The Vines by Shelley Nolden (ebook and pdf reader .TXT) 📕

. .” Kristian twisted his arm to inspect the puncture, but obviously consumed by rage, he couldn’t direct his attention away from Finn. “You’ve betrayed us.”

“You’ve got to be fucking kidding me!” Finn screamed inches from Kristian’s visor. “You’re the one who said my life would be an acceptable loss.”

“I was bluffing!”

“Bullshit,” Finn snapped, even though he knew it could be true. While Finn had been in middle school, Kristian had been living at home to save money. More than once, Kristian had taken a black eye for him as they together tested various tactics to convince the group of bored teens in their neighborhood to leave Finn alone. At the moment, that didn’t matter. It might take as long as two minutes for the drug to knock him out. Finn turned to Cora, who was watching them, stunned. “Go.”

Her lips moved, but no sound emerged.

Kristian lunged for her; she sidestepped him and made a beeline for the trees.

Seconds later, her figure merged with the foliage.

A heavy thump sounded, and Finn turned toward his brother, who’d landed in the mud.

Frantically, Finn checked to ensure that air could still enter through the filter in Kristian’s suit.

Lily. He scrambled to his feet and sprinted toward his girlfriend. Taking the corner so tightly he almost clipped his shoulder, he reached the path beyond the northern wall of the morgue.

In the same spot where Finn had left her, his father crouched over her limp body.

Suddenly, the wind seemed to cease. The chop of the East River softened. Even his dad’s form stilled.

Finn couldn’t lose her. He just couldn’t. While the rest of the world hung suspended in time, he raced to her.

1926–1938

June 15, 1926

n a long, gray woolen suit and Panama hat, the young man could have passed for a city official. But the bouquet of lilies, cradled in one arm, his other hand fisted, told Cora otherwise. She knew why he’d come. The anger-infused sorrow, rising viscerally from him like steam, seemed to merge with her own.

From the church’s roof, she watched him descend the ferry gangplank. The last to have disembarked, he stopped halfway down the pier. His head bowed, he seemed to be waiting for the day staff to disperse across the campus before stepping ashore.

Today marked the twenty-second anniversary of the sinking of the Slocum. Earlier this morning, Cora had stood on the seawall with Mary, O’Toole, and his wife and prayed into the wind as it scattered their white rose petals. Below her, on the sand where Dr. Gettler had tried to revive his daughter, fluttered a cluster of edelweiss. Every year on this day, he visited the site at sunrise to mourn alone.

By this evening, the beach would be dotted with garlands and small, wooden crosses, though their count had been dwindling. Each year, fewer of the staff who’d helped that day remained at Riverside. Even Linnaeus and his wife had left; eight years ago, he’d filled a prestigious administrative position at Tisch Hospital after its previous occupant died during the Spanish flu. Only then had she realized that seeing him with another woman had been better than not seeing him at all.

Most of the families of the deceased, their hurt assuaged through a new generation of births and marriages, had stopped making the annual memorial visit. Grief had broken that community; Kleindeutschland no longer existed. And with its dissolution, as well as anti-German sentiment following World War I, New York’s collective resolve to never forget the Slocum had disintegrated.

Finally, the man lifted his face to survey the island, revealing fair skin; a nose as straight and steep as the Alps; and short blond hair, barely visible beneath his hat brim.

Gawking at the familiar look of his Norse features, Cora strained to better see him through the spyhole she’d drilled between two bricks a year ago. Resembling a younger version of Dr. Gettler, the man could be Ulrich, she thought, now twenty-five years old.

Cora wondered if Otto knew. For the past year, since they’d faked her death a second time, burned her cloak, and reintroduced her to Riverside as Canne’s new, equally reclusive assistant, she’d spent much of her free time people-watching from this roof, where she couldn’t spread her germs. In the nearby hospital building, Mary was cleaning the bottles in Dr. Gettler’s lab. She’d threatened to expose the nature of his work unless he made her his technician.

Now Cora peered through the fissure.

Dr. Gettler stood rooted to the footpath, staring in the direction of the pier. Often, when a new theory struck him, his body would become stone still, all his energy seemingly rerouted to turning the wheels of his mind. But, in this moment, Cora could tell from the rapid blinking of his eyes that he was not thinking of his science. The young man had to be his son.

During the past two decades, Otto had not once brought Ulrich back to the island, and he’d rarely mentioned him. Five years ago, Otto had stated in a stiff tone that his son had begun his training to become a surgeon. From his silence on the topic since, Cora figured that the two had become estranged.

His attention on the shallows, Ulrich strode down the dock.

Almost imperceptibly, the doctor raised the heels of his black cap toe shoes; she guessed he was contemplating greeting him.

“Go on,” she whispered, “this is your chance to say sorry.”

Ulrich noticed him and halted abruptly.

Ten feet apart, they eyed each other, their shoulders squared, arms at their sides, jaws locked shut. The back of Otto’s dress shirt had darkened with sweat.

With her hand pressed to her heart, she waited. Throughout the years of specimen collections and unexplained surgeries, she’d repeatedly attempted to divert his attention from her to his former hobbies. Rekindling his interest in building ships in bottles had been out of the question, but she’d hoped he might rediscover the joy he’d once found in either sketching or the Pigs in Clover marble maze games he used to