Anna is content with her well-ordered life in San Francisco. But her world is turned upside down when her beloved grandfather, Max, reveals a startling secret: Anna is part of an aristocratic family who lost everything during World War II. What's more, Max was forced to leave behind a precious item over seventy years ago in their estate in old Prussia. It's now his ardent wish that Anna retrieve it.
Anna burns with questions as she heads for Germany: What memento could be so important to her grandfather? And why did he keep their history hidden? As she searches for answers, she finds herself drawn to Wil, a man who may hold the key to unlock the mystery. Together they discover that her family's secrets are linked with an abandoned apartment in Paris, and these secrets go deeper than she ever imagined.
Alternating between 1930s Europe and the present, The House by the Lake illuminates the destiny of a family caught in the tumult of history.
Release date:
October 20, 2020
Publisher:
Bookouture
Print pages:
350
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The decision was made in the Italian Café on Chestnut Street. Afterward, Anna wondered if she had any say in it at all. Everything beyond the table in the window had become one inextricable whirl. There was only one thing Anna was sure of: change was coming, and fast.
Her mind bounded with questions, but one stood out among the others. Why today? Why this morning?
Anna had woken at the usual time, thrown on her standard black work outfit and one of her mother’s favorite scarves, hand-watered her garden, removed dead leaves from her roses, even paid a few bills before heading out the door. There was nothing unusual in that.
Now shoppers with wicker baskets over their arms strolled up and down the sidewalk outside the window. Saturday morning traffic sat at a standstill in the busy street. Anna could only stare and stare at her ninety-four-year-old grandfather, Max. It was impossible to know what to say.
If anyone had asked Anna whether she thought her grandfather was capable of the revelation he had just made, she would have told them that they were mad. He had been the greatest source of consistency and love in all her twenty-nine years. She was devoted to him—and always had been.
She had tried countless times to get him to talk about the past. And countless times he had refused. It was a no-go zone. Now Anna knew not to touch it. Anna knew not to ask. She had no idea what had happened to make him never, ever want to talk about it.
One day she had found him in his apartment, snipping up photographs that he said were from his childhood. He was going to burn them all up. Anna had not known that he owned any photos at all until then.
And then Max had looked up and asked about Anna’s day. As usual. Diversion. Away from him. And definitely away from his childhood, his youth, in the former East Germany. All she knew was that his family had been forced to escape at the time of the Soviet invasion, that Max had never returned, and that he never, ever wanted to talk about it. His past had always loomed in Anna’s imagination, and yet it repelled her too—she found it too confusing so left it, out of respect and love for Max.
This morning, Anna had left the glass counter that ran the length of one wall of the café as soon as she saw Max walking up the street. She had made her way past all her customers, who were lined up for her thirty-four varieties of sandwiches, her Parma hams, and her Italian cheese selections—Rocca Reggiano, Parmigiano, Locatelli Pecorinos, and Dry Jacks—all of which had garnered her something of a reputation in Pacific Heights, indeed, throughout the whole of San Francisco. She continued past the second line that had formed for her artisan breads and delectable cakes.
Anna had amassed a loyal following that came back again and again for the magical blend of coffee that she had perfected. Her Italian Café was scented with it, along with spices, garlic, and hints of red wine. Anna’s customers often told her that if they closed their eyes, they could imagine they were in Rome.
Anna had placed one of her small black reserved signs on her grandfather’s Saturday morning table an hour before he was due to arrive. If she did not reserve his seat, someone would settle down to read the Saturday newspapers and not budge for hours.
When Anna held the door wide to allow him to enter, every other table was full. The counter staff were in nonstop motion and the café was abuzz with refreshing Saturday morning chatter. Anna led Max through the melee, one hand guiding his thin arm. Then she settled him into place and made sure his chair was in exactly the right position before going to prepare his coffee.
Cass, Anna’s business partner, appeared at her side. “Mind if I join you today? I am so in need of some Max time.”
“Well,” Anna grinned, pulling off her black apron, “perhaps you need a 1930s man. Now that’s an idea. You could always go back in time.”
“If only,” Cass said. Several curls had escaped from her attempt to confine them in a bun. Today her hair was red. The following week it could be purple. Whatever week it was, Cass hoped to meet a man.
Anna was grateful for every week that she did not.
