“I was going to ask Christoffel, the next time he came,” she offers. “It should be tomorrow.”
“We don’t need Christoffel. Do you have a long rod?” I ask. “Something very thin, maybe for closing the drapes?”
After several minutes of us both searching for something, Mrs. Janssen finally disappears into her back garden and returns with a flat wooden stake, slightly dirty at the bottom, and a seed packet affixed to the top depicting beets. “Will this work?”
I use the rod to push Mrs. Janssen’s glasses out the other side. She thanks me profusely while dusting them off, and then adjusts them across her nose, and a minute later we’re sitting back at the table.
“It could be that all this means nothing,” I tell her, “but I do have a few names. People who might have known Mirjam well. It’s all far-fetched, but did Mirjam ever talk about her friend Amalia?”
She purses her lips. “I don’t think so.”
“Ursie? Zef?”
“Ursie, maybe? But I could be confusing her with my seamstress. Her name is Ursie, too.”
I’ve saved the most promising for last. “Tobias? He might have been her boyfriend?”
“She did talk about a boy she liked, but I don’t remember.… Let me think.”
It seems strange, to think of Mirjam talking about a boy while she was in hiding, mourning her family and fearing for her life. But I suppose love doesn’t stop, even in wars. There’s only so much time a day that you can spend being terrified of something before your instinct to feel natural human emotions would kick in.
“Oh!” A light has gone on in Mrs. Janssen’s eyes. She reaches for her cane, scooting her chair back from the table. “I’ve just remembered something.”
“What? What is it?”
She stands and goes to the pantry. I hear rustling and the sounds of jars clanking, and when she returns, she’s carrying several jars of food.
“I’m not hungry,” I say, confused, but Mrs. Janssen shakes her head; she’s brought the jars over for a different reason.
“The day before Mirjam disappeared, I asked her if she would help me by wiping down the dusty jars in the pantry,” Mrs. Janssen explains. “I had to let go the woman who used to clean for me because I worried she’d hear Mirjam. Anyway, Mirjam had gotten most of the way done when my neighbor stopped by, so Mirjam stopped dusting and went to hide. This is what the ones she finished look like.” Mrs. Janssen pushes forward a jar that is wiped down and smooth. “Now look at these.”
At first, they appear the same as the ones Mirjam finished dusting. But when the light in the room shifts, something looks different. Someone has drawn a design in the dust, with an index finger probably—it reminds me of the designs I used to make on the windows before I cleaned them.
Mrs. Janssen rotates two of the jars, so I can see them right side up. The dust drawing on the first jar is an M. The second one is a T.
“I noticed them yesterday and thought they were just doodles,” Mrs. Janssen says. “But they’re not. They’re M and T.”
“Mirjam and Tobias,” I say.
“Do you think it means something?”
Do I think it means something? Something like Mirjam running away from a safe place to try to find a boy she liked? Something like Mirjam risking her life for a relationship whose only evidence so far is a cryptic note, a dusty trail on jar lids, and some flowers Mina says Mirjam once received at school? It would seem crazy to rational people. But isn’t this something like I would have done? Even if I hadn’t seen Bas in months, wouldn’t I still be thinking of him every day, mentally tracing his name on everything I saw? Isn’t that what I’m doing now still?
Isn’t love the opposite of rational?
Mrs. Janssen polishes her eyeglasses again while she waits for me to answer, rubbing off dust particles they picked up on the floor, murmuring something about the garden stake.
“Hmm?” I ask her absentmindedly.
“I was thinking I should keep the garden stake nearby in the house. The one you used to get my glasses? It could be useful for when I need to reach in small spaces.”
I sit up, a lightning bolt down my spine.
“What did you say?”
“I’m sorry. You were trying to concentrate.”
“No, no. You’re helping,” I tell her. “This stake was in your back garden?”
“Yes. I have a little plot of vegetables. Not now, obviously; it’s winter. But in the summer. Why?”
“I need to see the back door again.”
“Why?”