33. Berlin
BERLIN
Lucy was filled with relief when her plane touched down safely in Berlin.
Rather than spend another night in Copenhagen, she’d caught the last easyJet flight out, feeling she’d done everything she’d gone to do in Copenhagen and then some.
After four days in Denmark, where she’d regained some peace of mind, she was back and couldn’t wait to hug her children and tell them they were going to go break Mason out of the biosphere.
When she turned her phone on, she was alarmed to see a staggering number of notifications filling her screen.
She clicked first on a message from Drew’s mom:
Lucy! Wow, saw the Good Morning America story on Mason! Where are you anyway??? I really miss you. And Drew REALLY misses Jack.
Good Morning America ? Lucy clicked on a link that took her to a video of Mason exercising, his hands outstretched as he windmilled to touch opposite toes.
His shoulders were broad and his smile as earnest and appealing as ever, and yet it was crazy to see just how popular he was becoming.
She searched the biosphere for news and was shocked to find out that Ya?mur had packed up her yaybahar and left.
Mason was all alone now with the French microbiologist Veronique.
Something about the idea of her husband locked up with just one other woman, a young, smart, French scientist, unsettled Lucy; it was too private, too intimate.
As the plane taxied, she also saw she’d gotten a batshit number of missed calls, voicemails, and text messages from her mother. Twenty-seven of them in all.
Call me
Call me!
Call me, Lucy!!!!!!!!!!
Lucy, I am not kidding around right now. You call me this minute.
Lucy was scared something had happened to her house or to her dogs—or to her father! She called her back right away.
Her mother picked up, sounding breathless. “Where are you?”
“On a plane,” Lucy said. “I just landed. What’s the matter?”
“The kids are gone. They’re not here.”
Lucy thought her mother must be having some kind of episode of delirium. She clamped her hand over her free ear as the flight attendant babbled in German about the arrival gate and the baggage carousel. “Mom, we’re in Berlin, remember—”
“I know that,” she snapped. “ I’m in Berlin.”
Lucy stared at the seat back in front of her, dumbfounded. “Why are you— How—”
“Turkish Airline to Istanbul,” Irene said, sounding put out but proud.
“But … why? ” Lucy said, her voice lifting. She turned and smiled apologetically to the woman sitting beside her.
“Caught the connection with one minute to spare,” she said, “and we got to Greta and Otto’s apartment two hours ago,” said Irene.
“ We? ” said Lucy.
“Hi, Lucy,” her dad said.
“ Dad? You guys flew here just because I left town for a couple of days?”
“You bet your sweet bippy,” Rex said. “And it’s a good thing we came too, because something terrible has happened.”
“Mom,” Lucy said, trying to sound as calm and measured as she could, “Dad, I’m really glad you’re here, I am, but this was a completely unnecessary—”
“They’re not here,” Irene said again. “I had a bad feeling, like I just knew something was wrong, so we got a key from Otto and caught the first flight out we could get. So here we are and”—her voice caught in her throat—“no kids.”
“Jack texted me just this morning,” Lucy said calmly, although she too was finding this quite alarming. “He sent a heart emoji.”
“Then where are they?” Rex said.
“Probably at dinner or a movie or something.”
“At nine thirty at night?”
Lucy checked the time on her phone. “Sure. Maybe?”
“Then why,” Irene said tightly, “are all the toothbrushes missing?”
Lucy got a cab and gave the driver her address. “ So schnell wie moglich, bitte! ” she said. “ Es ist ein Notfall. ” Where these words came from, she did not know. It was the linguistic equivalent of a mother who suddenly displayed extraordinary strength and lifted a car to save her baby.
As they sped down the dark highway, Lucy called Jack again and again, but every call went straight to voicemail.
When they’d talked briefly the morning before, he’d seemed hurried but fine.
Since then he’d texted twice: All good last night and a heart emoji this morning.
She hadn’t told him she was coming home early.
The cab pulled up in front of the apartment, and Lucy handed the driver a hundred-euro bill.
She did not wait for her change. She got out of the car and bolted up the five flights of stairs.
At the sight of her parents, Lucy was overcome with emotion.
But before even hugging them, she ran through the apartment, looking for clues.
Just as her mother had said, the toothbrushes were missing from the little cup on the bathroom vanity.
Fred was also gone, but she couldn’t decide whether that was good news or bad.
“Should we call the police?” Irene said, worrying her hands together.
“Wait a minute,” Lucy said. “I don’t know.” She tried calling Jack again, while she chewed on her thumbnail. Again the call went to voicemail. “There has to be an explanation,” Lucy said. “Maybe they’re… Oh!” she said. “Maybe they’re down at Adam’s feeding his fish.”
