“So you want me to cook. And clean. And generally look after you and the cottage. And in exchange, I get to … stay here with you?” Snow White said.
The dwarves looked at each other.
“Yeah,” Grumpy said. “You got a problem with that?”
“Actually, yes,” Snow White said, grabbing a paper and pencil from the desk and sitting down. “What we really need is an equitable division of domestic labor.”
The dwarves blinked at her.
“Well, go ahead. Sit down,” she said. There was some muttering, it must be admitted, but eventually all seven of the men pulled up their chairs.
Snow White cleared her throat. “I officially declare this commune’s first governing meeting open.”
—FAIRY TALES FOR LITTLE FEMINISTS:
SNOW WHITE, EVELYN HARPER KREIS
November 2000
Saskia was eighteen. She’d been listening for it all day, and finally she heard the crunch of gravel, her parents’ low laughter, and she jumped from the bench, bolted to the side door. It was autumn and the air was full of burning leaves, and in the moment before her parents reached her, she closed her eyes to smell the tang.
“Sas!” Evie said. Her eyes flickered wide with surprise; Saskia wasn’t usually home on Sunday afternoons, was usually at the university or the conservatory or “Josh’s.”
“What’s up, kiddo?”
She grabbed Mike’s wrist and pulled him into the house, to the conservatory. Breathless, she dropped his hand and waited.
Mike’s head twisted to the side.
“What is it?” Evie came up behind them, following their gaze to the piano. “Is something wrong?”
“It’s new, honey,” Mike said, setting a hand on her shoulder. “Sas bought a new piano.”
Saskia broke into a grin as she ran to the bench.
“Isn’t it wonderful? It’s a 1923 Steinway. The resonance on this thing! Just listen—” She ran her hand down over the bass keys. “And yet there’s a brilliance—” Up on the treble. “And the weight of the keys—well, it wouldn’t mean anything to you guys, but they’ve got this gravity to them, it’s really something—” She turned to them, bright eyes unseeing. “Isn’t it incredible? It’s so amazing that all this sound is produced by just wood and metal and glue! Some felt,” she added. “And ivory, of course.”
“Who … who let you buy that?”
Saskia’s eyebrows jumped into delight.
“I went to the Steinway Gallery and tested out a few pianos. This was the best one on the floor, I did my research.” A lot of research. “And turns out: when you have money, people let you buy things,” she added, sarcasm lacing her otherwise gleeful tone.
Mike was peering into the piano’s innards, while Evie clutched the side of it, palm leaving a greasy smudge against the black. Saskia opened her mouth, started to tell her, No, please, don’t touch—
“Saskia,” Evie said, “that was your college money.”
Saskia looked down at the keyboard. Rolled her right hand into a quick arpeggio.
“No,” she said. “It was my contest winnings. It was my album deal. It was my performance stipends, and it was mine. Besides, there’s still plenty left over, stop freaking out. Anyways”—looking up, fierce, eyes fire—“I’m not going to college.”
Evie’s fingers tightened against the ridge, skin pulling against the lacquer with a squeak.
“Not college college, maybe. But surely music school—Juilliard or Manhattan—”
“But why, though? Why can’t I just … keep doing what I’m doing? Tour more. Record more. People go to those schools to become like me, Mom. But I’m already there. I’m already me. Why can’t I just keep on doing it?”
Evie smacked her hand against the gloss. “Because those names mean something, Saskia! Jesus Christ, you think anyone’s going to be lining up to hear you once you’re a bit older? You think there’s anything at all novel, interesting, in a talented musician in her twenties? You have to keep honing your craft—”
“I can do that with Carrie—”
“You cannot. Jesus fucking Christ, Saskia, you’ve been better than that woman since you were about twelve.”
Mike’s hand on Evie’s shoulder again, firm this time. “Evie—”
She shook him off. “No. No, Mike! This is just like the Saab, just like her to buy a stupid, vintage thing that will take specialist repair after specialist repair, spending willy-nilly because she thinks it looks cool—and how are you ever going to move this thing?” Whirling back to Saskia. “Great pianists are based on the coasts. Are you going to drive this out to New York yourself, pulling it in a trailer behind that Saab?”
