The Invisible Circus (19 page)

He carried her to a fountain and held her over it. They all stood quietly while Faith drank. When he set her on the ground, Faith stood weakly, rubbing her eyes while the color returned to her cheeks, then she smiled and suggested they get back on the ride. Their father laughed, relieved to see her spirits back. But Faith persisted, begged and coaxed and wheedled until it was clear that she actually meant to do it, get back on. But he wouldn’t relent, not that time. Simmer down, he said, you’re acting like a maniac. Riding home, Faith slumped by the window, stomach rumbling. She jammed her hands against it to stifle the sound, looking so miserable Phoebe thought she might be sick again, but it wasn’t that, she just hated going home.

They reached the Volkswagen. The car’s interior smelled like Wolf, a peculiar mix of tart and sweet like the backyard after a hard rain. Phoebe remembered that smell from his T-shirts, which she used to find on the floor of Faith’s bedroom. If no one else was around, she would lift one to her face, inhaling Wolf’s smell, a smell of comfort mixed with something else she couldn’t name, yet was drawn to.

She would tell him, Phoebe decided, what had happened in Europe. It was pointless to hide it.

“Wolf,” she said when they were moving.

She told everything, starting with London, moving on through each city, marooned in Karl’s apartment in Amsterdam, frightening those children outside Dinant, finding God, losing Him again. She’d expected to grope for descriptions, but found instead that they tumbled from her, stunning Phoebe with a wash of unexpected relief, even power. For out of the nightmarish surge of events a story had hardened into shape and it was hers, that story. She could tell it. She’d escaped.

Wolf drove in silence, expressionless. When Phoebe reached the part about trying to throw herself through the glass in Paris, he swung off the road. “I’m sorry,” he said, killing the engine. “I can’t drive and listen to this.”

The car was only an inch or two from a split-rail fence. Wolf leaned on the wheel, staring through the windshield while Phoebe finished. Afterward they sat in silence. Phoebe noticed a cow to her right with a smooth yellowy coat, enormous bones protruding from her backside. She felt calm, light.

“It’s wrong,” Wolf said. “You going through that.”

His grim tone unsettled Phoebe. She searched for some answer.

“It’s just wrong,” he said.

“Well, God,” she said. “I mean, it’s not like you caused it.”

They drove on, stopping soon after in a village for lunch. A shallow river pushed through the heart of the town, fat geese, soft black ducks paddling near the shore. Bright paintings adorned nearly every building: Christ on Saint Christopher’s shoulders, a knight on horseback waving a long medieval banner, the Madonna holding baby Jesus.

They ordered lunch and sat outside, at a black picnic table shaded by a striped umbrella. “What I can’t fathom,” Wolf said as the waiter brought their sandwiches, “is why you forced yourself to come to Europe at all. I mean, Christ, why put yourself through that?”

“I didn’t force myself,” Phoebe said. “I wanted to.”

“But why?”

“To find out what happened.”

“You know what happened!”

“I don’t.”

Wolf looked bewildered.

“And besides,” Phoebe went on, “in the postcards it sounded so intense, everything she did.”

Wolf stared at her. “Phoebe, she killed herself.”

Phoebe lifted her sandwich and ate, avoiding his gaze.

“She killed herself,” he repeated. “I get this feeling you don’t really understand that, like you think—I don’t know what you think.”

“You don’t know what happened,” Phoebe said.

Wolf pushed away his untouched food and lit a cigarette, swallowing down the smoke like nourishment. Phoebe tore into her sandwich, gulping whole mouthfuls unchewed, nearly choking herself.

“Yeah, but you’re forgetting, Phoebe, I was on that trip with her,” Wolf said. “When she was writing those postcards, I was
there
, okay? Me.” He knocked a fist against his chest.

A wisp of anger rose in Phoebe’s throat. She ate more quickly. “So tell me,” she said, not looking up.

Wolf rubbed his eyes. The energy seemed to leave him.

“Was it drugs? Was it heroin or something?”

“Sure it was drugs. It was everything that came along, that was Faith. No, it wasn’t drugs.”

“Then what?” Phoebe pressed.

Wolf threw back his head as if consulting the air. “The problem is, you do something crazy for long enough, it starts seeming normal,” he said. “To hold that edge you’ve got to go further and further out, and Faith had no trouble with that. But it changed her. Made her something else.”

Phoebe held his gaze, listening.