“ At whose? ” her dad said. “Doing what?”
Lucy didn’t take the time to explain. She went to the entry, walking past her parents’ suitcases, and grabbed Adam’s key from the table.
Since the key was there, she thought, the kids probably weren’t, but she went down the stairs anyway, her parents following behind, and opened the door to Adam’s apartment.
It was quiet. Lucy circled the living room, looking for evidence that they’d been there.
There was dirt on the floor by one of the plants, which was slightly reassuring.
And Fish was alive. She studied the surface of the water in his bowl and then dropped a few flakes in.
“Lucy,” her mother said, “focus!”
“I am,” she said. “I’m thinking.”
They climbed back upstairs, and her parents followed her into the little office, where Jack’s blankets were folded neatly at one end of the couch.
His laptop was on the desk, plugged in. Everything looked so normal; surely Jack, Zoe, and Alice would walk in any minute, and how surprised they would be to see their grandparents!
Her phone rang, and Lucy pulled it out of her pocket, hoping it was Jack. But it was Greta’s name on the screen.
“Sorry,” Lucy said, forgoing any kind of greeting and speaking in a rushed, high-pitched voice. “I can’t talk. My kids…”
“What’s wrong?” Greta said.
“I’m back in Berlin, and they’re not here. My kids are gone.” Saying it out loud made Lucy feel all the more panicked.
There was a pause and then Greta tried to calm her. “There are a lot of things open late in Berlin—”
“Jack’s phone is going to voicemail and I’m trying not to—” She swallowed hard and put Greta on speaker.
“Hi, Greta,” her mom said.
“ Irene? ” said Greta. “You’re in Germany?”
“I’m here too,” Rex said.
“Yeah, so tell us,” her mom said, “if we have to call the police—”
“Dial one-one-two,” Greta said.
Lucy thought she might throw up. She walked out of the office, leaving her parents to talk to Greta, and went from room to room in search of any kind of answer.
In the living room, she noticed that the balcony door was unlocked; that didn’t ease her mounting anxiety.
She stepped outside to look around, her hands on the railing, and scanned the street in hopes that her kids would come walking down the sidewalk.
She felt their absence then like a gut punch.
She went back inside and locked the balcony door, looking around the living room; it was as unlived-in as a museum.
She went down the hall, first into the girls’ room and then into Greta’s.
Jack had taken advantage of her absence to sleep in an actual bed.
The covers were messed up and a pillow was on the floor.
But then a flash of gold caught Lucy’s eye.
Under the glow of a lamp on the night table was a bracelet Lucy had never seen before.
She picked it up, her fingers touching the array of little charms: a key, a ladybug, a seashell, a tiny suitcase.
A woman had slept in her bed. Had Jack invited a girl back to the apartment?
Monika? Or the other one… Nathalie? This felt so out of the ordinary, so out of character for Jack, that Lucy was utterly stumped.
As far as she knew, Jack had never even kissed a girl.
Rex was pacing while Irene talked to Greta. “Yes,” she said, “we’ll— Wait, hold up.” And she stopped talking, staring at the bracelet in Lucy’s outstretched fingers. “Greta,” she said, “when was the last time you heard from Emmi?”
“Yesterday,” Greta said, “here in New York. Why?”
“How many of those charm bracelets does she have?”
“How many?” Greta said, sounding confused. “Only one. My mother gave it to her.”
“It’s from Tiffany’s, isn’t it?” Irene asked.
“Yes. Why?”
Lucy checked the clasp of the bracelet. Tiffany .
“What would you say,” Irene said slowly, “if I told you I’m looking at it.”
“At Emmi’s bracelet?” Greta said. “That’s impossible. She was just wearing it….” She paused. “Send me a picture.”
Lucy put the bracelet on the dining room table and texted a picture to Greta.
She heard Greta gasp. “I’m calling her,” Greta said, and hung up.
“I don’t understand,” Lucy said, picking the bracelet up again. “Emmi’s here? Why wouldn’t she tell Greta?”
“Why do teenagers do anything?” Irene said, sounding somewhat calmer. “I blame their unformed frontal lobes.”
“Even if she was here,” Lucy said, “what’s that got to do with my kids?”
“I can’t explain it,” her mom said, “but I feel better knowing they’re together.”
“Me too,” said Rex.
“Really? Why?”
Lucy’s phone rang again.
“Emmi’s not answering,” Greta said, her voice tense and low. “Do me a favor, Lucy. Go to the laundry room.”