Saskia played an A, long and resonant and vibrating through her. She matched her voice to it. “No. I’m going to stay in Milwaukee. I don’t need to go to the coasts. But even if I did move”—she kept that A steady through her mother’s indignant snort—“I’d just pay someone else to take it.”
Evie bent over the music stand. “With what money?” she said. “Not with ours, I’ll tell you that. You know what it costs to move a piano?”
It burned in Saskia’s chest. Why were they having an argument about who would hypothetically pay for a hypothetical move to New York City? She sought her father’s eyes, but he was murmuring soothing notes as her mother tried to twist him off. “Yours?” Saskia said, her voice low. “Your money? You must be joking. As far as I can tell, the only money around here is mine.”
“Whoa, whoa,” Mike said, holding up a hand.
“And we haven’t laid a finger on it,” Evie cried. “We’ve kept it all for you. We haven’t spent a cent of it, not on your lessons, not on your school—yes, that’s right, Saskia, somebody has to pay for that school, even when you don’t go, which seems to be always—all so that you could have a future. So that you would never have to worry. So that even if you had nothing, you would always have an education.” She paused, catching her breath. “But you’re Saskia fucking Kreis,” she said, her eyes closing briefly. “And you’re going to do what you’re going to do.”
Mike cast an apologetic look over his shoulder as he followed Evie out of the room—he’d be back, the look said.
Saskia put both hands on the keyboard and rolled through the arpeggios.
They burned in her, though, her mother’s words.
The money had been hers.
Hers alone.
February 2020
When the doorbell rings the next afternoon, Saskia scrambles down to get it, Wolfie barking at her heels. Her startle reflex is on high alert, her heart beating wild.
“I got it!” she calls to her father as he approaches through the archway behind the stairs. She’s not sure who it is—all of the possibilities seem terrifying—but she wants to be the one to head them off.
But when she opens the door, it’s just Josh.
He grins bashfully as he sees her. She takes a step out into the cold to kiss him before remembering that her father’s right behind them, and what she’d intended as a quick brush against the lips turns into an awkward bump.
“I’m sorry to just drop by, but I found this in my car and thought you might need it,” he says, holding up Evie’s black clutch.
“Oh, shit! Yeah, thanks. I’m not a real girl, I didn’t even realize I’d left without it.”
He smiles, then dives behind her as the door creaks open. He’s on his knees then, rubbing Wolfie’s head with a kind hand.
“Hey, buddy! Oh, hey!” as Wolfie slobbers down his cheeks. Worst watchdog ever. “Is it—Johann?”
She frowns. “Johann. The dog we had in high school, Johann?”
He nods, catches another lick from the dog with a laugh.
“Josh, that was twenty years ago. How long do you think dogs live?”
“I don’t know,” Josh says sheepishly, getting to his feet. “We never had one.”
She laughs. “No, Johann died years ago.”
“That’s too bad,” he says, brushing off his pants. “Dogs should live forever.”
Saskia bends down to give Wolfie a rough kiss.
“Josh!” Saskia’s father is joining the circus now, reaching out to clamp Josh on the shoulder. “Good to see you.” Watch how smooth he is.
“Good to see you too, sir.”
“Mike, please. Sas, aren’t you going to invite your guest in?”
Josh in the Elf House again. What if now’s the time that Patrick chooses to revolt? What if he floods the toilet? Throws his body against the door? Becomes known to Josh—
“Of course,” she says, grabbing the cuff of Josh’s coat and pulling him in. “We’ll be out back by the firepit.”
“Sas,” her father says as she leads Josh in, as she watches him peer upward at the glory and the decay of the Elf House. “It’s freezing.”
“Hence the fire.”