“Only one thing I ever saw her scared of: stopping. Like in that quiet, I don’t know, like something terrible would happen. All it took was one person egging her on—everyone wants a show, and Faith was usually willing to provide one. But she’s the one who suffered. Like the guy wearing the lampshade, the life of the party till everyone goes home, then he spends half an hour puking blood in the toilet.”

Phoebe looked away. Her sister in the amusement park, heaving over a trash can. Wolf had kicked the image to life. Faith thrashing in their father’s arms, the violence of it.

“All that energy, that incredible hope—it just turned. In the end she was one more person looking for kicks, anything that would take her someplace she’d never gone before. And me,” he laughed bitterly, “talk about arrogance, I was arrogant enough, fucking idiotic enough to think I could control this.”

Phoebe stood up. She couldn’t listen, was physically unable to hear her sister described in these terms. She left the table without a word, a funny ringing in her ears. “Hey, wait,” Wolf said. “Phoebe, don’t just—hey, come on!”

She kept walking. She heard Wolf leap to his feet, then the anxious protests of the proprietor, whose bill they hadn’t paid. By the time Wolf caught up with her, she’d reached the grassy slope of the riverbank. High on the opposite side stood a church, its twin onion domes oxidized blue-green and crowned with crosses, spindly as weather vanes. “Phoebe,” Wolf said from behind her, breathless.

He moved in front of her, catching Phoebe’s arms and forcing her to stop. She waited, eyes toward the grass, knowing he would apologize.

“What kind of shit is this?” Wolf said.

His grip hurt her arms. Phoebe looked into the angles of his face and found the narrow eyes full of rage. She tried to squirm away but Wolf held her fast. Phoebe thought he might hit her, half hoped he would.

“If you don’t want to know, don’t ask,” he said softly. “Hell, I’d rather you didn’t ask. But don’t ask and then run away and expect me to chase you.”

He let her go. Phoebe stayed where she was, swallowing dryly. A piece of cheese was stuck near the top of her throat.

“You remember Faith however you want,” he said, “that’s your business. Leave me out of it.”

Phoebe turned away in despair. The water looked like dark beer against the rocks. Two old men stood nearby, surrounded by white geese snapping at hunks of dry bread they pulled from their pockets.

“Don’t get me wrong, I was in love with her,” Wolf said. “Crazy about her, absolutely crazy. I don’t expect I’ll ever, ever feel that way about someone again. Jesus God, I hope not.”

He squatted at the water’s edge. Phoebe sat hunched on the grass, chin on her knees. “What about Carla?” she said.

“It’s night and day,” Wolf said with feeling. “You can be in love and still have a life, you know? You can build something. Faith and I were like thieves. Nothing belonged to us, it was one long spree.” After a moment he said, “On the other hand, we were kids.”

Phoebe lay flat on the grass, watching the clouds break apart and recombine like railway cars. Wolf came and sat beside her, and she saw that the anger had left him. “I’m not saying Faith was bad,” he said. “You know I’m not, Phoebe, you know all this—you must! She was full of conflict. Before we ever spoke I knew that, just seeing her at school, the sadness in her face. Skirts every day, blouses buttoned to the neck. These weird, sad eyes. It’s the clearest picture I’ve got of her, in a way.”

“You had a class with her, right?” Phoebe said, sniffling. “Physics or something?”

“No,” Wolf said. “We were three years apart—we wouldn’t have had any class together. She probably made that up.”

Phoebe sensed him debating whether or not to go on, weighing the use of it. “What happened really?” she said.

He’d noticed Faith, Wolf finally said, watched her with mild curiosity for weeks until once he was driving home from school in his truck and he’d spotted her hitchhiking—in her proper blouse and skirt, the most weird, incongruous sight. After that he’d look for her sometimes driving down Eucalyptus, and now and then she’d be there, thumb out. Alone, always. Once he’d driven past just as Faith was getting into someone’s car and he’d had a silly urge to follow it, make sure nothing happened to her. But he had a girlfriend at the time, Susan, and she was with him.

Phoebe raised herself onto her elbows. She could hear Wolf sinking into the story, wanting to tell it. There was yielding in his voice, the pleasure of giving way where normally he would resist. “So what happened?” she said.

