Home Sweet Stranger

By Adria Townsend

Forced to flee East Germany as a young girl, Ellie Meyer returns after the fall of the Berlin Wall to reclaim her home, only to discover her childhood friend Luther Beck has made a claim of his own. They enter into an uneasy agreement to share the house. Even as Ellie’s suspicions grow about Luther’s role in her troubled past, so too does an underlying attraction.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Adria Townsend
• Release date: Nov 1, 2014
• ISBN: 9781310786624

Adria Townsend

Adria Townsend teaches German at a university in Pennsylvania. She has spent four years studying and working in Germany and Austria. She is a freelance writer for The Albany Times Union and Adirondack Life Magazine. Her articles have appeared in The San Francisco Chronicle, The Miami Herald, and The Charlotte Observer. She is a commentator for North Country Public Radio and has been interviewed by New Hampshire Public Radio about her book, To Conquer the Heart of a King, and the wild west of electronic publishing. Her creative nonfiction has appeared in Syracuse University’s journal Stone Canoe.Adria Townsend also writes under the name J. S. Laurenz and blogs at The Dime Store Cowgrrl.

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HOME SWEET STRANGER

Copyright Adria Townsend, 2014

Smashwords Edition

CONTENTS

Prologue

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Chapter Ten

Chapter Eleven

Chapter Twelve

Chapter Thirteen

Chapter Fourteen

Chapter Fifteen

Chapter Sixteen

Chapter Seventeen

Chapter Eighteen

Chapter Nineteen

Chapter Twenty

Chapter Twenty-One

Chapter Twenty-Two

Chapter Twenty-Three

Epilogue

Other Books by the Author

Excerpt

Dedication Page

About the Author

Copyright Information

Prologue

East Germany

1988

The train came in a rush, driving the autumn air in front of it and dragging the dawn behind. Ellie Meyer hesitated as the heavy doors clanked open, but her parents urged her on ahead of them.

Lindenberg was small and it disappeared quickly. For a long moment the castle on the hill seemed to follow their progress, but then they turned a bend and all that was left of the town was a dissipating column of smoke from the chimney of the porcelain factory.

Ellie sat facing her parents. She was usually fluent in the language of unspoken things, but this time she could not make out the look that passed between them.

Where are we going? she asked.

There had been no time for the question this morning. Her parents had roused her suddenly, and she had dressed quickly in the dark in the jeans and heavy wool sweater her mother had already picked out. Ellie pushed her dark bangs back from her face. They had been in such a hurry to leave their house at Bachstrasse 25, there had been no time to comb her hair, or eat breakfast. Yet they had taken the long way to the train station instead of passing Luther’s house next door. They carried no luggage.

Her parents exchanged another look she couldn’t read, before her mother responded without answering her question. Aren’t you glad to be missing school?

But Luther will be waiting for me, Ellie began. He won’t know—

Don’t worry about him! her father said harshly. Luther knows everything.

Michael, please! her mother said in an urgent whisper. If it weren’t for Luther—

Yes. Her father’s voice had turned quiet, but the anger was still loud. If it weren’t for Luther!

The same words; vastly different meanings, which Ellie again could not interpret.

We’re going to visit your Uncle Jens, her father said more gently.

Ellie didn’t have an Uncle Jens. Her father turned to stare out the window, and Ellie swallowed the questions she wanted to ask. They made her empty stomach feel even more hollow.

She couldn’t have said how long they were on the train because it kept its own time as it ticked along the tracks. The man she was supposed to call Uncle Jens, who was waiting for them at the station when they got off, did not return her greeting.

She’s tall for ten, he grunted instead, glancing at her once from head to toe.

He led them to a grey Trabant and they drove out into the countryside to a lonesome clearing. When they got out, Uncle Jens immediately opened the trunk but did not take anything out of it. He pulled a small bottle from his pocket and rattled the contents. Here are the sleeping pills.

No, her mother said. It’s too easy to overdose.

What makes you such an expert? Jens asked.

I’m a nurse, she said, and as if to prove it, she opened her purse and pulled out a vial and a needle. I have something more effective.

Jens shrugged. They all watched the needle suck the liquid from the bottle. For a long moment her mother stared down at it, and then she looked up at Ellie.

It all happened at once, her mother stepping towards her, her father’s arm coming around from behind, clamping Ellie’s arms to her sides. His other hand was on her forehead, forcing her face up and away so she couldn’t see anything but the colorful leaves on high branches.

