As White as Snow Read online

  Drops of water fell on the pavement. The thin produce bag must have had a hole or tear in it, which was letting water out. Lumikki had shoved her wet clothes from the sink into this bag and all the rest of her stuff into her backpack as quickly as possible. She had taken only five minutes to pack. Now she stood on the street wondering what to do.

  She could try to find another cheap hostel, but would anyone let her in at this time of night? It was already past eleven o’clock. The thought of tramping from hostel to hostel in hopes of finding an open room didn’t appeal to her. Neither did spending an hour surfing on her phone or in an Internet café and trying to track down a bed that way.

  Suddenly, Lumikki was exhausted. She felt like calling home and asking her parents to buy her a ticket that same night if there was a flight. She knew she wasn’t going to do that, though, because that would rob her of her independence. That would just make her a helpless child who couldn’t manage on her own.

  Right now, part of Lumikki wanted to be a child and have her parents help her run back to Finland. Jump in a taxi, ride to the airport, fly home. Forget Prague. Forget Lenka. Forget that some strange man had invaded her room looking for her. Forget Jiři Hašek and everything he had told her.

  Jiři. Crap.

  Lumikki pulled her dripping wet shorts out of the produce bag and shoved her hand in their left pocket. There it was. A business card, badly mangled now. She could still read the cell phone number, though. Thank goodness.

  “Call if anything happens. Anything. No matter what time it is.”

  That’s what Jiři had said. He probably hadn’t meant this exactly, but Lumikki knew she didn’t have many options now. Returning home wasn’t something she was ready to do yet. That would have been giving up. Lumikki wasn’t a quitter. Besides, that would have meant far too many questions from her parents, and she didn’t want to be interrogated when she didn’t have any answers.

  Lumikki punched in Jiři’s number and called. She hoped a sleepy girlfriend wouldn’t answer the phone. Based on their previous meeting, she had assumed Jiři was single, but she could be wrong. And single people didn’t always spend their nights alone.

  He picked up after three rings.

  “This is Lumikki Andersson,” Lumikki said.

  Then she had to stop and think for a second about how to phrase her question in English, because “Can I spend the night with you?” might give him the wrong impression.

  As she walked to Jiři’s apartment, Lumikki went back over their meeting earlier that evening. Jiři had led her to a popular, bustling café and bought her a Coke. Then he demanded that she tell him everything about herself and how she knew Jaro and especially what she knew about his death. Lumikki told him as vaguely as possible that she was a perfectly normal tourist from Finland and had met this girl named Lenka completely by chance. She didn’t mention a word about Lenka believing they were half-sisters. Lumikki didn’t think that was any of Jiři’s business. Not at this point, at least. Lumikki didn’t know anything about Jiři. She didn’t know if she could trust him.

  Lumikki described catching a glimpse of Jaro and then running into him at the café where Jiři was interviewing him, and how later, when Lenka told her that he’d died, she’d started wondering if the accident was really just a coincidence.

  “You seem to put very little faith in chance for a girl who got mixed up in all of this by chance,” was Jiři’s comment.

  Lumikki kept her mouth shut. Jiři emptied his own water glass in a single gulp.

  “But you’re right. I’m pretty sure Jaro’s death wasn’t a coincidence.”

  Then Jiři really looked at Lumikki, clearly wondering whether he could trust her. Lumikki saw herself through his eyes, a ragged backpacker girl who had appeared at his office out of nowhere with this strange story. Not necessarily the first person you’d choose to confide in. However, the situation was sufficiently strange in every other way, and Jiři was clearly impressed with how few clues Lumikki had needed to find him.

  So he decided to trust her.

  “How much do you know about the White Family?” Jiři asked.

  The White Family. That was the first time Lumikki heard those words. Lenka had just talked about “the family.” When Jiři went on to tell her that it was a religious cult he’d been investigating for a while now, Lumikki felt like banging her head on the table. How could she have been so stupid? Why didn’t she guess from all the strange things Lenka had said and done? Now that Jiři said it, it was so obvious.