Once, when Susan wasn’t there, he’d driven down Eucalyptus and, sure enough, there was Faith hitchhiking, so he’d pulled over and picked her up. “I think we go to high school together,” he’d said, which apparently was news to Faith. This surprised him, he had to admit; he’d kept a pretty high profile. Faith was achingly shy, just looked out the window saying nothing, and Wolf had no idea what to say, either, that’s how edgy she made him. Finally he asked why she hitched, didn’t she know that was dangerous for a girl to do alone? Still watching the window, Faith said, “The bus is slow.”

Well, look, how would she feel about a detour to the beach? Faith said okay, not seeming to care one way or the other, so Wolf drove her to Ocean Beach, wondering what the hell he thought he was doing, it wasn’t even nice out for chrissakes, but he parked on the Great Highway and the two of them sat looking over the dashboard at the dunes and ice plant, fog condensing on the windshield. Gray sky, waves lumbering up, nose-diving onto the sand. Faith just stared out there saying nothing. Wolf getting more and more nervous at the silence, when suddenly she turned to him and said, “Hey, want to go swimming?”

He assumed this must be a joke. No one swam in San Francisco—who swam? It was late fall, the water gray and impermeable-looking as rock. But Wolf said, “Sure, why not?” thinking if it was a joke then hell, he’d call her bluff, and he followed her out of the truck onto sand that felt heavy and cold as freshly poured concrete. Faith took off her shoes but kept on the rest of her clothes, a blouse and skirt that whipped her legs in the wind, a Sunday school outfit. She headed toward the water, Wolf trailing reluctantly, thinking how his clothes would make him sink, how heavy blue jeans got when they were wet, about riptides and undertows and crosscurrents and whatever the hell else people drown in. When his toes touched water, he said, “Hey, you really want to do this?”

Faith just stood there, wind tearing her hair. She said, “Are you scared?”

“Fuck no, I’m just … No, I’m not scared.”

And seeing no way out of it, he leapt in ahead, like diving through a sheet of glass, such a terrible, crushing cold, but he beat her in at least, though Faith was right behind him. Wolf thought he would die for sure but he kept on swimming, he’d be damned if he was going to look like a coward in front of this freshman, this prissy little girl, Jesus Christ. So with the teeth knocking in his head, he kept going, straight out. Sharks, he hadn’t even thought about sharks—after all, this was the fucking ocean. But some distance out a funny thing started to happen: the cold water began to feel almost hot, literally kind of tropical, warming his limbs; it felt pretty good, he had to admit, and on top of that there was this weird power, being out there in that gray heartless sea—as if you’d crossed over to a place most people didn’t know existed. Faith swam near him. Wolf had the impression some of that heat he felt was coming from behind her skin, and he reached out, touching her—just did it—they kissed right there in the water, so easy, as if they knew each other when all they’d done was say five words and jump in the freezing sea. When Faith looked back at the empty beach, she was smiling. Wolf had never seen her really smile before; it shook on her face she was so cold, and he wanted to get her back onshore. Around school he was pretty used to calling the shots, being a senior, having the truck and all, but as he breathed the cold salt air and the wind beat his head, Wolf had a feeling those days were probably over and he didn’t mind, really. He was actually kind of glad.

Back onshore the cold made them stammer. “You want me to take you home like that?” Wolf asked as water ran from Faith’s skirt and blouse and long hair all over his front seat. His parents were in Mexico on vacation. “Or you want to shower and change at my place?”

And not hesitating, Faith said, “Your place,” though she was only fourteen and had never been with a guy in her life, but nothing scared her, nothing. Or maybe she liked being scared.

Wolf looked away, his sharp, handsome face full of pain.

Watching him, Phoebe felt a weird, elated glow. Her sister had risen again, untouched, majestic, invincible. The feeling seemed to lift Phoebe up and crush her, stopping her breath.

Wolf glanced down at Phoebe, who lay on the grass. Their eyes locked and she saw that parting in his face, a stirring deep in his eyes, and it seemed to her then that she was pulling him down, that she could do that. The sensation was eerie, like finding each other in a dream. Wolf looked away. He covered his eyes with a hand, as if they hurt. “Let’s get out of here,” he said.

fifteen

It was fully night by the time they parked the car. Street light swarmed in the flowering trees outside Wolf’s building, as if drawn by their sweetness. Rounding the top flight of stairs, Phoebe caught a flutter of harpsichord music and saw a band of light under Wolf’s door. Wolf saw, too, and from the brief unreadiness in his face she guessed he hadn’t expected this. “Carla’s here,” he said.

