I

Early April saw the cemetery as a cold, unsung place. Its trees were more bare than not, clawing at an overcast dawn. The gray of the stones had bled out across the rest of the landscape. Grass, gravel, ground… even the air felt dimmed as Felix breathed in.

He was early this year. Usually when he came to visit Martin, spring had a firmer hold on the world. May 2’s warmth and flowers made the whole visit bearable. But today the weather leeched the life from Felix’s bones as he walked through rows of angels and crosses. Some stones were worn beyond reading. Others tumbled to the ground altogether.

The marker Felix was looking for was still standing, still readable. The summation of his brother’s existence etched into its granite:

MARTIN WILLMAR WOLFE

BELOVED SON. REMEMBERED BROTHER.

15 OCTOBER 1934—2 MAY 1950

When Felix reached it, he stopped, fingers curled into fists in his pockets. Martin’s absence was always there—leaning alongside Felix as he worked on Volkswagen engines, cramming into the Wolfes’ church pew, hovering around the rare family dinner. But the gravestone always hit Felix with the finality of it.

Martin. Beloved. Remembered. Gone.

He liked to think that (somewhere, somehow) his brother could hear him. So once a year Felix came to talk.

“Hello, Martin.”

His brother said nothing.

“I know you weren’t expecting me today, but this year has been different.”

Different. The least inflammatory word he could think of to describe his twin sister trimming her hair into a perfect imitation of Felix’s curtained haircut with their mother’s sewing scissors and father’s razor. It was eerie how much he felt as if he were staring at himself when Adele held out her hand for his papers.

“I’m racing in the Axis Tour,” she’d told him. “If anyone comes checking for me, Papa can tell them I’m ill. You’ll need to stay hidden to maintain my cover.”

He’d wanted to tell her no. He should have. But that had never been the way things were between the twins, so Felix gave Adele his documents and promised to keep out of sight.

For the majority of the Axis Tour, Felix had stayed indoors—blinds shut, shadows heavy—watching himself race across the world. Reichssender footage tended to highlight the race at its best and its worst. During the first few days, they hadn’t focused much on Felix Burkhard Wolfe, the sixteen-year-old from Frankfurt with fair times. He was neither a victor nor an underdog. Plus, he was oddly camera shy.

As the days passed, the number of Axis Tour racers dwindled, as it always did, but interest in Felix Wolfe began to climb. The racer had managed to stay at the head of the pack, keeping pace with Victor Löwe and Victor Tsuda through accidents, alliances, and attempted sabotage.

By the third week, the race was tight, and as a result, the wrecks grew nastier. Just a few days ago, outside Hanoi, one of the German racers (seventeen-year-old Georg Rust) had been edged off the road into a rice paddy, an accident that cost the rider his leg. The incident had been caught on camera. Georg—a black-and-white blur—flying along with his Zündapp before being crushed into the mud. The first time Felix saw it, he was breathless. The fifth time, he felt sick. By the tenth showing, all he could see was the past and the future:

Martin flying, crushed on the Nürburgring racetrack.

Adele flying, crushed on the road to Tokyo.

Felix’s insides flew with the fear of it all, crushed by the weight of his own helplessness.

It would all be over soon. The racers had left the Kaiten and were navigating the final leg. A few more hours and a winner would emerge to claim the victory of 1955. The Reichssender was abuzz with projections. A severe stomach flu had knocked front-runner Tsuda Katsuo out of the race. Victor Löwe was ahead, set to claim the tour’s first double victory, but Felix Wolfe was close on his tail.

“Anything can happen,” one of the Reichssender hosts had said, “when racers are desperate enough.”

This was exactly what the real Felix, watching from the tiny family room in Frankfurt, feared. He knew he should keep his promise to Adele, stay inside just a little longer. But his nerves were getting the better of him, and he just couldn’t. Three weeks of watching, waiting, not knowing whether his sister was dead on the road had worn Felix thin. He needed a distraction that wasn’t the Reichssender, so he’d come at the loneliest hour to the loneliest place, where only the crows might see him. Where only the dead might hear…

Though it was not May 2, Felix kept to the other tradition of his annual vigil: talking. He sat by Martin’s grave and told his brother about every Wolfe and the year they’d had. There was Mama’s sadness—shut-door days that piled into themselves—and long pre–Axis Tour hours in the garage with Papa, who could no longer hold a wrench like he used to. In the wake of Adele’s departure, both symptoms had grown worse. Neither of his parents would look at the television screen, for fear of flash-forward ghosts, though every night at supper, Papa asked for news of Adele’s standings. His voice was quiet, his eyes crinkled with pride.

Felix—tender-treading ambassador that he was—offered his parents the highly edited version. He left out the sudden drop in Adele’s time on the road from Hanoi to Shanghai. Georg Rust’s ruined life and severed leg were definitely not mentioned.…

All these things he saved for Martin. “She’s somewhere in Japan now, second only to Victor Löwe.”

Anything can happen.…

Felix needed to keep talking, stay distracted, not think about it. But the only Wolfe left to talk about was Felix himself. And—as it happened every year—when Felix reached his own story, he never knew what to say. He supposed if Martin really could hear him (somehow, somewhere), then his brother knew everything already.

In fact, he was probably watching Adele now. Seeing everything Felix couldn’t.

“Keep her safe.” It was not the dead’s job, but Felix tasked it anyway. His words climbed up into air, sky, nothing.

Not even the wind answered.