  “Apparently, they believe they’re directly related to Jesus. And so everyone in the cult is related to each other. They’re not just a spiritual family, they’re also a biological family.”

  Of course. That fit perfectly.

  “Although,” Jiři continued, “over the last few months, I’ve done a lot of genealogical research and it looks like some of the family relationships are pretty tenuous. And I don’t mean the blood relationship to Jesus, which is obviously complete bunk—I mean the relationships between the members of the cult in the here and now.”

  “Is there a specific reason why you’ve spent so much time researching them?” Lumikki asked.

  Jiři squinted thoughtfully, weighing his words again.

  “It’s been suggested to me that this cult may have some dangerous plans they intend to implement soon. I still don’t know what those plans might be, but I’m trying to find out. And Jaro promised me an anonymous on-camera interview. That’s why I have a hard time believing his death was an accident. Especially because there’ve been unexplained deaths in the cult before. A young person’s heart giving out. A perfectly sober person falling into the river at night. A car swerving out of its lane into an oncoming truck. A man tripping in front of a train. Police investigations called off for lack of evidence.”

  The noise of the café danced around them as they both fell silent for a moment. The surrounding noises came from another, brighter and more carefree world. A bubble full of dark visions surrounded Lumikki and Jiři.

  “A lot of them are afraid, Lumikki,” Jiři said, surprising her with his correct pronunciation. “A lot of them are very afraid.”

  Lumikki nodded and said that the young woman she knew was afraid too. Lumikki promised to quiz Lenka in more detail. Jiři expressed his hope that they could meet afterward and trade information. Lumikki agreed.

  Now she was standing at the front door of his building, wondering if this was such a good idea after all. Jiři had said on the phone that of course Lumikki could sleep at his place, for the rest of her trip if necessary. Lumikki wasn’t in the habit of spending the night in strange men’s apartments, though.

  Don’t trust anyone. That was her principle. Over the past year, she had been forced to bend her principles a lot, and she wasn’t sure whether that was a good thing.

  Lumikki placed her finger on the buzzer that read “Hašek” and then pressed long and hard.

  Lumikki pulled the covers closer and tried to turn off Anna Puu’s voice singing in her head about her burning heart. It didn’t work. She was lying on a thin guest mattress on Jiři’s kitchen floor and knew falling asleep would be hard.

  Jiři had tried to insist that Lumikki sleep in the bed and that he could sleep on the floor, but Lumikki wouldn’t hear of it.

  “Or we could both sleep in the bed,” he’d said, resting his hand on Lumikki’s upper back.

  Lumikki froze in place, ready to send a quick kick to his groin, grab her things, and rush out into the Prague night. Feeling her tension, Jiři quickly removed his hand and started to laugh.

  “Hey! I’m totally joking. We don’t even know each other and you’re practically still a child. Don’t worry. I’m not that kind of guy.”

  Lumikki turned and looked Jiři straight in the eyes. He looked sincere. And a little embarrassed. Lumikki understood that Jiři might well be a player, but he wasn’t a rapist. And Lumikki was a kid in his eyes.

  They stayed up late into the night ta
lking about the man who had broken into Lumikki’s room at the hostel. Jiři was convinced the man was a killer sent by the White Family.

  “They want to get rid of you,” he said. “It’s best if we stay together for the rest of your trip. This could get dangerous for you. Or, actually, it already is dangerous for you.”

  Then they both yawned, looked at each other, and burst out laughing. It was so absurd. Talking about mortal danger and then yawning as if it were about as interesting as yesterday morning’s leftover oatmeal. It was late, and both of them had had a long day. They decided to continue talking in the morning when their minds were fresh. Lumikki felt like she could have fallen asleep right there in her chair in the middle of a sentence.

  Jiři made up Lumikki’s bed while she went to wash her face and brush her teeth. Lumikki restrained her desire to peek into Jiři’s bathroom cabinets. She’d already imposed upon this man’s life quite enough for one day. She shouldn’t spy.

  When Lumikki finally laid her head on the pillow, she assumed she’d fall asleep instantly. She was wrong.

