Much later my father came up and knocked. At first I didn’t answer, but when he spoke and I knew it was him, I got up and opened the door.
“Can I come in?” he asked. I nodded. He came into the room, dragged the chair out from behind the door, and sat down heavily on it. I sat on the bed and looked at him, through eyes that felt like puffy slits from crying.
“Ach, Pia.” My father sounded tired. “I’m so sorry.”
I trembled. “Papa, we’re not really going to England, are we?”
He sighed. “Doch. I wish I could tell you otherwise.”
“I don’t want to go.”
“And I don’t want you to go, Schätzchen.”
“Then can’t I stay here-with you?”
“I don’t think so.” My father’s words were uncertain but they had the ring of doom in them.
“Why not?”
“It’s not settled yet, but your mother wants you to go with her.”
“She can’t make me.”
“Well, maybe she can’t, but the courts can. She wants-Pia, do you know what custody is?”
I shook my head.
“It means that one of the parents is allowed to take the children with them… after a divorce.”
“A divorce?”
My father nodded; he did not need to explain that one.
“Why…?” I began, but I couldn’t get any further than that. The question wouldn’t shape itself.
“It’s grown-ups’ stuff,” said my father sadly. He opened his arms and I got to my feet and went to be hugged. The feel of the hardness of his shoulder through his shirt as I laid my head on it was somehow reassuring. I sniffed noisily into the thick fabric.
“Papa, Charles and Chloe laugh at me.”
My father said nothing, but his arms tightened around me.
“And I don’t want to go to school in England.” I ground my forehead into his shoulder. “And I hate English food, even Oma Warner’s.”
I felt my father’s shoulders heaving and for a moment I wondered what I had said that was so funny. Then I pulled back and looked at his face. And that was only the second time in my life that I had seen my father cry; the first was when Oma Kristel died.