It’s okay, he whispered. But the sharp hard pinch on her arm told her the truth. It’s okay. He repeated the lie over and over, and those leaves that had pretended to be green all summer seemed to whisper it back. Their colors became confused, the reds and yellows churning into a muddy orange that started to go black around the edges.

Her father lifted her into the open trunk. Her arms had turned against her, too; she couldn’t hold on to him. She could feel her mother’s hands arranging her, like a piece of baggage, to fit into a small space. The blurry outlines of three heads looked down on her for a moment before a flap or a blanket covered her and the lid of the trunk closed with a thud. The darkness closed around her like a tight fist.

She thought of Luther then and for just an instant she saw him waiting for her where Bachstrasse turned to cobblestones, his face serious and watchful, the warmth about to come into his brown eyes. Then the engine came back to life, drowning out his image, and her heartbeat. As she felt the car move beneath her, she understood that Luther would be waiting a very long time.

Thirteen months later on November 9, 1989, the Berlin Wall would fall, and within a year, East and West Germany would be put back together. But it would take Ellie Meyer twenty more years to make it back home.

Chapter One

Lindenberg, Germany, 2009

Luther Beck had come back to Lindenberg. At least that was the rumor. The mayor Michael Seibert had come to see for himself. He knocked at Bachstrasse 25. There was no answer except a pounding deep within the faded grey stucco house. No one came to the door.

The house did not belong to Luther, though it could have once. It had a complicated past; its future, it seemed, was not going to be simpler. Gerhard Beck had acquired the house in 1988 after the Meyer family had abandoned it. He died three years ago leaving it to Luther. But Luther hadn’t shown up for the funeral. In fact he hadn’t been seen here for 20 years, since Gerhard had packed him off to military school around the time the Meyers had fled.

And Luther hadn’t come back to claim the house that was willed to him, until now. The problem was it had reverted to the Town of Lindenberg in the meantime. The bigger problem was Michael Seibert, under his authority as mayor, was about to give it away.

Elinora Meyer had been petitioning the town for over a year to get her childhood home back. She was coming from New York in a month’s time to sign the deed. And now Michael didn’t know what to tell her. How would her rights as a victim of political persecution stand up against Luther’s rights as a disenfranchised heir? Michael wasn’t a lawyer. He wasn’t even really qualified to be mayor.

He’d been a foreman for most of his life until the porcelain factory went out of business. Because he had a knack for repairing things, the people of Lindenberg assumed he could fix the town, too. But Lindenberg had been falling apart since Germany was reunified and there wasn’t much Michael could do to stop it.

He knocked again, louder, noticing the cracks in the door’s pane. A few red tiles were missing from the roof. Michael could see where they had landed in the yard, alongside broken pieces of plaster board and wood which someone, presumably Luther, had thrown there. For a moment there was silence before the pounding within the house resumed. Michael could feel the vibrations like small earthquakes under his feet. He’d try again tomorrow. He owed that much to Luther.

As he turned, his eye caught a movement in the house next door to the right, a curtain fluttering, although the window was shut against the stiff spring breeze. For a moment he almost expected Elsbeth Haller to step away from the window where she’d been watching him to open her door and invite him in for a cup of coffee. The door remained closed. There was nothing to prevent him from knocking there himself, except the past that had grown up like brambles between him and his best friend’s widow. The Berlin Wall may have come down 20 years ago, but it hadn’t taken every barrier with it.

Michael waited a moment longer, then hunching his shoulders against the spring chill, made his way back to the town hall, to the deed for Bachstrasse 25 that was waiting for him on his desk. And he wondered how he could do the math to divide one house by two.

Maybe, he thought, division wasn’t the answer. Maybe there was a way to give both Elinora Meyer and Luther Beck what they wanted. He had the feeling neither of them would be happy about it. Not at all.

Chapter Two

Ellie Meyer arrived in Lindenberg an hour late for the most important meeting of her life, which wasn’t too bad, considering it had taken her twenty years to get there. She’d left East Germany at the age of ten. Now at 31, she couldn’t get her childhood back, but the house she grew up in would be hers again. She was almost home. All she needed to do was put her signature to the deed at Lindenberg’s town hall.

She was in a hurry to get there and almost ran down a stranger approaching from the opposite direction when they both turned towards the entrance to the town hall. She reached the heavy wooden door first and with one hand struggled to hold it open, while dragging her suitcase and carry-on over the threshold.