  Jiři’s joke about sleeping in the same bed had gotten Lumikki thinking about whether she would ever fall in love again since she still burned for Blaze the way she did. Because she really did love him. That was why the longing wasn’t going away. That was why the yearning wouldn’t release her. Would anyone else’s flirting ever have the same effect? Would she ever be able to trust anyone enough to let them that close to her, skin to skin? Lumikki didn’t know.

  One bright, starry August night, they had sat together at one of the wooden stalls on Tammela Square when everything was still good. Lumikki lightly stroked the constellation on Blaze’s neck and looked for the same pattern in the sky. When she found it, her mind was flooded with peace, certainty, and joy.

  “I love you,” Lumikki said.

  The words were so natural, so light, even though their content was heavier than anything she had ever said before.

  “I love you too,” Blaze replied, just as naturally.

  The sky above them was dark and full of stars. In that moment, every single one burned just for them.

  SUNDAY, JUNE 19

  Lumikki had run into plenty of funny words in her life, but “funicular” was still definitely the funniest. Funicular. Funicular. Funicular. She felt like repeating it over and over to the rhythm of the car. “Inclined plane railway” didn’t sound nearly as fascinating, even if it meant the same thing: a rail car pulled by a cable up a steep slope. Lumikki would’ve flipped a coin to decide whether to walk to the top of Petřín Hill instead of ride, but that morning, when she asked Jiři’s opinion, he said that she really should try the funicular at least once while she had the chance. And besides, for some unknown reason, it hadn’t started charging tourist prices yet, so you could get up the hill with a normal public transit ticket.

  Lumikki and Jiři came up with a plan: Jiři would continue his own research, and even though it wasn’t ideal, Lumikki needed to go alone to interview Lenka and try to figure out what the cult was up to. They’d meet back at Jiři’s place that afternoon to compare notes. Jiři insisted it wasn’t safe for Lumikki to stay anywhere but at his apartment. Lumikki had to agree.

  Now she gazed at the green slopes of the hillside as the funicular made its slow, steady climb. Her eyes greedily took in the terrain, which was so different than Finland’s. Valleys, hills, slopes, stairways, and roofs. The variety was thrilling. Most of the other passengers were also tourists who kept jumping up and gushing over the beautiful landscape. A few locals sat around looking as morose as Finns on a bus in November. Lumikki had already learned that Praguers weren’t the most talkative or bubbly, and that suited her just fine. When cashiers didn’t smile, she didn’t have to force one either.

  Business was business, smiles were smiles.

  It wasn’t even ten o’clock yet, but the temperature had already risen uncomfortably. A light breeze blew over the hillside, wafting through the funicular’s open windows. For a moment, Lumikki felt like she was doing what she originally came to Prague to do. She was just another solo tourist who no one knew and who knew no one. Free to do and think as she pleased. She wished she could forget she was on her way to meet Lenka.

  Opposite her in the car sat a father with two little girls. The girls were about three and five, and clearly sisters. Both wore braids. The younger had them wrapped in two donut shapes around her ears, and the older wore hers in a crown. Just like Lenka. The girls sat side by side with their knees touching. The younger girl had a Hello Kitty Band-Aid on her knee.

  Suddenly, Lumikki remembered clumsy but gentle hands putting a Band-Aid with a picture of Mickey Mouse on her own knee.

  A voice that whispered, “Big sister will blow the owie away.”

  And then a strong blowing that left a couple of drops of saliva on her skin. Little Lumikki had laughed.

  The memory couldn’t be right. Someone might have put a Band-Aid on her knee. Some older friend or cousin. But not a big sister. Lumikki and Lenka had never met before. Seeing the little girls had probably just activated some forgotten childhood memory and Lumikki’s mind was mixing in elements from the present. The human brain worked like that. That’s how people could be manipulated into creating fake memories, like violence and abuse in their childhoods, even when nothing of the sort had happened.