She took Max’s soft almond-meal biscuit out of a glass jar and placed it on a plate. She sensed Cass watching her. A drop-dead gorgeous man had just walked into the café. He looked as if he worked out at the gym full time, and his white T-shirt showed off the loveliest of biceps.
“Forget it,” Anna muttered, swiping a look at her friend.
“It is becoming a bit ridiculous, Anna,” Cass said in a whisper. “Six years? It’s a very long time.”
“Watch me.” Anna smiled at the woman standing at the front of the line.
Ten minutes later, Anna kissed her grandfather on the cheek, sat down with him and Cass, leaned back in her chair, and stretched her tired legs out in front of her. She inspected the black pumps that she wore every day. They were polished; they looked fine. She tugged at the pencil skirt that she wore under her black apron; it had risen a little under her black top. Her long dark hair was pulled back into a ponytail, highlighting her almond-shaped brown eyes.
“I brought this.” Max pushed a newspaper article across the table toward her.
Cass leaned in toward Anna, reading over her shoulder. “A Belle Époque apartment in Paris that was abandoned for seventy years? How intriguing. Imagine the ghosts!”
Anna frowned at the photographs before her. A faded Mickey Mouse was propped up against a stuffed ostrich with a patterned shawl draped over its poor stiff back. There was a photograph of a faded sitting room, wallpaper peeling off in long strips. Yet another showed an antique dressing table complete with cut glass bottles containing the remnants of some ancient perfume.
But Anna couldn’t take her eyes off the very last photo. It was a painting of a woman. Her dark hair was tousled and her face turned to the side. Though elegant and beautiful, she also had a touch of the erotic about her. Her dress had been painted with such feather-like brushstrokes that she seemed ethereal and not of this world.
“The apartment was…” Max began, then paused. “Full of beauty once.” There was an old Hollywood quality to his voice that blended with his slight European accent. It lent gravitas to almost everything he said.
Max meant, of course, that the apartment must have been beautiful once. Anna smiled at him, adopting the sort of expression that she often took these days with her grandfather. Inside, she felt a twinge of sadness at his advancing age.
“You see, this is why I want to go to Paris,” Cass said. “This sort of thing never happens here. If I could get Anna there, maybe I could find her a man. It’s exactly what she needs. Don’t you think so, Max?”
“A vacation could be wonderful,” Max said. “If Anna would ever allow herself to let go of the past.”
Anna almost choked on her coffee. “Excuse me—I am in the room!” But she was laughing.
Max appeared to be thinking.
The only thing to do was wait.
“Anna, darling. I haven’t asked you to do anything for me in a while.”
“If, by that, you mean never…”
“Don’t speak too soon,” he said, his voice softer now. It was easy to picture him as he had once been—glamorous, young, his fair hair swept back, showing off his sparkling blue eyes. Anna’s grandmother had kept her wedding photograph on the chest of drawers in her home. Anna had often picked it up as a child, turning it over in her hands.
Cass scrutinized him. “What is it, Max?”
“Anna, you have never been to Berlin,” he said.
“No.” A knot formed in her stomach.
Max leaned down and pulled a piece of paper out of the leather bag on the floor by his feet. Even Cass stayed silent as he opened what was clearly an old map and laid it across the table, spreading it carefully with his gnarled fingers. Anna stacked the empty coffee cups and plates to one side; she hardly noticed when a staff member appeared and took them all away.
A neat interior plan of a building covered the yellowing paper. Anna ran her eyes over the rows of rooms, all lined up in sepia ink. A faded painting of what was clearly the building featured on the map was sketched into the background. Elegant turrets and pretty French windows hinted at beauty beneath the more prosaic diagram.
Anna stared at Max.
“Schloss Siegel,” Max said, his eyes meeting hers.
“Oh, my.” Cass leaned in toward the old paper, smoothing the parchment with her fingertips. “Did you pick this up in an antique shop, Max?”
“Not exactly.”
Anna stayed silent.
Max inclined his head and pushed the paper toward her, inviting her to have a proper look. Anna studied the drawing: there was an enormous entrance hall on the ground floor. A set of double doors gave way to a room labeled “music salon,” which, in turn, led out to a terrace overlooking a park with its own lake.
The rooms leading out from the entrance hall were all labeled in the same handwriting: smoking room, billiard room, library, ladies’ room, guest bedrooms, small and large dining rooms, estate offices, footmen’s rooms, individual rooms for the valets, even one for the silverware. The second floor housed several large bedrooms above the salon and corridors that led to smaller rooms labeled “maids.”
