“You never mentioned her before. Not yesterday, not in any of your letters. Why didn’t you tell me about her?” How could he like Isobel so much and not tell her? Did he have any idea how alone she felt? How could he not feel the same way?
“I don’t know,” Gerhard said, and his face grew serious. “I’m sorry for that. I should have.” He turned to his plate, chased down the last morsel of moussaka. Only a reddened stain remained. He had polished off his entire plate while Rose hadn’t noticed. “It makes me nervous, I suppose. We are very serious. I feel—well, I want to marry her. I’m going to. You’ll like her too, you’ll see. She’s unlike anyone else. And I want to start my life. I’m ready.”
Marriage? Now? Already? Gerhard deserved happiness, of course, but all Rose could think was: Your life? You want to start your life? How do you feel like you have a life? Mutti and Papi—
But no. There was no finishing the thought.
The beads on the red lampshades shook and shimmered, throwing off dapple and shadow. “I am happy for you,” Rose whispered.
7
Los Angeles, 2006
All alone, in a country that wasn’t hers. Lizzie was thinking about Rose as she and Max finished dinner on his small brick patio that overlooked the canal. The darkening sky still bore traces of violet, the air turning rapidly from cool to cold. Lizzie always forgot this about L.A., how swiftly temperatures could drop, how quickly conditions could change.
“Do you know the name of the investigator that my dad hired after the paintings were stolen?” Lizzie asked Max as they cleared the table. He carried the plates and platters, she had the glasses.
“No,” Max said, and he held the door open for her. “I didn’t know he hired one. Why?”
“Rose Downes asked me.”
“Ah.” Max took the wineglasses from her, heading toward the sink.
“I was going to do those,” Lizzie said.
“I’ve got it.” Max said this easily enough, but he made it clear: he would wash them. It was only in the last day or two that she had come to realize that his solicitousness masked a more exacting part of his personality. She watched him wash the delicate glass under the faucet’s stream. He did this deftly. She would have taken more time. She knew she could be clumsy. But also: the glasses weren’t hers.
“Did you check your father’s papers?” he asked.
“No,” Lizzie said. “I need to.” The thought made her tired. She and Sarah had taken a storage unit after all, moved Joseph’s papers there along with some things that Lizzie wanted to ship back to New York eventually—from the intricately carved Chinese set of drawers that she’d always loved and her childhood books (All-of-a-Kind Family and Summer of My German Soldier and the Trixie Belden mysteries) to her father’s medical textbooks and the framed 1930s photograph of the boxer Barney Ross that had hung in the hall outside her father’s room for as long as she could remember.
“We should have Rose over for dinner.”
“What?” Lizzie said, taken aback. She had heard him. But they hadn’t gone out with anyone yet, not Sarah, not Claudia.
“We should have Rose over for dinner,” he repeated with a self-effacing smile. “You’re spending a lot of time with her; I thought it would be nice.”
“It would be,” she said, surprised, pleased. She and Ben used to have the dumbest arguments about their friends: he thought Claudia self-involved and dramatic; she found his best friend to be loud and shockingly confident, given the banal things he had to say.
“As far as I’m concerned, the more friends you have out here in L.A., the better,” Max said.
Lizzie bit her top lip, less from nerves and more to keep herself from smiling too broadly.
Lizzie could get used to this life. She arrived at the Dish before Claudia, took a spot on a stool at the U-shaped counter. A compact man with smoothed-back graying hair and a trim mustache manned the grill. He nodded at her. “Hickory, no cheese, cream soda,” he said gruffly.
“Yes, please. But wait on the burger. My friend should be here any minute.” Lizzie loved this place, with its old-fashioned counter and wood-paneled walls. She’d been coming here since she was a kid, continued to stop in whenever she was in town. She loved the charred smells and scraps of conversation and the sputtering sound of fat on the grill. The screen door banged open and shut, customers coming and going.
The grill man nodded again, slid a soda can and a full cup of ice toward her. “Haven’t seen you in a while.”
“Busy,” she only said. He had worked the grill since she was in high school. She was fairly certain he thought she still lived in L.A. She had no desire to correct him.
“You.” She heard Claudia’s voice behind her.
“Hello, you,” Lizzie said, twisting around, kissing her friend. Claudia was wearing a short leather jacket that Lizzie had never seen before and a shirt patterned with tiny roses, looking stylish as usual.
“Hickory, cheese, fries,” the grill man said to her in greeting.
“Actually, grilled cheese and fries,” Claudia said. “And a slice of banana cream. Thanks.”
“Grilled cheese and pie?” Lizzie asked, looking at Claudia. Was it the shirt or were her breasts fuller too? “Is there something you have to tell me?”
Claudia shook her head, her face tightening. “Nope. Got my period yesterday.”
“Oh, Claude.” Lizzie gave her friend’s hand a squeeze. “I’m sorry.”
“Yeah, well,” Claudia said. “I’m having terrible cramps, and I think the Clomid is making them worse. Pie is the only remedy.”
“It will happen, I’m sure it will.” Claudia and her husband had been trying for several months now.
“I’m not so sure anymore,” Claudia said. “But I’m still trying.”
Soon the grill man slid a burger and a grilled cheese nestled in wax paper toward them, a mound of fries on a separate paper plate. “Okay?” he said. They nodded back. The ceiling fans clicked and whirled overhead.
“What’s going on with you?” Claudia asked.
“Me? I have turned into a lady who lunches.”
“A lady who lunches on burgers and fries,” Claudia clarified, biting into her grilled cheese.
“I only meant it’s strange, not working. I feel like I’m skipping out on something.”
“It’s good for you to relax.”
“I’m not relaxing.”
“My point exactly,” Claudia said, her mouth full. “How’s Max?”
“Oh,” Lizzie said, dragging a french fry through a puddle of ketchup. She felt a smile unbidden, forming on her lips. “He’s good.” She still couldn’t quite believe it. “He’s really good.”
“Well,” Claudia said. “That is good.” The grill guy delivered her pie. She pulled it closer to her, forked off a dollop of cream. “Want some?”