The bright indoor light shocked Phoebe’s eyes. Carla sat cross-legged at the table, reading a newspaper. Her cigarette leaned in an ashtray. Phoebe’s first thought was how tall she seemed, even sitting down. Wolf greeted her in German somewhat stiffly, but Phoebe noticed the familiar, easy way their lips met.

Carla’s short pale hair looked smooth as an animal’s pelt. In spite of her height she was finely boned, her delicate face frank, unguarded, its delicacy there for the taking. Her shoulders curved inward a little, as if in apology for the full, soft-looking breasts under her white cotton sweater. “I am happy to meet you,” she said carefully, in a strong accent. She took Phoebe’s hand in both her own, a decisive grip offset somewhat by the slenderness of her fingers. Phoebe felt the engagement ring. Afterward she peeked at it, a modest diamond, pure white, as if a drop of light were trapped inside it.

Phoebe murmured something, overtaken by shyness. It struck her only now, meeting Carla, how prepared she had been to dislike her.

Cloistered in the bathroom, Phoebe listened to Wolf and Carla speaking German, their gentle voices muting the harsh language as if muffling its edges with felt. A second door connected the bathroom to Wolf’s bedroom, where Phoebe’s backpack still was. While changing into jeans and a T-shirt, she peered around the room; last night when she’d slept here, she’d been too drained and dazzled by the turn in her fortunes to notice very much. Now she was drawn to Wolf’s dresser, a scatter of loose change and restaurant matchbooks. Phoebe hovered at the door, listening to Wolf and Carla. Was there a difference in the way he spoke to his fiancée? It seemed to Phoebe there was—a readiness to laugh, something. She knew only one phrase in German,
Ich liehe dich:
I love you. At least they weren’t saying that.

On the desk lay Wolf’s translation work, the unbound pages of a typeset German text on the left, and on the right, face-down, an enormous stack of handwritten pages. Phoebe flipped over the top sheet and found it crammed with minute, painstaking writing that she thought at first could not be Wolf’s. “In order to be effective,” she read, “the brace, which acts as a kind of corset on the growing spine, must be worn twenty-three hours of each day, with the remaining hour spent in therapeutic exercise (see Appendix 1).” The pen was one of those black artist’s pens whose ink comes out through a needle. Phoebe lifted a few more pages and read, “These sores, caused by heat and chafing from the plastic in the first weeks of use, should be treated with astringents, such as rubbing alcohol, in order to toughen the skin. Avoid all moisturizers, lubricants and balms; these will only prolong the condition.”

There was a knock. The door opened and Wolf regarded her quizzically. Phoebe realized she was crouched like a thief over his manuscript. “I was—curious,” she stammered.

Wolf grinned, moving closer. Phoebe sensed that he rather liked the idea of her spying on him. “Find anything interesting?”

“Yes” sounded shameless; “No,” potentially insulting. “I don’t know,” Phoebe said truthfully. “I’d just started looking when you came in.”

Wolf laughed. “Don’t let me stop you.”

They stood together, the manuscript before them. Phoebe smiled nervously.

“It’s a bore,” Wolf said in a different voice. “Treatments for adolescent scoliosis.” He shrugged, moving to the door. “Will you join us?”

Phoebe stood by the living room window. Outside, the tall trees shook dryly in the wind, their dense leaves distilling the white lights beyond to pinpricks. Wolf sat on the couch next to Carla, his right knee touching her left. Part of Phoebe refused to believe in the authenticity of their affection. She’d felt this skepticism with other couples, too, a suspicion that their closeness was contrived merely to persuade her, that without her there to watch, they would move apart indifferently.

Carla asked whether Phoebe had enjoyed Ludwig’s castles, her uncertain English giving the questions a stilted, textbook aspect. “I am sorry,” she said, lighting a cigarette and blowing a stream of smoke toward the ceiling. “My English is very …” She paused, as if groping for the proper pejorative, but managed only, “… bad.”

“You never speak it,” Wolf said.

Carla turned to him. “I know, but some years ago I am …” She looked away as if embarrassed, laughing suddenly. In that laugh Phoebe heard an eerie likeness to Faith—the same abandon, as if the laughter were a pair of arms she was letting herself fall into.

“I feel strange, in English,” Carla told Phoebe, real surprise in her voice. She motioned at Wolf. “Like he is stranger.”

