“You have stars in your eyes.” Anneliese handed her a cold glass, fending off Taro, whose tail was still lashing in delight at the lady of the house’s return. “Who’s put that glow in your cheeks?”
A man who makes my toes curl, Jordan thought, who makes me laugh, who even helps me work better. And maybe it will only be a summer fling and he’ll lose interest when I go away, or maybe I’ll be the one to move on. But right now . . . Jordan buried her smile in the iced tea. Possibly some nosy neighbor would tell Anneliese about a young man seen leaving the basement, but Jordan knew her stepmother wouldn’t launch an inquisition. “What did you buy at the auctions?”
“Nothing,” Anneliese said ruefully. “Not a thing. Your father made it look so easy; one look at a Queen Anne highboy and he just knew if it was a reproduction or an original, or if the restoration was good work or shoddy. It was foolish to think I had picked up enough to match him. I’ll just have to let that go to someone more knowledgeable.”
“At least you had a vacation.” Jordan folded her hands around her glass. “And your week in Concord?”
Anneliese’s face softened. “Your father was right there with me, I could have sworn. I even had the same room we had on our honeymoon. How have you and Ruth been?” Jordan filled her in, omitting for now the details of darkroom lovers and music lessons. “My photo-essay is almost done too. I have fourteen prints; I want fifteen.”
“Then you should start thinking about a place to live in New York. I did a little apartment hunting while I was there. We can’t have you sleeping in some flea-riddled bedroom with a toilet down the hall.”
“It’s still a bit soon to be apartment hunting.”
“Why? Your project is almost done; what better time to look for work? And you did say you wanted to move in the fall. You’ll need a chic suit for interviews—I found the perfect Butterick pattern . . .”
“I was going to wait till Ruth was settled back in school. It’s going to be hard for her.”
“Nonsense, she’ll still have me and her friends and her dog. She shouldn’t be the one holding you back. Unless”—Anneliese shot Jordan a shrewd, humorous look—“you have some other reason?”
Jordan laughed. “There is no getting anything by that sixth sense of yours, is there?” She should have known Anneliese was far too sharp not to discern the real reason for flushed cheeks and sparkling eyes.
“He must be quite something.” Anneliese drew a fingertip around her glass. “But I’d hate to see you changing your plans for some young man, however special.”
“He won’t stop me leaving.” However lovely things were with Tony, Jordan wasn’t putting off a chance for work, real work. She wouldn’t put that off for anyone . . . except one person. “I can’t leave until Ruth’s used to the idea, though. I just can’t.”
“Now, I really won’t allow this,” Anneliese scolded. “Let’s set a date, Jordan. The date your new life begins; the day you go and start leading it. I don’t want to let anything stand in your way.”
“My way or your way?” Jordan smiled, joking. “If I didn’t know better, I’d think you were trying to get rid of me!”
Anneliese’s smile slipped for just a fraction of a second, showing a different expression, and in Jordan’s lap, her camera finger twitched. Click.
“Well,” Anneliese said quietly, “I certainly didn’t mean it like that.”
“Anna, I’m sorry.” Reaching out to touch her stepmother’s hand. “I didn’t mean that the way it came out, not at all.”
“Of course.” Anneliese rose, took the glasses back to the kitchen. “Would you like more iced tea?”
“Yes.” Jordan tried a smile. “Maybe we should look at apartment listings together. You really didn’t have to do that for me when you were in New York.”
Anneliese gave her usual warm smile over one shoulder. “It was my pleasure.”
Especially if you really do want me out as soon as possible, the thought came.
But Jordan shoved that out of her head, because Anneliese was sitting down again looking entirely her friendly self, asking, “Your last photograph for the essay, what will it be?”
Jordan wasn’t sure yet—Ruth at her violin, small fingers on the strings, the fierce line between her brows as she played with exquisite care through that simple Russian lullaby? But Jordan couldn’t say that to Anneliese, so she said something about going to the nearest station to snap firemen at work, and Anneliese teased that perhaps it was a handsome fireman who’d been putting the roses in her cheeks. And even as Jordan teased back, another thought couldn’t help but rise through her mind like the shadowy image of a print rising through the shimmer of developer fluid: When exactly had she started keeping so many secrets from Anneliese?
