Shard of Glass | Page 3

blend in.
My mother cried each night and I knew she kept a picture of my father
in her bag, but the face she turned to me every morning was as hard as
my piece of glass. She never asked me if I wanted our fugitive
existence, but the idea of letting them catch us didn't occur to me until
much later. She never really told me what had happened that day she
wore the yellow dress, but I knew my father and his family were
chasing us because of something she had done. Somehow, it didn't
matter. I loved my father, but he had been like a smiling shadow my
whole life--not a real person, just a grainy four-color facsimile. A man
who sent me fancy clothes and jewelry on my birthday under fake
names, visited me and my mother at strange times of night and then
vanished for months on end. No, I loved my father, but my mother
owned my soul. How could it have been otherwise?
Three weeks after we arrived in Luxembourg, my mother and I huddled
together for warmth in a reeking alley behind an expensive French
restaurant. The window on the side of the building was a bit too high
for either of us, but I could see through a gap in the curtains when she
hoisted me up. Inside, a man who looked sort of like my father, only
with less hair and a bigger belly, was slowly sipping a glass of
fifty-franc wine as he watched the front door with lidded eyes.
"Is he still there?" she whispered.
"On his third glass of wine," I said, softly as I could. "The waiter keeps
coming back, but he won't order any food. I think he's waiting for

someone."
"Us, probably. Just like that damned family to spend a small fortune
feeding us before they throw us in jail."
"Who is he?" I asked.
I could practically hear my mother's frown. "Your uncle," she said,
finally. "Henry. He's part of the family business."
"What's the family business?"
"Money. Politics. Mostly money." She sounded bitter, but I didn't quite
understand why. Despite the confusion of the last few weeks, the glow
of adventure somehow still hadn't worn off for me. I guess that I
couldn't imagine my father actually hurting us. The danger was
something only my mother understood--she knew what she had taken,
and how much they would risk to take it back.
She had spied him around the corner when we were walking back from
the market. We had cowered behind the gigantic loaves in a baker's
window as he walked past and into a restaurant. Luckily, Mom had
insisted we take our bags with us wherever we went--if they had traced
us all the way to Luxembourg City, then surely they would have found
our tiny second-floor apartment by now. They would expect us to flee
the city, and were probably watching every possible method of
transportation for just that eventuality. So, we hid in the safest place we
could think of--behind the restaurant where my uncle waited for us,
sipping his expensive wine.
"Leah," my mom whispered, "my shoulders are getting tired. I'm going
to put you down, okay?"
The door in the front of the restaurant opened. "No, wait!" I said. Two
men who didn't look anything like my father brushed straight past the
maitre d' and sat down in front of my uncle. The two newcomers spoke
quietly for a few moments, but whatever they said made my uncle
livid. He slammed his glass on the table, and some wine sloshed over

the rim. He stood up, tossed a few francs on the red-stained table cloth,
and stalked out of the restaurant.
"Dammit!" he cursed as he stepped out onto the sidewalk. "I always
told Charles that pet bitch of his would get him in trouble. You're sure
there was no sign of them? Or the glass? Did you check the rooms?"
They had stopped in front of the alleyway, the three of them making
long shadows in the flickering streetlights. My mother and I pressed
ourselves against the wall.
"I turned the rooms upside down," one of the other men said. "Had to
pay the landlady for two nights just so she wouldn't call the cops. I
mean, somebody'd obviously been there, but they didn't leave anything
behind. Not even a toothbrush."
"Did you show the landlady their pictures?" my uncle asked.
The second man nodded. "She wasn't sure about the woman, but she
said it looked like the same girl."
My hands slid to my jacket pocket. The coat my mom had bought for
me in Luxembourg was made for someone much bigger, and its
pockets were deep enough for even the fat book to fit inside
comfortably.