The front door hung open on its hinges. Cold night air not yet breathed on by spring gusted into the room and caused the fire to flicker.

I ran toward it. “Mutti? Mutti!” I could see nothing in the darkness. No. She couldn’t leave me. She wasn’t well enough!

I reached for my coat, but Oma stayed my hand. “I’ll find her.”

“She’s my mutti!” I had to help. Had to fix this.

“She doesn’t remember you. She doesn’t want you.”

Doesn’t want you.

Oma slammed the door behind her, leaving me in our cottage with the body of my dead pappje.

*  *  *

The next morning, we stood over two graves.

She’d found Mutti frozen and lifeless less than a mile from our home. Oma didn’t let me see her. Didn’t let me kiss either of them goodbye. Instead, she woke me from where I’d curled in the corner by the fireplace. “Come say words over their graves.”

I had no words other than, “I’m sorry. I’m so sorry.”

I fell to my knees. This was so much worse than when they lay side by side trapped in illness. At least then I had hope. I could tuck myself into their arms and will my love for them to warm their bodies.

Now they lay in the earth, blanketed in darkness. I wanted to be with them, but I didn’t want to die. I sniffed hard as the frightening burning built in my throat. There was no stopping it from spilling over in hot tears.

Oma knelt beside me and wrapped an arm around my shoulders, an uncharacteristic show of tenderness. I moved to lean my head on her chest, but something cold and hard met my cheek.

A glass bottle.

“Let it out, child,” Oma whispered as the first tear slipped into the vial. “Just keep crying. I’m here.”

Chapter 2
Bastiaan

Five years later

Bastiaan’s soul was 107 years old.

His bare feet pressed into the dark soil between rows of blood-red tulips, sending his youthful body forward and leaving behind their signatures of ten toes and young soles. Scattered amid the tulip rows were women of varied ages. One bent over a row of purple buds, a woven basket in one arm and her hand stretched toward a stem. Another rested on her knees, a handkerchief pressed to her brow.

None moved. None breathed. Statues of blood, bone, and frozen breath.

Bastiaan fixed his gaze forward. Ahead, over the hill of carefully tended tulips and beyond the stretch of mature grain stalks ready for harvest, rose a windmill, its wide base pregnant with memories. Its wood-lattice blades paused midrotation.

Home.