“The silver-gray dog dove back into the water with an angry snarl and disappeared. The green ship sailed on, though, and the little queen worried that maybe she would never see the sea lion or the dog again. And she felt a prick of pain in her diamond heart.

“But in the morning, there was a bouquet of white sea roses next to the bed in the cabin, where the rose girl had slept. They were the kind of sea roses that grow only far out in the sea and only in winter. Somebody must have plucked them from the froth on the waves. Possibly a sea lion. The rose girl smiled. But there, behind the green ship, were black sails, very close, much too close, and the little queen was cold in spite of her down jacket.”

Abel looked down into his cup. He drank the last bit of hot chocolate, which was long cold. He gazed out at the sea in the February dusk. Silently. Maybe he had used up all his words. Micha tore a little corner from the paper napkin and put it on Mrs. Margaret’s head, like a white rose petal.

“I think I … I’ll be back,” Anna said and got up. “Too much tea. Rose-hip tea …”

Anna was alone in the tiny room that led to the ladies’ room. She stood in front of the mirror, combed her dark hair behind her ears with her fingers, and leaned forward, over the marble counter with the two built-in sinks, so far that the tip of her nose nearly touched the tip of her reflection’s nose.

It was true. She had five tiny freckles there. You couldn’t see them unless you were really close. She took a deep breath and splashed her face with cold water. “Thank you,” she finally whispered. “Thank you for the sea roses. It doesn’t matter that you destroyed the roses on my arm with your teeth. They were unnecessary anyway.” And then she smiled at her mirror image. It seemed beautiful all of a sudden.

Abel and Micha weren’t talking about the story when Anna returned to the table. They were talking about school, Micha’s school, and about a picture she had painted there. And about Micha’s teacher with the blond curls: Mrs. Milowicz, whose name Micha never managed to spell correctly and who’d been wanting to talk to Micha’s mother for a long time now.

“She can talk to you instead, can’t she?” Micha said, shrugging. “I told her that. Like she did on the first day of school, back then.”

“Yes,” Abel answered, but he looked away, out at the sea.

“Didn’t your mother come on that first day?” Anna asked, and then was immediately sorry that she’d asked.

“Mama doesn’t like school,” Micha said to Anna. “She always has other things to do. And sometimes she has to sleep in really late in the morning, if she’s been out the night before. Abel, what I wanted to tell you before was we had to draw a fish, and I made one with a whole lot of colorful scales, and you know what I can write now? X. Even though you never need it. It’s strange what you learn in school, isn’t it?”

“Yeah, strange.” Abel laughed. “Why don’t you tell Anna about the time you had to learn about the inner parts of the eye, and nobody understood a thing …”

He didn’t want to talk about Michelle. Anna was getting the impression, more and more, that Michelle just happened to live in the same flat as Abel and Micha, who also just happened to be her children. It sounded like Abel had been taking care of Micha for a long time, even before Michelle had disappeared. Maybe since Micha was born.

How old had he been then? Eleven? When Rainer was living in that small apartment, too … and then they had thrown Rainer out.

Anna tried to pay the bill, but Abel’s eyes turned cold once more, and she let it be. “We don’t need charity, but thanks,” he said quietly. She nodded.

Outside, in front of the café, it was difficult to say good-bye. Anna couldn’t find the right words. She wanted to say “see you tomorrow,” but she didn’t know whether Abel would talk to her tomorrow or whether he would go back to behaving as if he didn’t know her. Abel stood beside her smoking. Micha jumped up and down in the snow, her pink down jacket with the artificial fur collar bouncing, her boots making as many weird footprints as they could.

“The problem is, we don’t get full social services,” Abel said all of a sudden. “Not without Michelle. She has to go in and sign for it herself. We get the children’s allowance. That’s something, at least.”

“How many bank accounts do you have?” Anna asked.

“Just one.”

“And you said you’re getting the children’s allowance, so I take it you’re drawing from that account, right? Michelle’s not the only one who can, right?”

“Of course. I’m the one taking care of the fucking household.” He laughed. “I’ve been doing that for a long time now. Michelle, she … well, she had problems. Drinking, for example. Not only that, though.”

Anna nodded. “If that’s the only account, you can check to see if anybody else is withdrawing money. And from which ATM. Maybe that’s the way to find out where she is. I mean, she has to live on something. She’ll need money.”

Abel didn’t say anything for a moment. “She hasn’t taken out any money,” he murmured finally.

“You’re sure? Did you check?”

He nodded. “Nothing’s been taken out.” But Anna wasn’t sure he was telling the truth. She wanted to say, You know where she is! Why don’t you tell someone? Don’t you want her to come back … even a little bit? Or are you protecting her? From what? From whom?

“If I can do anything,” she began, and then she realized how stupid she sounded. “I mean, I could lend you something … it wouldn’t be charity then …” He shook his head, smoking in silence. Micha made baby footprints in the snow, using the sides of her fists, and Anna remembered doing the same thing when she was a child. Linda had showed her how.

“Where I live everything is so different,” she said. And suddenly she heard herself telling him things. About the blue light; about Magnus; about Linda, who was nearly invisible; about the single rose in the garden; the robins; England; Gitta’s glass wall, through which you couldn’t see anything worth seeing; and the easy-to-clean furniture—and when she mentioned Gitta’s mother disinfecting the white sofa, Abel started laughing.

He ground out his cigarette in the snow with his foot and looked at her. “Thanks,” he said. “It’s … it’s good to not always be doing the talking.” He unlocked his bike, helped Micha onto the carrier, and pulled the black woolen cap down over his ears. “About charity,” he said, before he rode away. “You know … you could donate the eighteen euros. The ones I owe you.”

“Excuse me?”

Abel turned around to look at Micha, who was busy stuffing Mrs. Margaret deeper into her pocket and whispering to her that she’d be cold otherwise. Micha wasn’t listening.

“You gave me twenty,” Abel said quietly. “Two is what that blister pack was worth.”

“I … I don’t understand …”

“I was afraid you’d really take some of that stuff. You looked so determined.” And he smiled, his smile gliding past her, out to sea. “Lucky nothing was written on the back of the package. Tylenol. I sold you Tylenol. Children’s Tylenol.”

Then he rode away, and Anna stood there alone, in the snow. She felt an absurd, sparkling laugh creep up her throat and shake her whole body.

“Young lady,” said an elderly gentleman, who had just come down the staircase of the café with his wife on his arm, “young lady, can I offer you my handkerchief? You’re crying.”

“Oh,” Anna said. “Really? I thought I was laughing. Stupid mistake.”

It didn’t matter that she had canceled their date.

He told himself that it didn’t matter. Why should it? He stood on the beach alone and looked out over the ice. It was nearly thick enough to walk on. No. He wasn’t alone. There was the dog—the dog that probably wondered why, over the past few days, Bertil had taken it out so often.