“I left something there, you see,” Max said.
Anna looked up. Her eyes caught Max’s.
“Something valuable,” he went on.
“Sorry?” Anna whispered.
“You heard me, darling. It was… another life.”
Max had always been open about his life in the States—how he had wound up in San Francisco in the 1950s, earned a degree in economics, worked hard to build up an investment company of his own. He had married Anna’s American grandmother, Jean, and they had had what looked like a tolerable marriage. Max had not spoken of her since she died. But it was what Anna had seen growing up—and it was the last thing she wanted for herself.
“Anna.” Max sounded like his gentle self, but there was something firm in his voice.
Anna wanted to stand up. She pushed her chair back to do so, then pulled it forward again. Everything in her life was going so smoothly these days. The unsettled feeling that had coiled into her system became more pronounced.
“It’s your family too, Anna.”
Anna inhaled deeply.
“Two hours northeast of Berlin. The old Brandenburg—Prussia. Forests, lakes.” He paused. “So beautiful—my old home.”
Anna’s gaze returned to the map, her eyes roaming faster now: twenty-six rooms on the first floor, twenty-four on the second; stairs leading down to another floor, with an arrow marked kitchens and scullery—no basement, but several attic spaces. So. Four floors. Anna’s brain always retreated into numbers when she was overwhelmed. Logic never let her down—and most importantly, it was always, always there.
“I want you to go back there for me, Anna. I want you to find what I left behind.”
He wanted her to go there? To this house by the lake, this—Schloss, he had called it?
“Oh, my.” Cass sat back in her chair and let out one of her customary whistles. “I told you I needed a dose of Max. Didn’t you hear me say that? You romantic, you.” She leaned in toward him. “What do you want her to do? Tell us! This is exactly what Anna needs, you know. You are clever.”
Anna shook her head. “Sorry. I’m not following you. You want me to go to Germany? To retrieve something you left—when?”
“June 1940. I was in a bit of a rush.”
Anna sat back in her seat.
“The best things in life are mad, you know, darling. Instinctive,” he said. “You don’t understand that yet… but, in time, you will. That’s where the magic lies. And that, my darling, is what you are lacking in your life.”
“What?” Anna didn’t know what to say. Max never spoke like this. She had never heard such urgency in his voice.
“That is so true!” Cass rapped her fist on the table. “Bravo, Max! That’s exactly right.”
“Hang on,” said Anna. “You’re telling me that you grew up in a palace in the former East Germany, and that you want me to go there, on my own, to search for something that you left there seventy years ago? Did I hear you right?”
Max held her gaze.
It was all the confirmation she needed.
“But decades of people will have passed through the Schloss—the Soviets probably used it for military operations, or a hospital. A family must be living there now. Grandfather, surely you know that there is no chance that whatever it is you left there will still be there. I’d hate to see you disappointed. Not now. And I’m just reeling from this.” She stared at the map once more.
There was a silence.
“There’s a strong chance it will still be there,” he said, finally.
“Oh, come on, Anna!” Cass stood up. “You can’t just not go!”
“I can’t just run off to Berlin!” She turned to her grandfather. “And I don’t like leaving you alone. What gave you this mad idea anyway? The abandoned apartment in Paris? Because that is clearly a freakish situation. You can’t expect your… stuff… to be sitting there too, untouched after all these years—”
Max leaned his forearms on the table.
Anna sighed. “I have questions. So many questions, Grandfather. First, what is it that you want me to retrieve? Second, couldn’t we just write to the owners and ask them to send whatever it is you want back? Surely we could find a simpler way to do this. And third, we need to talk about this. Please—”
“You could go away for months and the business would be fine,” Cass said. “I can run everything for both of us. It runs like a Swiss train.”
“A conspiracy then.”
“No, it’s not.” Cass and Max spoke at once.
Anna’s fingers wanted to trace their way over every detail and run over every room on that map in front of her eyes. Her mind wanted to imagine the entire place—set it out. A palace? Who lived there now? What must her grandfather’s childhood have been like? It was what she had always wanted to know, but she needed to talk to him properly. She didn’t want these vague hints. Asking her to go and get something? What was that? Why now?
“We’ll have to talk about this later,” she said, but she said it with kindness. She simply had to return to work. Frustration at this blended with an urgent desire to know everything.
