait much longer, Gretel.” Odalinde walked to the kitchen table, pulled out a chair, and sat. “And if you’re ready,” she said, “I’d like to tell you now.”

“Hello, Anika.”

“Father?” Anika whispered.

Anika had never been one to believe in ghosts and magic, but seeing the form of her father, now, at this moment and in this setting, could only be the result of a force supernatural. Or perhaps she was hallucinating—the workings of her brain stressed to its limit.

“I suppose I’m the last person you expected to see come through that door, eh?” Marcel forced a sad smile and nodded slightly, answering silently for his stunned daughter.

“Father…What…Why are you here? Are you being held here? I think I’m being imprisoned! Again! I don’t know what’s happening. Who is that man?”

“It’s okay, Anika, it’s okay. He is who he says he is. He is a System officer.”

Anika’s father turned back toward the door and yelled for Officer Stenson, calling for him as simply “Stenson,” before erupting into a rasping cough. The episode subsided for a moment, and then continued again, this time more violently, forcing the old man to double over, hands to his knees. He stumbled around the sofa, using the back as a crutch, and then dropped to the cushion, bouncing comically and nearly toppling to one side. As if prompted by the act, Officer Stenson walked back through the door carrying a plate and a ceramic cup of water. He kept his eyes to the floor, brooding.

Anika stayed focused on her father, watching him with a mixture of concern and terror, both at his condition and his apparent knowledge of the situation. In fact, she observed, he seemed not just knowledgeable, but in control.

“This was not the plan, Marcel,” Stenson said through tightly clenched teeth, “what are you doing?”

Anika’s father tried to speak but was still in the throes of sickness, and waved a dismissive hand instead.

“What is happening?!” Anika screamed, rising like a piston from the chair. She walked to the couch and sat next to her father. “Give me the water! Now!” she barked at Stenson, reaching her hand behind the couch but keeping her eyes to her father.

Officer Stenson handed the water to Anika and she put it to her father’s mouth, gently tipping a steady sip over his lips as she’d done dozens of times over the past year.

He swallowed the water and then pushed the glass away, gulping down several frantic breaths, trying to fill his lungs as fully as possible before the coughing resumed.

“I’m dying, Anika,” he said, “and…I don’t want…” was all he had managed before the hacks started again.

“You’re okay, Papa, don’t talk,” she whispered, stroking the back of his head. She glared back toward the officer who was standing alone, away from the oasis of furniture, awkwardly watching the domestic scene play out as if he’d stumbled upon it accidentally.

“My father is not well. He should not be here!”

“Your father is here of his own will, Mrs. Morgan,” Stenson replied. “In fact, it is your father who…”

“No!” It was Marcel. He stood, precariously and with some effort, but much quicker than Anika would have thought possible given his condition, his chest bowing forward, his shoulders high and receded. “No. If she is to hear it she will hear it from me.”

“I don’t
want
her to hear it, Marcel. There is no purpose served by it. That was never the plan and it shouldn’t be the plan now.”

“I want her to hear it, Oliver,” Marcel said, his words soft now, a plea for understanding.

The officer shook his head disapprovingly, but remained quiet.

Anika’s father closed his eyes for what must have been twenty seconds, and then breathed deeply, exhaling comfortably, the coughing fits mercifully over for the moment. “I know what has happened to you, Anika,” he said finally. “I know where you’ve been.”

Anika shook her head in a combination of confusion and denial. “What?” The word was barely audible, and the tears in Anika’s eyes felt poisonous.

“I know all that you’ve been through. At that cabin.”

“You have no idea what I’ve been through! How could you know! What is happening here? Papa, what did he mean that you want to be here? What does that mean?”

Anika looked back and forth between the two men, hoping the pieces would suddenly come together and the answers to her questions made apparent. She watched as Officer Stenson walked toward her and set the plate on the table beside the couch. The dish contained an assortment of cheeses and surprisingly fresh-looking bread, but Anika’s appetite was lost.

Officer Stenson said nothing more as he strode to the back of the warehouse and disappeared through the interior door.

“I’m trying to tell you, Anika,” her father continued, “I’m dying. Soon. I can feel it in my chest and hear it in my cough. You know it as well as anyone. You can hear it too. And you’ve seen how I’ve rotted over the years.”

Anika cringed at the word choice.

“You know I’m dying. You do. But the problem is my girl, I am a selfish man, and I don’t want to die.” He paused, and his eyes widened just slightly before saying, “And I don’t intend too.”

Marcel sat down again on the couch, this time easily and controlled.

“I had always hoped, Anika, and at times even prayed, that as the years piled on me and my body began failing that I would accept death as everyone does, as people have done for thousands of generations: ideally, with grace, but if not grace, then at least concession.” He paused, calculating the words. “But once I learned of it, of the miracle, and the truth of what it meant, I…”

He stopped suddenly, recognizing the frenzied crescendo of his voice. The volume and tenor reminded Anika of a carnival barker.

“I could never unlearn it, Anika,” he continued slowly, “I could never not try.” He paused again, and this time stared intently at his daughter. “That is where you come in.”

The words drifted in the room, each molecule of air now saturated with the solution to the riddle of why Anika’s father was sitting before her in a warehouse at the end of the world. Anika shook her head in disbelief, the tears now streaking steadily.

“I don’t understand,” she lied, “what are you saying?”

Marcel’s look was rigid, but his voice had the tone of kindness, “You know what I’m saying, Anika.”

“But why? Why me? And how could you have…It was just an accident. I wandered into the woods. What you’re saying doesn’t make sense!”

“Sit down, Anika, the story is a long one.”

“I don’t want to sit down!” Anika screamed, now teetering on hysterics, but her father’s look was fierce, and one Anika had known since her earliest memories. It was a look that, even under the circumstances, she’d been conditioned to obey.

She moved backward to the chair and sat, waiting for her father to begin the story of why her life had been shattered.

Gretel stared at Odalinde, who was now seated in the kitchen, her shoulders and chin high, her back stiff against the chair. Gretel’s hand was still firmly wrapped around the door knob, her expression mixed with fear and confusion.

“I don’t mean to be rude, Odalinde, but I really had plans to row today. I…”

“Sit down, Gretel. Please.”

Odalinde’s stare was hypnotic, and Gretel could see in the woman’s eyes that whatever she had to say was not insignificant.

“It’s about your mother.”

Gretel relaxed her hand and let it slide from the knob, the feeling of urgency now replaced with one of anxiety. “What is it? What’s happened?”

Gretel walked to the kitchen table and sat down next to Odalinde.

“And I want your brother to hear this too.”

Gretel quickly called for Hansel, who emerged from his room moments later. Seeing his sister and guardian seated together instantly made him curious, and he too sat down, facing his sister from across the table.

Hansel and Gretel stared unwaveringly at Odalinde, waiting for her revelation. Gretel could sense the woman’s nervousness as she looked to the floor, studying her thoughts and trying to figure where to begin.

“I’ve wanted to talk to you both for quite some time now. And it’s taken me much longer than it should have. And before I begin, I just want to say I’m sorry—for many things really, but most of all I’m sorry for that. For waiting so long.”

Neither child said a word in response to this preamble, and Odalinde continued.

“I’m going to tell you why I’m here, why I came here at all, to your home.” She paused a moment, waiting for any interruptions that may come, and hearing none said, “and to tell you what I believe happened to your mother.”