The Huntress. Кейт Куинн

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СКАЧАТЬ before the mirror patting her face and neck with a powder puff, perfectly composed in her pink suit and broad-brimmed cream hat, not a bridal nerve in sight. “We’re almost ready.”

      “You’re a vision,” Jordan said. “Dad will be speechless.”

      “You look lovely too.” Anneliese turned, looking Jordan over in her blue dress, and for once she seemed to speak impulsively. “I look forward to making you things, Jordan. I make all our day clothes, Ruth’s and mine—I could run up a summer dress for you if you liked. Something not fussy, you aren’t a fussy girl. Three-quarter length, nothing floral printed …” Anneliese stopped herself with a laugh, looking suddenly rueful. “Du meine Güte, I swore I wouldn’t start offering to dress you, like you were a child! It’s the opposite, you see—it would be a pleasure to make a dress for someone who isn’t a child and wanting everything ruffled.”

      Jordan felt herself startled into genuine laughter. “It sounds like we’d better set up the sunroom for you as a sewing room, then. But first”—she reached into her blue clutch for something she’d meant to offer days ago but hadn’t quite been able to manage—“I thought you might like to wear this today.” She held out the gold bracelet her father had given her on her sixteenth birthday.

      “I would be honored,” Anneliese said quietly.

      The last knot in Jordan’s stomach melted away. “Now you have something borrowed—”

      “Something old—” Anneliese patted the string of gray pearls around her neck.

      “Something new—” Jordan fastened the bracelet around her soon-to-be stepmother’s wrist. “Your pink suit—”

      “And something blue,” Anneliese finished, lifting her bouquet of creamy roses with stems wrapped in pale blue satin ribbon.

      Jordan smiled. “The cab’s waiting.”

      Anneliese straightened her hat and glided downstairs. She glided into the chapel with the same silent grace, and Jordan saw tears in her father’s eyes. This makes it all worth it, she thought. Father Harris’s voice rolled across the chapel, and it was done.

      THERE WAS CAKE and champagne in the vestry afterward, corks popping as friends crowded around. Soon the newlyweds would take a cab to South Station and be off to their honeymoon; Jordan had already prepared little bags of rice to throw. Anneliese chatted with some neighbors, and Jordan’s father swung Ruth up to his shoulder. “You want to hold your mama’s bouquet?”

      “Don’t, she’ll drop it,” Anneliese began.

      “She’ll be careful, won’t you, little missy?” He plucked Anneliese’s bouquet from her hands and settled it into Ruth’s. Jordan got an adorable snap of Ruth in his arms, burying her face in roses, looking cautiously thrilled with her new life.

      More glasses being drained, more laughter. Jordan’s father set Ruth down, hearing himself called over by a colleague. Ruth looked around, chewing her lip, and Jordan captured her hand. “What do you need, Ruthie? Oh—” As Ruth made a certain clamped-knees gesture. “Let me take you to the powder room.” Ruth protested as Jordan took the bridal bouquet from her hands. “Mama said don’t let go of it—”

      “You can hardly take it into the toilet!” Ruth disappeared into the stall, and Jordan laid the roses down before the powder room mirror, snapping a close-up of the flowers. The pale blue satin ribbon was coming undone around the bouquet; Jordan started to rewrap it, but there was a hard little lump in among the stems. Some wedding charm for good luck? Jordan fished down into the roses and drew out the wedged object. The little piece of metal lay in her hand, glittering in the soft powder room light, and Jordan stood as if turned to ice.

      A war medal. Not an American medal, but Jordan still recognized it. All through the war, Hollywood actors wore them if they were cast as the Nazi villain. An Iron Cross, black swastika gleaming.

      She dropped it as though it were red hot. It lay among the bridal roses and loops of pale blue ribbon like a drop of poison. Something old, something new, Jordan thought, waves of bewildered horror crawling down her spine, something Nazi, something blue.

      The toilet flushed; Ruth would be coming out. Anneliese could walk in at any moment. Hardly aware of what she was doing, Jordan raised the Leica. Click—the swastika lurking among the wedding flowers. What kind of woman walked down the aisle carrying a swastika? Why would she risk that? Swiftly, Jordan bundled the roses back together, burying the Iron Cross exactly where it had been before, then she rewrapped the ribbon. Her hands trembled.

      Ruth came out, trotting to the sink to wash her hands. Who is your mother? Jordan thought, staring at the little girl. She put the roses back in Ruth’s hands, looked at herself in the mirror, and saw the spots of color flushing in her cheeks. Smile, she told herself, smile—and went back outside.

      “There you are!” Anneliese exclaimed, swiftly reclaiming her bouquet. “Ruth takes my flowers and just disappears. Mäuschen, I told you—”

      Jordan gripped her father’s sleeve, drawing him aside. “Dad—”

      “Cab’s here,” he said, reaching for Anneliese’s traveling case. “You have the telephone number of our hotel in Concord if there’s any trouble. Though I don’t see how much trouble my girls could get into in just two nights!”

      I think we may be in a lot of trouble. “Dad,” Jordan said, gripping his sleeve harder.

      The crowd was already carrying them outside. He pulled Jordan along. “What is it?”

      Jordan’s tongue dried up. What on earth was she going to do, rip Anneliese’s bouquet to bits on the church steps? What would that prove?

      Anneliese’s laughing voice exclaimed behind her: “Jordan, catch!”

      Jordan turned at the top of the church steps, and the bridal bouquet came flying into her hands.

      “For my maid of honor,” Anneliese twinkled as guests clapped. “The train, Dan, we’ll be late—” There was a whirl of luggage and flying skirts as he loaded the cab and Anneliese slid her pocketbook over her arm, and Jordan stood feeling frozen all over again. Because she could feel quite clearly that there was no hard little lump among the stems now. Anneliese must have slid the Iron Cross out before throwing the bouquet.

      It must be something very precious, Jordan thought, if she’d risk carrying it today, and only take it out at the last minute.

      Or it was never there at all, another thought whispered, and for one horrible moment Jordan thought she was going crazy. Jordan and her wild stories. She’d concocted the wildest theory imaginable out of thin air and jealousy, and this time her mind was furnishing evidence.

      But the strap of the Leica reassured her. The Iron Cross had been there; she’d snapped a shot of it. She’d go down to the darkroom the minute she got home and look at the film. Already she was shivering, imagining the black arms of the swastika emerging skull-like through the developing fluid. Proof.

      Of what? Jordan thought, staring at Anneliese as her father opened the cab door. By itself, it’s not proof of anything.

      Except that this woman was hiding something.

      Ruth СКАЧАТЬ