She directs Josh out back and throws the kettle onto the stove, catching her breath as it boils. Through the wavy glass of the mullioned windows, he’s strolling around the yard, his hands in his pockets. She loves the broadness of his shoulders. I get to touch him, she thinks, the knowledge running through her with a zing.
He takes the mugs from her as she throws wood into the pit, pyramids it, and crumples newspaper at its base.
“You’re a real Girl Scout,” he says as the flames burst into life.
“I told you, I’m not a real girl at all,” she says, laughing, taking one of the mugs back. He sips his, eyes widening at the kick of it.
“What is this?”
“Mom’s secret recipe,” she says with a wink.
He takes another sip.
“Swiss Miss and Captain Morgan?”
She shrugs. “Any kind of rum will do.”
She’s not sure how it happens, but somehow he maneuvers it so that they’re sitting on the bench together, and his arm is wrapping around her. Funny: in her mind, he’s still a gawky teenage boy. But he’s had twenty years of dating, twenty years of practicing this.
He’s not so much younger than Patrick was, back when.
But Patrick’s not here, she reminds herself, staring into the flames against the lavender twilight, feeling the blood rise to her cheeks. She’s suddenly very aware of the tower rising over them. Well, he’s here. He’s not here.
“So, the bag’s not actually the only reason I came by,” Josh says, and his voice is lower than before, less playful.
“Oh, no?” If she turns to look at him, their faces will be uncomfortably close together. There won’t be anywhere for her to hide her reactions. She watches the fire.
“No. I’ve—I’ve actually stepped down as executor. I’m asking the court to name someone else, though I know this judge; she’ll likely ask me to nominate somebody, and I can give them the name of someone at the firm. Someone great.” She doesn’t say anything right away—doesn’t know what to say. But he feels her body stiffen. Turns out there was nowhere to hide, anyway. Not with his arm around her.
“It’s just that … seeing you in this house. Thinking I have to give it to someone else—I’m having feelings,” he says with a short laugh. “And it’s turning into a conflict of interest.”
She whirls her face to his as the flames crackle. The scents weave their way around the two of them, overwhelming. Pine sap with the sharp edge of snow, burning wood, hot chocolate laced with something stronger. Christmas, it feels like Christmas. It feels like long ago.
“You mean you could just decide to give it to us?”
His eyes crinkle.
“No. Of course not. I’m legally bound to do what’s in the will. But that’s the problem—I didn’t want to. It’s just so right seeing you here. It just—” He looks up at the house, glowing with otherworldly light in the falling dark, and there is a look of reverence on his face. “It just fits.”
Maybe he truly did understand this place. The ghosts rising up around her, claiming her as their own.
“I don’t know anymore,” she says. “I really don’t. There’s a heaviness to it, you know? Like I’m being hammered into my place in the historical line. Like I’m nothing more than the next iteration of Harper, whatever that is. And the whole time, it’s like Mom’s around every corner, just reaching for me—”
She sees the pity in his eyes and shuts up, downs the rest of the cocoa. She’s not explaining it right. And she can’t say the next part, which is that nothing in the house truly belongs to her, anyway. The piano, once. The piano had. The piano still does, she supposes. But it’s only in the tower where she feels like herself.
She hops to her feet. “I’m so glad you came by,” she says, taking his hands and pulling him up. And she is, but she’s gladder, now, to imagine him going. She needs to go and listen at the bottom of the stairs. She needs to make sure she is still safe. She needs a lot of things, none of which she can do with Josh here.
“Of course.” They start walking toward the house. “I don’t want to come on too strong here, but—are you free tomorrow night?”
Interesting. She’s never had a relationship that wasn’t some variation on her and Patrick’s Wednesday and Sunday afternoons, limited by its own secrets.
“Three nights in one week?” she says, and laughs.
He kisses her laughing mouth—and for a fraction of a second, it’s fully him. They are the only two people in the embrace. Josh’s lips are on her lips, Josh’s chilled hands on her neck, in her hair. Her leg twisting around his.