SHE MIGHT HAVE forgotten all about it, but four days later Jordan walked into the shop to find Anneliese and Mr. Kolb shouting at each other in German.
Or rather, Kolb was shouting—shambling back and forth, spitting German and brandy fumes. Completely soused, Jordan thought, recoiling from the anger on that usually affable face. Anneliese stood small and composed before him, answering in German that sliced the air. Both lapsed into silence at the sound of the bell, staring at Jordan standing there in the yellow summer dress her stepmother had whipped together in her sewing room.
“Jordan,” Anneliese said at last, switching back to English. “I didn’t expect you.”
Jordan had dropped in to see Tony, but he was clearly on lunch break. She crossed to her stepmother’s side, looking at Mr. Kolb. “Do we have a problem?”
He didn’t look at Jordan, still staring at Anneliese. “Making you good money, good work—”
“You cannot come to work intoxicated, no matter how much good work you have done for me,” Anneliese said icily. “Go home. Dry out. Keep calm.”
He said something else slushy and spiteful in German, and Anneliese cut him off with a rattling retort, eyes blazing. His mouth snapped shut, he looked at the ground. When he glanced back up, his shoulders had slumped.
“Get your coat,” said Anneliese.
“I’ll get it,” Jordan said. She didn’t want him lurching drunkenly through the back room with so many fragile things waiting to be knocked over. She found Kolb’s coat hanging over the back chair, wrinkling her nose at the clink of what sounded like a bottle in the pocket, and turned around to find him right behind her, swaying. She jumped.
“So much money,” he said. “That bitch—”
Jordan recoiled. “Do not speak about Mrs. McBride like—”
He cut her off, spitting more insults. Hure, Scheissekopf, J?gerin, swaying on his feet. He hardly seemed to know she was there.
Anneliese’s voice snapped like a whip behind them. “Herr Kolb.”
He flinched, and Jordan’s tongue shriveled. She didn’t think she’d ever seen a man look more afraid.
“I won’t have you frightening my stepdaughter,” Anneliese went on, evenly. “Go home.”
Kolb snatched his coat and stumbled out. Anneliese opened the door for him, then shut it again. The shop bell rang tinnily in the sudden silence.
“Fire him,” Jordan said, finding her tongue again.
“I can’t afford to fire him.” An acrid little smile. “He has made us a great deal of money, Jordan; he was quite correct about that. He’s very good at his job.”
“We can find someone else. Dad would never put up with that kind of talk.”
“He wouldn’t dare talk to your father that way. It is what it is, a woman owning a business.” Anneliese shrugged. “Tomorrow he’ll slink back apologizing. Drunks always do.”
“That doesn’t excuse what he called you.” Hure; Jordan was fairly sure what that meant. Scheissekopf, J?gerin; she didn’t know. “Bitch,” well, that certainly didn’t need any translation.
“Believe me, I take no pleasure in being insulted by clerks.” Anneliese sighed. “For now, he’s harmless.”
“Are you sure?”
That curling smile returned. “I’m not afraid of a man like Herr Kolb.”
No, Jordan thought. He’s the one terrified of you. She’d seen his face, close enough to reach out and touch the beads of sweat.
Anneliese picked up her gloves. “Let’s go home, shall we?”
SOMETHING WAS TUGGING at Jordan, like a pin stuck into the back of her mind. Something she couldn’t quite get a grip on. Something Kolb said, something her dad had said . . . ? She barely ate any of Anneliese’s excellent meatloaf that night, too perplexed by that niggle of a thought that refused to come out.
“You should go out,” Anneliese told her. “Have your young man take you somewhere!”
The words echoed, all in Anneliese’s voice.
You should go out.
He’ll go when we can afford it.
The date your new life begins . . . go and start leading it!
Go.
But that was ridiculous. Anneliese wasn’t trying to get rid of her, for God’s sake.