Annika handed him a cup of coffee. “Where will you go?”
“It’s not safe for me to tell either of you, but if you need me, Hermann can find me.”
“I will take care of her and your... other things.”
“Thank you, Annika.”
Max showed them the hiding place beside the fireplace, the panel built by his ancestors that opened with the push of a thumb. Then he kissed the cheeks of both women and was gone.
CHAPTER 31
The waters of Hallstatt are an inky blue in this early morning hour, captured by a net of mist as Josh steers us toward the castle in an electric boat.
I was planning to visit a number of churches in Vienna, but I received an email from Sophie last night. She still hasn’t found anything about a Luzia Weiss in the archives, but she found several papers that mentioned a Luzi. I’ve arranged to meet with her this afternoon to review them.
“What’s it like to dive under the surface?” I ask, trailing my fingers through the icy wake.
“Have you heard of the German wordAbstand?”
I lean back against the seat, searching my brain for the meaning. “It has something to do with travel.”
He nods. “It’s also used to explain the space between us and the world. A distance that a diver can find under the water.”
“You dive to escape?”
“Escape from the noise of our world while I’m searching for treasure.”
“My space is the wall of my room back in Ohio.”
“There’s a wall down here,” Josh says, pointing to an area not far from Annika’s former estate. “It’s ribbed with stone for about forty feet and then it drops out. I can take you sometime to see it.”
Curiosity wars again with my fears of the unknown. “I much prefer the world up here, even with the noise.”
“You won’t—not after you experience what’s underneath.”
It’s just the two of us out on the lake—Josh called one of his students who’d decided to stay a couple extra days near Hallstatt, and she agreed to hang out with Ella this morning while Josh took me to the train station. I suspect Ella might still be sleeping when he returns.
“Why haven’t you dived here before?” I ask.
A breeze sweeps across the lake, stirring the blue, and I zip up my jacket. At first I don’t think he’s heard my question, but then he responds.
“I’d planned to dive before Grace and I were married, but when she discovered that seven divers had drowned searching for treasure near here, she begged me not to come. She was afraid the water would take me from her.” The gentle buzz of the electric motor fills the space between us, his words settling over me. “Instead of my drowning, the cancer stole her from me.”
“She must have loved you deeply.”
He glances toward the castle. “And I loved her more than this dream of mine, but before she died, Grace said that she didn’t want me to live in fear like she had once done. I still battled withwhether or not to come this time, for Ella’s sake. My chair at the university said it was time for me to stop researching ownerless treasure and start searching for it.”
“You would lose your job?”
“Possibly. If I didn’t bring a team here this summer and write about our findings, he was going to consider someone else for full professor and tenure. It wouldn’t be good for either Ella or me if I lost this position.”
I hear the doubt in his voice, the wanting to do the right thing but not being certain what was best for his daughter.
“You take good care of her, Josh.”
He looks away again, but if nothing else, I want him to know this. “Even the fact that you’re concerned is...” What is it? Admirable. Kind. Compassionate. Perhaps his care for her is simply what the wordfatheris supposed to mean.
“I don’t want her to grow up afraid,” he says, “but now I’m the one scared for her.”