The stranger was polite enough to hold the door open, but did not respond to her ‘thank you,’ as he followed her inside and the overcast spring day was replaced by a gloomy blinking fluorescent light. She gave him only a quick glance. He was lean, broad in the shoulders and had the hollowed cheeks of an extreme athlete or a military type. Military, she guessed by his close-cropped sandy-colored hair, but his jeans and grey T-shirt were streaked with dust as if he’d just come from a construction site.

She turned her attention to the clerk. Herr Krause, according to his nameplate on the scratched counter, hadn’t looked up as she entered.

I’m sorry I’m late. My flight was canceled, the second one was delayed, she began quickly as she stacked her luggage against the warped paneled wall of his counter and dropped her backpack on top. I missed the only direct train here.

The clerk kept his eyes on the ancient-looking computer on the desk underneath his counter. With a stiff index finger, he tapped stubbornly on its keyboard. Ich versteh’ gar nix.

For a moment Ellie said nothing.

He doesn’t understand a thing, the stranger next to her said into the silence. He spoke English with barely a trace of an accent.

She glanced sideways up at him. Thanks, I got that.

She could understand German. Most of it anyway, if it was enunciated clearly and slowly. But she hadn’t spoken it since she was ten. People said it was like riding a bike, and it was—a bike with a loose chain and flat tires. And every time Ellie opened her mouth she felt she was going to go flying over the handle bars. The mayor, before he’d stopped taking her calls, had spoken excellent English. She searched now in the corners of her mind for the right words to string together.

In the lengthening silence, the stranger leaned towards the clerk and they had a very brief conversation, of which Ellie could understand the gist … and the tone. The stranger asked what it was the mayor wanted from him and why it was so urgent. The clerk said the mayor wanted him here an hour ago, but he guessed no one had any respect anymore in this day and age for being punctual. He looked up then pointedly, and for the first time, at Ellie.

By then she had found the words, and was just struggling with the grammar. Ich habe ein …einen Termin mit dem Buergermeister, she said slowly. Ich bin—

The clerk cut her off with the wave of his hand. Ist klar.

He knew exactly who she was and that she had a meeting with the mayor, and he seemed to have no intention of doing anything about it. Ellie tried to swallow her impatience. She wanted to get home, despite what she might find there. The mayor had assured her the house at Bachstrasse 25 was in livable condition, but had warned her not to expect much more than that. The street had not fared well in her absence. The three houses across the way were empty. The house adjacent at number 27 was the only one on that block still occupied. To the other side, the home at number 23 had long been abandoned and had fallen in on itself.

And what about the boy who had lived there? Ellie had been afraid to ask. She supposed it would be possible to track him down, even though she couldn’t remember his last name. She hadn’t forgotten him—she could never do that, but she had more and more trouble hanging onto the details. Memories needed to be kept alive through pictures, or mementos, or stories. Ellie had none of those things.

She wanted to know what happened to that boy, but at the same time, she couldn’t bear to find out for sure what he had done. Her parents had known. She was sure of it, but they’d refused to talk about the past. She’d inherited their suspicions. She didn’t want their certainty.

And what was the sense of rehashing all that? It wouldn’t change anything. She was here to move forward, not to look back. Ellie was done with waiting. She leaned against the counter and addressed the clerk. The mayor said there was a complication. Could you please at least tell me what that is. I’m very anxious to have this resolved, she said.

Complication?! the clerk repeated, stretching the word out as if he could torture the meaning out of it. Was heisst denn ‘complication?’

Erschwerung. The stranger who had come in with her provided the translation, without being asked.

The clerk gave her a wide and yet unfriendly smile. Again Ellie caught the gist of what he was saying.

You want to know what the complication is? He nodded towards the stranger beside her. He is.

A complication. Luther Beck’s mouth managed a half smile. He’d been called a lot of things, especially in the last year, but never a complication.

He watched the clerk reach over to his desk, pick up a folder and drop it on the counter. The woman who had come in with Luther, did not pick it up. She was asking the clerk, in English, what he meant, while the clerk, in German, was giving her instructions to take the papers and enter the mayor’s office to her right. The clerk didn’t address Luther, but he’d already involved him, like it or not.

Luther picked up the folder and flipped it open. It was a deed, for Bachstrasse 25, his father’s house. Luther had never lived there until now. He was a squatter really and he was not surprised to see Lindenberg listed on the document as the grantor.