She pulls away, breathless, and they grin silently at each other.
“Dad, Josh’s leaving!” she calls as they walk back inside, pausing in front of the den. The local news is blaring, loud, and he’s reaching with the remote to mute it when:
Breaking news this evening—
She has vague memories of the headlines of her childhood flashing on the screen when she was little. The Gulf War, satanic abuse, missing children, Jeffrey Dahmer’s murders on the other side of town.
We have a silver alert to share with you.
And Mike startles up, pushing to the edge of the sofa as Saskia and Josh come in to see what’s disturbed him. There, on screen: a photo of Patrick, grinning in the darkroom as he stands next to a tray of liquid, pictures hung up to dry behind him.
This is sixty-year-old Patrick Kintner. He was last seen on the University of Wisconsin–Milwaukee campus on the morning of February eighth. If you see him, you’re asked to call Milwaukee police.
Her father has turned to her now, his dark blue eyes pinned on hers. Beside her, she feels Josh’s gaze, too, darting between her and her father. For a second, she’d forgotten he was there. He feels, suddenly, very far away.
And finally, tonight, breaking news in the Democratic primaries—
The screen goes dark.
“Saskia,” her father says, “what do you know about this?”
Her heart unclenches. What do you know. Not, What did you do. She can almost hear the whirring of his mind behind the placid, pleasant face.
She swallows. Then frowns, trying to look as affronted as the teenage Saskia once had been by almost everything.
“Don’t look at me,” she says. “I’m right here.”
Back in her room, her heartbeat is thrumming in her eardrums. Already she’s missed a series of calls from Tara.
Saskia takes a deep breath. Finds the Wisconsin voice in her head, adjusts herself to its tone, its volume.
“Oh my God, Tara, did you hear?”
“Yeah, holy shit. I mean—yeah, holy shit.” Tara sounds a few drinks in. All the better. Saskia swallows.
“I mean, I know he had problems. The man’s a mess. You don’t think he—he did something to himself?” It’s a new tack, it literally just came to her.
Tara bites. “Who knows? Guys like this, once the jig is up … I mean, look at Epstein…” She trails off. “Yeah, it seems not impossible.”
Saskia pulls her knees to her chest.
“So, then … what does this mean? For our case?”
“It depends,” Tara says, and her heart sinks. “Sorry. First things first, if there’s evidence that he ran off there could be a default judgment for you and your father. Once you actually file the paperwork. But if there isn’t evidence that he ran away … we’re looking at another stay.”
“Until he’s found?”
“Or declared legally dead. But just in case you’re thinking that this solves everything—it really doesn’t, Saskia. If you don’t contest the will, the petition to administer will be granted and he’ll still legally inherit the house. And then if he’s eventually declared legally dead, it’ll go to his heirs.”
Who, Saskia wonders with a sinking heart, would that even be? No children, no siblings, and both parents dead since his early twenties.
“Another mess,” she says.
“Well, yeah. I’ll talk with Josh, see if he still wants to send an appraiser over, or if he’s going to be chasing Patrick down.”
“Didn’t you hear? Josh’s not the executor anymore. We’re…” She’s not sure she’s ever said this phrase before, takes a deep breath. “We’re actually dating. Or something.”
“Too cute,” Tara says. “Love that for the two of you. Do you know who’ll be taking over?”
“Someone else from the firm. What happens if that person doesn’t find him?”
“Well, they’ll put the property into a trust, in case Patrick shows up demanding it.” A pause. “That’s if you don’t choose to continue with challenging the will, of course.”
“How long?” She’s going too fast now, she should be pretending to ruminate or something. Oh well, in for a penny. “How long does the property have to remain in a trust? And could we stay in it, in the meantime?”
“Seven years before he’s declared legally dead. And I don’t see any problem with you staying there in the meantime. We’d have to run it by the new executor, of course.”
She disconnects the call, staring shakily into the flames jumping in her fireplace.
Seven years.
It’s such a long time.