“Yeah, I had my partner analyze Kiel’s letters, and it turns out that the final sentence—While I am denied your presence, give me at least through your words some sweet semblance of yourself—is a quote from an old love letter from the Middle Ages. It’s from a letter that a theologian sent to his young lover. Her name, like yours, was Heloise, just spelled with a diaeresis over the i—you know, two dots like the umlaut in Schäfer?” He paused and waited several seconds for her response. “Hello?”

“No,” Heloise replied.

“No, what?”

“That doesn’t mean anything to me.”

“You’re not familiar with the story?”

“No.”

“Well, all right then.” Schäfer sounded disappointed. “But it is pretty weird, isn’t it, for Anna Kiel to toss a reference like that into the letter, and that it was originally written in the year eleven hundred something or other to a woman named Héloïse?”

“Yes …”

“And you’re sure that you’ve never heard of these medieval people before?”

“Yes.”

“Okay, but it has to mean something. We just need to look at it from the right angle. Would you mind looking it up and see if it rings any bells?”

“Sure. Anything else?”

“Not right now. How about you? Any news?”

“No,” Heloise lied. Her voice sounded strangely hollow to her own ears, as if she were standing above ground and hearing herself speak from the bottom of a dry well.

“You sure?”

“Yes. Could we talk some other time?”

“Of course. So, you’re okay?”

“Yes.”

“Are you sure? You sound a little—”

“I’m fine, okay? I’ll talk to you soon.”

Heloise hung up and let the phone fall from her hands as she slid off the sofa down onto the living room floor, where she lay for a long time gasping for breath in short bursts.

She felt sick. Sick and decimated and broken deep down inside.

It couldn’t be true.

It had better not be true.

In a clear vision that filled her with fear, she understood what the letters were about—what connected her to Anna—and she didn’t know what was worse: the story Anna Kiel wanted to share with her or what she had to do to hear it.

CHAPTER

34

“BABY?”

“Hmm …” Erik Schäfer tore himself away from his thoughts and looked at Connie, who was sitting on the other end of the dark-red velour sofa. “I’m sorry, honey, did you say something?”

She laughed. “This is the third time in ten minutes that you’ve spaced out. Where’d you go?”

“Oh, it’s just a work thing that’s bugging me.” He took a slightly firmer hold of her foot, which was resting in his lap, and massaged it. “I’m working on a case right now that I can’t figure out.”

“Tell me about it,” Connie said.

So, he did.