Lucy took her phone with her and did as she was told.
“What am I looking for?” Lucy said.
“Look out the window.”
Lucy did, scanning the trees in the courtyard behind the building.
“The car,” said Greta. “The Volkswagen Beetle. Is it there?”
Lucy pressed her forehead to the glass and looked straight down. The parking spot was empty.
“It’s gone,” Lucy said.
“ Oh, mein Gott ,” Greta said. “I know where they are.”
Greta caught the next flight from New York to London and would arrive in Berlin early in the morning.
Lucy settled in with her parents for what would surely be the longest night of her life.
Jack was a terrible driver, and Lucy hated to think of him on a dark highway—in a tiny VW bug—with his precious sisters in the back seat.
“You should get some sleep,” Lucy told her parents.
“As if we could,” Rex said.
They were sitting in the living room, and every sound she heard—and Greta’s apartment creaked and clanged—made Lucy jump. Irene had put on pajamas, but Lucy didn’t want to change in case she had to leave in a hurry for who-knows-what reason.
“I find it impossible to believe,” Lucy said, “that some random girl he’s never met before could have talked Jack into taking a car without permission to go to some beach.”
“I believe it,” said Irene. “You haven’t met Emmi. If she asked nice, I think Jack would do pretty much anything.”
“You really think they’re okay?”
“I think Jack is driving twenty miles an hour back from wherever that beach house is, and they’re trying to get back here before they expect you to land.”
Lucy threw her head back. “I never thought Jack would be so deceitful. I’m his mother!”
“Ha,” said Irene. “Talk about the pot calling the kettle black. Who just lied to her mother about her whereabouts?”
“That was different,” said Lucy. Although she knew it really wasn’t. It seemed children never really ended the push and pull with their parents, even as adults. “If my kids come home safe,” Lucy said, “I’ll never care about another thing for as long as I live.”
Her phone rang, and she reached for it; an unknown number from Copenhagen appeared on the screen. She answered it.
“Lucy?” a man said. “It’s Bj?rn. I’m sorry to call so late.”
Lucy heard voices in the background, the hum of conversation and high-pitched giggling.
“Your children are here,” he said, “at my house. They’ve just arrived.”
Lucy jumped to her feet, one hand gripping her head. “Oh my God, what— Are they okay?”
“Yes, they’re all fine. Jack and the girls. And their friend Emmi is with them too. They drove from Heiligenhafen, and it took them over six hours to get here, although I can’t really imagine how that’s even possible. It’s only about two hundred kilometers.”
Irene was right next to her. “Where are they?” she said. “What happened?”
Lucy held up a finger. “Did you know they were coming? I had no idea—”
“No, it was quite a surprise,” Bj?rn said happily. “But a wonderful one. Are you still in Copenhagen?”
“No, I took a late flight back to Berlin,” she said. “And when they weren’t here… I’ve been thinking the absolute worst. I’m so grateful you called.”
“Jack’s going to call as soon as his phone is charged.”
“And— Wait, why are they there? And how did Jack find you?”
“He’s resourceful,” said Bj?rn, his voice barely above a whisper. “I hope it’s okay if they spend the night with us. Astrid and our girls are making up trundle beds for them.”
“Tell Astrid…” Lucy didn’t want any bad feelings between any of them. “Tell her I said, from one mom to another, thank you,” said Lucy.
“Our four girls are getting along nicely. I’ll send a picture.”
“I’m so glad they’re safe,” Lucy said.
“We’ll talk in the morning after we’ve all gotten some sleep. Astrid and I could accompany them back to Berlin tomorrow. Emmi says she needs to catch a flight to New York.”
“Yes,” Lucy said. “Or I could come get them.”
“What if we were to meet halfway?” he said. “Astrid and I will bring our girls as well.”
“Yes, Bj?rn,” said Lucy. “I’d love that.”
After they hung up, Lucy sent a text to Greta, who was no doubt wide awake on the flight and worrying. Rather than explain the second leg of the kids’ trip, she simply wrote: Kids are safe. All okay!
Irene and Rex went to bed in the girls’ room, and Lucy went to Greta’s, hoping her adrenaline would taper off so she could at least rest for a few hours. She wanted her kids under her roof. She wanted Mason in her bed.
At two in the morning, her phone pinged with a text from Jack:
I’m so sorry, Mom. This was important to me. A + Z are totally fine, don’t worry. See you tomorrow. Please don’t kill me.
She wanted to give him room to grow, even though that was the hardest thing in the world for a mother to do.
I love you always , she wrote. Come back to me.