  An even more disturbing vision reared up in Lumikki’s mind. A nightmare she didn’t want to see. She was trying to put on a Band-Aid, but there was so much blood that the Band-Aid got soaked right through and turned red. There was too much blood. She watched herself start to cry. She didn’t understand. Why didn’t the Band-Aid make the owie go away?

  The funicular jerked to a stop. The jolt was just enough to dislodge the strange images from Lumikki’s mind. But at the same time, it brought back a memory too vivid to be an illusion.

  Silhouettes of her father and mother hovering somewhere above, presumably above her bed. She was lying down, feeling like an elephant squeezed into a ball. That’s what she remembered thinking. Like a heavy ball that couldn’t sense its own outlines. Mom and Dad’s faces were gray, tired, and sad.

  “Your big sister . . . ,” they said.

  Each separately and both together. For some reason, they couldn’t get any further than that word.

  People shoved their way past Lumikki to exit the car. She got her feet moving too, even though the memory weighed them down. The situation in her memory was real. She was sure of it.

  She had a big sister.

  The family tree she’d been tracing in her mind had been pruned a little too enthusiastically.

  “You really don’t know any more than that?” Lumikki asked. Lenka shook her head.

  Her family was made up of Lenka, her mother Hana Havlová, her mother’s parents Maria Havlová and Franz Havel, Franz’s brother Klaus Havel, and Klaus’s son Adam Havel.

  “And Adam is the head of your family now?” Lumikki double-checked.

  She avoided the word “cult” for obvious reasons.

  “Adam is . . . ,” Lenka thought for a moment. “Adam is Father. We all call him Father, even people older than him, because he takes care of us like a father. And for me especially he’s like the father I never had.”

  “How old is he?”

  “I’m not sure exactly. I’d guess about sixty. Why?” Lenka asked.

  Lumikki shrugged and avoided the question. She wanted to know more about Adam, but she sensed from Lenka’s twitching and the tension in her voice that the conversation was already on thin ice and more questions might scare Lenka off.

  They were sitting on top of Petřín Hill watching the hordes of tourists wandering by and marveling at the iron lookout tower. It looked deceptively similar to its more famous cousin, the Eiffel Tower, but was significantly smaller and somehow more approachable.

  Lumikki occasionally glanced at Lenka’s thin fingers. Could those fingers have placed a Band-Aid on her knee a long time ago? What if they h
ad met but Lenka didn’t remember it? Or what if Lenka was lying about never having seen Lumikki anywhere but in photographs? But why? That didn’t make any sense.

  Lumikki thought about how they were here, side by side, so close that their knees could have touched, but at the same time, a wall of hidden secrets stood between them. Lumikki hadn’t told Lenka anything about Jiři, the man sent to kill her, or any of what Jiři had told her. Likewise, she was sure Lenka was hiding things from her.

  Once upon a time, there was a girl with a secret.

  Once upon a time, there were two girls with secrets they didn’t tell each other.

  They were from the same family, a family of secrets. Lumikki almost snorted out loud.

  “And your mother never talked about Adam?” Lumikki asked.

  “No. I already said that. I’d never met any of my relatives. My grandparents died before I was born. I didn’t even know that my grandfather had a brother, let alone that his brother had a son. I don’t understand why Mother never talked about them. She lived with them.”

  Lumikki’s ears perked up.

  “Your mother lived with the family? Before you were born?”

  “Yes. But then she left. I can’t think of any explanation other than that the darkness went into her. Why else would she have left such good people?”

  Lenka looked at Lumikki with wide eyes, as if Lumikki couldn’t possibly have an answer. Lumikki shuddered. If Lenka’s mother left the cult and cut off all contact with its members, she must have had a good reason. And then, when she died, they came and plucked her daughter like a ripe apple.

  “I asked Adam about it once, but he just said that the past is the past and I should forget Mother. He’s right. Mother belongs to my old life. The important thing is the future, not the past.”

  Lenka turned her face toward the sun, closing her eyes and smiling. She had that illuminated expression that made Lumikki so uneasy. She knew there was no reaching this part of Lenka.

  “Is there something special coming in the future?” Lumikki asked cautiously. “Maybe the near future?”