Phoebe smiled, still unnerved by the laugh.

“In English I am not me,” Carla said, serious again. The strain of wanting to explain showed in her face. “I have only simple words, like baby.”

Wolf made some objection in German, but Carla waved him off. “In English I am …” Her eyelids fluttered as she groped for a word. She consulted Wolf in German.

He blustered in protest. “Colorless,” he finally said.

“Ja,”
Carla said, nodding matter-of-factly. “Yes. In English I am colorless.”

Carla went to unpack the groceries she’d brought. “German food is very heavy, so we are making for you some Italians,” she told Phoebe from the doorway. The room felt deeply silent in her absence. Phoebe sensed Wolf wanting to say something, but when their eyes met, he looked away. An odd shyness overcame them.

“Look, Pheeb,” he finally said, “I’d rather you didn’t—I’d prefer we not talk about Faith in front of Carla.”

“Was I doing that?”

“No, no. Not at all. I’m just saying let’s not.”

The request seemed reasonable enough, yet Phoebe was stung by it. “Okay,” she said.

“It’s just,” Wolf said, “I hate inundating her with all that.”

“I won’t mention her,” Phoebe said, edgy.

Wolf idled at the door as if he’d meant to say something more, then left without a word.

Phoebe went to the window. Yellow light from the kitchen smeared the dark glass. She heard their laughter, the tinny sound of a radio, and it seemed to Phoebe that her sister’s life was entirely effaced, a shadow beside the vivid presence of Carla. Wolf’s fiancée reminded her of girls in high school who’d worn their boyfriends’ athletic jackets to smoke cigarettes outside on foggy days, sleeves reaching halfway down their slim, manicured fingers. They had seemed to Phoebe so dazzlingly complete, lockets tangled in their turtlenecks, a dozen rings, jade, turquoise; girls who didn’t hesitate, whose very thoughtlessness she longed to copy.

Phoebe began to explore the living room, listlessly at first, drawn to a stack of American board games she’d loved as a child, Candy Land, Life, Clue, but as she opened the latter box and fingered the tiny murder weapons, Phoebe began, as she had in Wolf’s bedroom, to feel an element of subterfuge. She imagined herself as an undercover agent posing as a dinner guest, with orders to search the premises by evening’s end. Like a cat burglar, she leapt to the stereo and flipped swiftly through an exhaustive record collection, ELO, Chicago, Journey, all bands she despised, though seeing their albums in German was amusing. Men at Work, the Bee Gees; having determined these records couldn’t possibly be Wolf’s, Phoebe left them, darting to a set of low, deep shelves filled with rows of books. She reached behind the books and found the space crammed with objects. Hands scuttling like crabs, Phoebe prised free a squeaky rubber mouse, a pincushion shaped like a tomato, a pair of seamed black panty hose still in their plastic. But all this clutter was the Lakes’, she knew; they’d thrown it back here to clear out the place for Wolf. At the sound of footsteps Phoebe jumped to her feet. “Dinner is coming,” Carla said.

Wolf and Carla served tortellini in a cream-and-peppercorn sauce, spinach and green-apple salad. They both ate quickly and efficiently, forks in their left hands. Still full from the sandwich she’d devoured at lunch, Phoebe struggled to finish her portion. Carla asked Phoebe about her travels: Where exactly had she gone? How did she get from place to place? Was her luggage heavy? Often she employed the present progressive—you are seeing, you are going—creating the eerie impression that she was narrating a voyage in progress. Behind Carla’s politeness Phoebe sensed real scrutiny, as if there were something specific she was trying to nail down. It made her nervous.

“You are living in San Francisco?” Carla said.

Phoebe looked up, surprised. She’d assumed this went without saying.

“Phoebe and I went to the same high school,” Wolf jumped in, “about a decade apart.” It sounded forced.

“Not a decade,” Phoebe said.

“No?” He seemed to welcome the challenge. “I graduated ’67. You?”

“This year, 78. Oh yeah,” she admitted. “I guess it is a decade.”

“You are how many years?” Carla asked.

“Eighteen.”

Carla exclaimed, speaking in German to Wolf.

“She says you’re young to be traveling alone,” he translated, adding with the same tense joviality, “which is true enough.”

Phoebe considered alluding to his own youthful travels but thought better of it. That would be almost like bringing up Faith. She shrugged.

