“It’s almost time for lunch,” his father said, glancing at his watch. “I didn’t realize.”

“What kind of message?” Nick asked, still absorbed.

“Not now,” his father said quickly, as if they could be overheard. “And nothing in front of Anička.”

“She doesn’t know?” Nick said.

“No. It could be dangerous for her.”

“Why does she think I’m here?”

“I wanted to see you, before it’s too late. It’s natural.”

“Yes,” Nick said flatly. A cover story.

“She’ll be worried,” his father said. “She worries when I’m late.”

Chapter 9

THEY WERE IN the garden, hammering in stakes for tomato vines. Anna wore rubber boots and worker’s overalls, which had the effect of making her look even broader, her hips ballooning out like Churchill’s in his siren suit. Nick thought of his mother at the embassy party, slim and glossy. Molly, holding the stakes, had rolled up her jeans and taken off her shoes, playing peasant in the mud. They had clearly been at it for some time, their faces damp with perspiration in the humid air.

Molly waved at the car and grinned, and he felt her smile like a wakening hand at his shoulder, something real again. Her hair, piled on her head, fell down in wisps around her face, but the back of her neck was clear, as white and vulnerable as a child’s. She seemed too fresh for the tired countryside, with her freckles and American teeth.

Anna wiped her hands and started over to them, her face tentative and somehow relieved. “We started. Before the rain comes. You had a good trip?” she said to Walter, glancing at Nick.

“Yes, perfect,” his father said easily, not answering her real question. “Here, let me help you with that.”

“No, no. You sit. I’ll start lunch.”

“She treats me like an invalid.”

“You are an invalid.”

“And you always expect rain,” he said, smiling.

She looked up at the cloudy sky, unimpressed by the patches of light breaking through, then leaned against him to take off her boots, holding on to his upper arm for support. “There are left a few,” she said to Nick, handing him a hammer. “You don’t mind? Your father should rest.”

“Sure,” Nick said automatically, staring down at her feet, surprisingly small and pale.

“Is there beer?” his father said.

“For you?”

“Anička,” he drawled, a mock pout.

She giggled good-naturedly and turned to the house. It was small, ordinary stucco with wooden shutters and sills, but placed at the top of a rise so that the lawn in front looked out over the trees to a field beyond. The landscape was unremarkable, not the dramatic rolling hills of Virginia, but the trees enclosed them in privacy. A rusty gas tank at the side. A stack of firewood, like the one at the cabin where they used to hide the spare key. A tiny tool shed in the back. A spigot with a green plastic garden hose attached, curled in a pail. Beyond the muddy driveway, woods to keep out the world. They came every weekend.

“Having fun?” he said to Molly as he reached the garden.

“You can’t imagine. Gidget goes to Prague,” she said. “Careful of the beans.”

He sidestepped a row of tiny green seedlings.

“You had a good trip?” Anna’s question, with the same edge.

Nick hammered in the stake. “We went to Theresienstadt.”

“The concentration camp?”

“My father seems to think it’s a tourist attraction.”

“The Germans go,” Molly said simply. “Pretty amazing, when you think of it.” She moved to the next stake. “How was it? With your father, I mean.”

“Fine,” he said. Then, “I don’t know. One minute he’s the same, then the next –I can’t get a fix. You know when you’re adjusting binoculars? It’s fuzzy, then it’s clear, then it’s all fuzzy again. Like that.”

“Why? What did he say?” she asked, curious.

Nick moved away from it. “It’s not what he says. It’s–maybe he’s just getting old. I never thought of him as old. I don’t know why. Of course he’d be old. What’s she like?”

“Not old. She doesn’t miss much. Her English is better than you think. She’s nervous about you.”

“Why?” Nick said quickly.

“Well, why not? Here she is, cozy in her garden, and you drop in. The long-lost son. She wants you to like her–it’s natural.”

Natural, his father’s word. “Yes,” he said again.

“So smile a little,” she said, pretending to be airy. “You look like you’ve just seen a concentration camp.” She stepped back from the last tomato stake. “There, that’s done. Just in time. Looks like soup’s on.”

She nodded toward the cottage door, where Anna was waving to them. She had changed the overalls for a skirt and blouse, and Nick noticed that her hair was brushed back, all tidied up.

“I hate soup,” Nick said absently.

“You’d better like hers,” Molly said.

She sprayed her feet with the hose and stamped them dry on the ground, taking down her hair and finger-combing it while she slipped into her loafers. Involuntarily, Nick smiled. Both Kotlar women seemed determined to make a good impression.

And, in fact, lunch was pleasant. The round dining table, set near the window corner of the room, was draped with a crocheted tablecloth anchored with a porcelain jug of fresh wildflowers. Across the table Anna had spread plates of pickles and hard-boiled eggs and salami arranged in pretty concentric circles. Nick glanced at the larder shelf, just like the one in their old cabin, but filled here with glass jars of cucumbers and tomatoes and beets, a garden preserved all year in vinegar and dill. He looked for the rainy-day snacks of his youth–peanut butter and saltines and cans of tuna–but this was a serious pantry, with real food to last a season. Anna ladled some form of borscht, beet red, from a decorated tureen and poured tall glasses of beer.

“Did you do all this yourself?” Nick said to her, indicating the shelves.

She nodded. “In the winter it’s difficult for vegetables. We are fortunate to have the garden.”

“Difficult. Nonexistent,” his father said. “Carrots–that’s it. Of course, the Americans have lettuce. Once a week the car goes to Germany. The lettuce run. Sometimes they share with their friends–the British, the Czech staff. Everyone in Prague knows someone who can get a German cabbage from the Americans. But Anička doesn’t like to do that. She thinks it’s disloyal,” he said playfully.

“Not disloyal. Illegal. Ruzyně for a salad? No.”

“Ruzyně,” Nick said. “The airport?”

“A prison,” his father explained. “Nearby. Same name.” Then, smiling at Anna, “Where they put you for groceries.”

“In the summer it’s different,” Anna said, ignoring the tease. “We have cherries down below. Plums. For jam.”

“Jam,” Nick said to his father. “Remember the time Mom tried with the blackberries?” It had slipped out before he could catch it and now it hung there, an embarrassment, but Anna smiled.

“Your mother was a gardener too?” A figure of the past.

“No. She said it would ruin her nails.” A half-truth, making her seem frivolous. Why had he said it? To make one feel comfortable at the expense of the other? But Molly was right–Anna didn’t miss much, and sensing his discomfort, she examined her hands and sighed.

“It’s a price, yes. She was right, I think.”

“But look how we eat,” his father said, pointing to the array of pickles. “Anna can make anything grow. A magician.”

“Oh, a magician. With peasant hands. That’s the price. For the planting thumb.”

“Green,” Molly said. “Green thumb.”

“Yes?” Anna giggled. “Green thumb. English–why do you make it so difficult?”

“You should try Czech,” Molly said.

Anna found this funny, or chose to, and laughed, and Nick suddenly saw her as she must have been, bright and attractive, before weight and time had drawn her face closed. When had they met? Did they have jokes together? Nick thought of his parents, laughing downstairs after the guests had gone. He had been looking at Anna as a kind of nurse, dispensing pills and telling his father to rest. Now he sensed a different intimacy. Not a nurse, a wife. Who broke her nails pulling weeds.