When Max answered, he sounded firm. “I know you’re interested in going, Anna. And if there’s one thing I’ve learned in this life, it’s that you should trust your instincts. Believe me, I’ve learned that the hard way. And you shouldn’t push things—opportunities—away. Not when every bone in your body tells you that you want to do them. Don’t let fear stop you from being happy.”
Anna stared at him again. What on earth was that about? This was not her Max! All she could do was shake her head.
Raised voices could be heard at the counter. A difficult customer was berating one of the staff. Anna stood up.
“Later,” she said to her grandfather. She leaned down and kissed him on the cheek.
Max was in his favorite armchair when Anna let herself into his flat that evening. She had forced herself to concentrate on work all afternoon, but her mind had been swirling the entire time.
Anna wanted the key to Max’s past. She had wanted to know about it for years. But how was she supposed to deal with the logistics of his request? Something hidden somewhere in his childhood home? What was he thinking?
She had tried to sneak a look on the Internet between busy periods at the café that afternoon. It had only taken her a few seconds to find some old pictures of the palace online, taken back when Max’s family owned it. She only just managed to tear herself away from the images of the beautiful old building when she had to return to work, but the black-and-white photographs had lingered in her mind long after she had shut down her computer.
The old photos were more than evocative. They were stunning, drawing her in and making her feel the mystery of her grandfather’s childhood more than ever before. Despite its opulent details—turrets and rows of dormer windows—it looked less like a palace than a home.
The only information that she could find online told her that Schloss Siegel had belonged to the Albrecht family until the Soviet occupation. There was nothing more. Not a scrap. Did anyone live there? Anna had done a search for hotels in the region. Nothing. Museums? It was not a museum either.
She kissed her grandfather on the top of his head and made her way through Max’s small living room, opening the paper bag that she had packed for his evening meal. She pulled out a container of lasagna, a salad, and a slice of the special caramel apple cake that she would warm for his dessert. She kept an eye on Max as she busied herself warming up his meal in his modern kitchen. He had the article about the apartment in Paris on the small glass coffee table in front of him, along with his map.
“Another busy day,” Anna said, sensing that this was not the moment to barrage him with questions. She placed the lasagna and the salad on one of Max’s new white plates and brought it over to him. Anna sat opposite him on the sofa that he had bought just a few years earlier, when he had moved into this small, chic apartment. He always kept his surroundings meticulously up to date. He always threw out anything that was the tiniest bit old—relentlessly culling furniture, clothes, books, even selling the odd painting now and then, because, as he always said, Anna would not want any of his old rubbish when he was gone. That was why the sight of him with his childhood photographs had more than unsettled her.
“Best way to be, darling.” Max began eating. “Busy.”
It wasn’t until he had finished his food and wiped his still elegant hands—aristocratic hands, Anna suddenly thought—with his napkin that he turned to face her.
“Are you happy, Anna?”
What sort of a question was this?
“No plans to change a thing,” she said.
“I would hate to see you—give up on love.”
“Oh, let’s stop going there. Honestly.” Anna started to tidy his plate, but he reached out his hand and tugged at her sleeve.
“Sit down again, my dear. I want to talk to you.”
He wanted to talk? The Max she knew would never have spoken like that.
“What is all this?” She kept her words gentle.
Max seemed to think for a while. “I have a regret.” His mouth was set. “It’s to do with that apartment in Paris.”
The apartment in Paris.
“You know, seeing these pictures, after all this time—” He pointed at the haunting photos. “Seeing these photographs has brought it all back. It seems as if it happened, oh, I don’t know, a month ago, perhaps. I can still see it. I don’t know. I think regret is the saddest thing we can have in this life… it’s what we miss out on, what we don’t do… that causes the worst sort of pain. Because you never will know what might have been. The chances we didn’t take. How different our lives may have turned out… if we had made different choices. We will never know if we don’t do them, if we don’t act.”
“Do you really have such strong regrets?”
He tugged at the map of Schloss Siegel, his hands shaking now.
Anna helped him to spread out the faded paper.
“Here”—his hand, blue with a tracery of veins, tracked its way across the top floor of the Schloss—“was my bedroom.”
His fingers lingered at the room to the right of the two large rooms directly above the music salon. Though slightly smaller than the two central rooms, it was still substantial compared to those bedrooms that housed the servants. The room next to Max’s was marked “nurse” in neat italics, the one after that, “governess.”
“I need you to search under the floorboards in my old room,. . .
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