“In America we grow up fast,” Wolf said with mock bravado.

Carla grinned. “But you are staying children for always.”

After dinner Wolf and Carla pushed their plates away and lit cigarettes. They divided up the newspaper, spread it over the glass and began combing the apartment listings. The Lakes would return at summer’s end; they had to find one before that. Phoebe left them in their cloud of smoke and brought the plates to the kitchen. “You guys cooked,” she said, dismissing their languid offers of help.

She piled everything in the sink and turned on the water. While it ran, she began quietly opening drawers, surprised at how fragrant some were despite their emptiness, cloves, coffee, peppermint, as if the contents had just been removed. She found a sack of prunes, a bag of straws. Phoebe hoisted herself onto the counter and stood upright to inspect the highest cupboards. Here were products still in boxes—the Lakes’ wedding gifts?—a cheese board shaped like a crescent, a small hibachi grill and shish kebab set. A dense silence clung to these objects. Phoebe had loved to babysit for precisely this sensation: other people’s lives spread open around her, like having the power to go inside rooms you’d glimpsed through street windows. Inevitably Phoebe would open the father’s closet door to look at his ties, suspended there as if forever, so still and elegant.

Phoebe stepped along the counter as far as she could go without entering Wolf and Carla’s range of vision, working her way through a set of lobster bibs, a fondue pot, some cryptic machine whose apparent purpose was the compression of bread and leftovers into tidy loaves. No wonder the Lakes hadn’t used it. When the sink was at the point of overflowing, she climbed back down and washed the dishes, a delicious lightness in her chest. Afterward she left the water running in the empty sink and hid impulsively in the V of the open door, peering through its crack at Wolf and Carla leaning over their newspaper. Carla exclaimed at something she’d found, set down her cigarette and circled the item with a stubby pencil, her other hand groping for Wolf as if for a pair of glasses or a cigarette pack, finding his wrist without lifting her eyes from the paper. The gesture transfixed Phoebe—the inadvertence of it, the thoughtlessness. Wolf rose from his chair and leaned over her, his chest to Carla’s back. He kissed her temple, breathing in her smell while his eyes perused whatever it was she’d found in the paper. The sheer ordinariness of it all confounded Phoebe, as if any one of these things might happen several times in a day, with no one watching. They belong to each other, she thought, and found herself awed by the notion—knowing someone was there, just there, reaching for that person without a thought.

Later the three of them moved to the living room. Wolf discovered he’d left his tapes in the car and ran downstairs to get them. “Wolf,” Phoebe called after him, wanting him to check for a hairbrush she couldn’t find. But she’d missed him.

Carla lay haphazardly on the couch, one leg over the armrest. Phoebe noticed the curve of her hipbones through her jeans. “This name you are giving to Sebastian,” Carla said. “Olf?”

“Oh, Wolf,” Phoebe said. “It’s a nickname.”

“Like animal? Wolf? Yes, yes,” Carla said, approving. “The eyes, yes.”

Wolf returned, puffing from his sprint. He squatted by the stereo.

“Wolf,” Carla called to him playfully. “Why I am never learning this name?”

Phoebe saw Wolf stiffen. Lightly he said, “It’s old.”

“Where is coming from, this name?”

Her question was aimed at Phoebe. Wolf, too, turned to look at her, and Phoebe knew she’d misstepped. Had Wolf asked her not to use the name? Should she simply have known? Now she was at a loss. Not mentioning someone was one thing, lying to avoid it was another. She couldn’t believe Wolf wanted that. “It was Faith,” she said timidly, watching his face. “Wasn’t it Faith?”

“I don’t know,” Wolf said tiredly, turning back to the stereo. He slipped in a tape and turned it on. They sat, waiting in the crackling silence before the recording began.

“Faith,” Carla said, sounding confused. “Faith.” She pronounced it “Fate.”

“You remember Faith,” Wolf said, as if reading from a script.

“Yes. Of course I can remember Faith,” Carla said, frowning. “But why is Phoebe …? I don’t …” The words seemed to elude her, yet she didn’t switch to German.

“I’m her sister,” Phoebe said, blood rushing to her face. “Faith’s sister.” It felt like a proclamation.

Carla’s eyes were on Wolf now, her mouth slightly open. She spoke in soft, rapid German. He answered humbly, his throat dry. Phoebe thought he seemed afraid.