But Luther was surprised to see his own name as grantee. He didn’t think he could be truly shocked anymore, not after all the things he’d seen, after the things he’d done, but he felt something very much like it when he read the second name in the grantee section. Elinora Meyer.

Elinora Meyer. He hadn’t recognized her. Probably because he had never expected to see her again. The Berlin Wall had fallen 20 years ago. She and her parents had disappeared barely a year before that. People who went away in East Germany either got swallowed into a veiled network of detention centers, or they vanished into the west. He’d never known for sure where Ellie had gone, until now, until he read her ‘New York, New York’ address printed next to her name on this deed.

The years had been kind to Ellie, and why shouldn’t they have been in the land of opportunity … and opportunists. He forced himself to look at her. The same indistinguishable colors swirled in her hazel eyes, now wide with disbelief.

Those are mine! she said.

She was dressed conservatively in jeans and a tapered, long-sleeved top that covered, but couldn’t hide a trim, athletic figure. Her hair had always been dark, now it was the color of a raven. The wind had tangled it in places. He saw her suddenly as a ten-year-old, pushing bangs, which never seemed to obey her, from her pretty face. She’d changed. She was beautiful now.

He looked down at the deed again. She’d taken so much of him when she’d gone. Now she was back and it looked like she was after the only thing of value he had left. She reached for the folder in his hands, and he closed the flap as if to hand it over and then, impulsively, he tore the whole folder in two and gave her one of the halves.

What are you doing?! she said.

You want half don’t you?

Half? What is going on here? Who do you think you are?

He laughed for the first time in a long time. Who do you think I am?

How am I supposed to know?

You don’t recognize me, he stated.

She looked at him closely, her eyes flitting from his close-cropped hair, down to his plaster-streaked boots and back up to his brown eyes. Should I?

It’s all there in black and white. He nodded at the torn papers in her hand and she glanced down at them, opening the ripped folder and letting it flutter to the ground.

Her hazel eyes scanned the half page in a jagged motion. Why is there another name here?

Because I live there.

She looked up. The house is empty. It’s been empty for three years.

Luther shrugged.

She turned back to the deed for answers. Her lips moved, and he could tell she was silently sounding out his name. Her brow came together in concentration.

You don’t remember me do you? He laughed louder this time. Worry, regret and guilt had each in turn carved her name into his heart; wounds that had never healed. And she didn’t even remember him.

She glanced up at him, unnerved, and then back to the paper and shook her head. I don’t know anyone by the name of Beck, she said slowly. And then she read his first name aloud. Luther.

She looked up now and her eyes went wide. Luther? She said his name again, but it was a whisper.

She had always been so easy to read. In a split second, he saw the recognition, then the beginnings of a smile that quickly died as her eyes narrowed in suspicion. And behind it all was confusion.

You, she faltered, and then began again. You don’t live here, she said shaking the deed. You live next door.

No one can live next door. It fell down years ago.

She stared at him, her eyes still wide. You … you used to be my friend, she said haltingly.

You used to be German. It seems a lot of things have changed.

Luther crushed the papers in his hands, dropped them to the floor and stepped around her.

Where are you going?

Nowhere, he said as he reached for the door to leave. He was going absolutely nowhere.

Ellie Meyer looked down at the torn deed in her hand. Her eyes stumbled over its alphabet trying to make sense of it, before they got hung up on one word. Luther. From the corner of her eye, she saw him reach the front door to the town hall in one step and put his hand on the lever. She did nothing to stop him. She just stood there with a torn and useless piece of paper in her hands.

On her other side another door was opening and a man stepped out. She assumed he was the mayor, but he strode past her without acknowledging her, reached the front door and closed it before Luther could completely open it.

There you are, Luther, he said in a voice that was too calm for the situation. It’s good to have you back.

Is it? Luther asked.

The mayor didn’t answer the question, but turned his brown eyes to Ellie instead.

Frau Meyer, he acknowledged her now.

He was a tall man, his broad shoulders bent a little as if he had spent a lifetime carrying something heavy. His grip was strong when he shook her hand. And then he put that hand at her elbow, and gently, yet uncompromisingly, guided her a step toward his office door. She couldn’t say he pushed her, but it was something very like it.

Then he stooped to pick up the papers on the floor before turning back to Luther. He clapped a hand on his shoulder that she imagined was as uncompromising as the one he’d offered her.

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