The Tulip Eaters. Antoinette van Heugten

you can call when I go?”

      “Well, it’s embarrassing, but the answer is no.” Now she hesitated, avoiding Marijke’s gaze. “When I came back to the States, I was still broken-hearted about Nico.”

      She hated hearing the sadness in her voice. Nora thought briefly of her two years in Amsterdam, the happiest of her life, and her fellowship with Dr. Jan Brugger, one of the world’s top researchers in brain cancer. It had been intense, thrilling, each day more fascinating than the next, and she somehow had become the superstar of his program, the reason that John Bates had contacted her to come work for him in Houston.

      Nico. Falling in love with him, living together in perfect happiness. Until it all fell apart. She had so tried not to dwell on him and their tortured breakup, his refusal to move to Houston with no future for himself in America. Nora still felt a stabbing regret. She glanced at the silver ring of his she still wore, its tulip design delicate, lovely.

      “Nora?”

      Nora returned to the present. “I didn’t want to be around anyone except my mother. And she understood that I needed to be left alone until I could get my life back on track. Then just as I started meeting people, I found out that I was pregnant. What a shock! But so exhilarating. It eclipsed my life. I didn’t have time for anything else.”

      She saw Marijke give her a sideways glance. “You’re still in love with him.”

      Nora avoided her gaze. “No, I don’t think about him anymore.”

      “Hmm,” murmured Marijke. Nora was relieved when she said no more about it.

      She glanced at the silver-framed photograph on the coffee table. Rose’s newborn face was red and scowling, as if birth had not been the liberating experience it was cracked up to be. She stared out with her big eyes and fierce wisps of copper hair. Nora felt comforted. It made Rose look as if she had come into the world a fighter, a survivor. Like herself.

      Marijke slipped her knitting into her bag. “So, if you’re not going to stay here, why don’t we start packing up boxes?”

      “Not Rose’s room.”

      “Sure. But we can work here and then tackle your mother’s bedroom.”

      Nora was so deathly sick of waiting and of the adrenaline rushes that plagued her that Marijke’s words brought her a welcome sense of purpose. She stood and dusted off the seat of her jeans. “All right. You start here. I think I’ve got some empty boxes in the garage.”

      “Fine.” Marijke stood.

      “Wait a minute,” said Nora. “Do you suppose the killer and the kidnapper might have been looking for something?”

      “Like what?”

      “I don’t know. But the investigators said there seemed to be a struggle—footprints up and down the stairs.” She rubbed her chin, thinking. “What if killing my mother wasn’t the only thing they came for? And we still have no idea why they’d take Rose.”

      “Nora, maybe you’re just grasping at straws.”

      “But what can it hurt? We’re going to pack up all of this stuff, anyway—why not search for a clue?” Possibilities rushed through her mind. “Something my mother had that they needed? Something that could give us insight into why this nightmare happened?”

      Nora thought she saw Marijke bite her lip. “We have to pack up everything, anyway, and if we do a thorough job, who knows what we’ll come up with?”

      “There must be a link between my mother’s bizarre murder and that man on the floor. But what?” Her eyes now fixed upon Rose’s bassinet, a cruel reminder that pierced right through her.

      Marijke returned to the couch and motioned for Nora to sit, but Nora remained standing, energized by her theory. “Look, the police searched the house, but how much time did they really spend looking? Their objective was physical evidence, not motive. And one guy said he could tell by the footprints that two people went upstairs. Maybe that’s what we should focus on.”

      Marijke shrugged. “If the FBI and all those policemen can’t find a connection, how can we?”

      Nora felt excitement for the first time since that terrible evening. “Look, we’re going to search every nook and cranny of this house. We’ll go inch by inch until we find something—anything—that might shed light on the murder.”

      “Nora, even if we do find some motive, how will that help us find Rose?”

      “Because the two have to be linked. Mom was Dutch. The forged Dutch passport, the Dutch money on the killer—these aren’t coincidences. Maybe the accomplice panicked, grabbed Rose and then ran away, not thinking of the consequences.”

      “But even if we find out why your mother was killed, how will that explain why his accomplice would risk kidnapping Rose? And why wouldn’t he already have called demanding a ransom?”

      Nora saw Marijke react to what must have been Nora’s look of disappointment. “But,” said Marijke kindly, “anything is worth trying at this point.” She stood. “Tell me what you want me to do.”

      Nora hugged her, the most positive reaction she had mustered since that awful day. She went to the kitchen counter and picked up a pad of paper and a pen. She chewed on the plastic cap, her brow furrowed. Then her eyes cleared and she wrote furiously on the pad. She tore off two pages and handed one to Marijke.

      “Here’s a list. You start in Mom’s bedroom. I’ll look downstairs. Even if we don’t find anything, it will give me something to do instead of sitting by the phone going crazy.”

      Marijke glanced at the page Nora had handed her. “What am I looking for?”

      Nora shrugged. “I don’t really know. Anything. Old papers or letters, documents, something hidden away. If there’s anything at all, it won’t be sitting out in the open. I’ll start down here with the oldest files in my father’s study. Who knows where they would hide things?”

      Marijke stood and folded her arms. “Nora, do you really think they would have kept incriminating documents?”

      “Maybe not, but what else can we do but try?”

      “Vooruit! I will begin.” She disappeared down the hall.

      Four hours later, Nora, still sitting on the study floor, looked at the cardboard boxes now packed with books, files of financial papers and tax returns, small Delft Blue plates and figurines. The sad detritus of over thirty years—all she had left of her mom and dad. She looked around her. In a way, it was the souls of two people she was packing into those boxes, fragments of two lives not only unfinished, but unlived. She had found nothing relevant from their past, but every object had evoked a memory. In her mind’s eye, she saw her father’s wide, gentle hands holding a thick book with a look of pleasure on his face. The needlepoint pillow nestled into her mother’s chair, its profusion of roses like the ones Anneke had tended so passionately in her garden.

      Nora stood, her legs cramped from sitting cross-legged while poring over her father’s files. She glanced outside. The fiery Houston sun was setting in a bath of surreal colors. Probably pollution, she thought. She walked to her father’s desk, picked up a framed photo and studied it. A dark-haired, beautiful Anneke stared out at her, a quiet smile on her face. The photo, she knew, had been taken in 1946, the year her parents married. She studied the background. Was it Holland or Houston? The sepia backdrop and faded black-and-white figures told her nothing.

      She studied her father’s expression—proud and happy. He had been the affectionate one, a disciplined academic with one soft spot—his daughter. She’d never known him to be anything other than patient, kind and fair. She stared at the smaller photo next to it, Hans pulling a red wagon up the hill at Hermann Park, while a five-year-old Nora waved and smiled.

      Her eyes blurred with tears. Her mother had had terrible bouts of depression, often emanating an all-consuming sadness. Sometimes