The Lost Wife by Alyson Richman Page A

hearing bits and pieces of their heated discussions. I loathe to admit it now, but I was still a self-absorbed young woman at the time. I did not want to believe that my family was suffering and that our life was beginning to unravel. I only wanted to distract myself. And so I would go to my room and try to think of something that made me happy. I thought of Josef.

     
    Tensions began to escalate throughout Europe that June and my parents welcomed the news when I told them that Věruška’s family had invited me to spend two weeks at their summer home in Karlovy Vary. I was overjoyed to learn that Josef would be escorting us on the train.
    Although my parents were happy that I’d have a distraction, Marta was not so pleased.
    “Do you really have to go?” Marta was twelve now and had become particularly sullen when not included in what she perceived as my entertainment. I was folding my dresses as neatly as I could because I didn’t want them to be creased.
    “Marta.” I sighed. “You would be bored silly. We’re probably just going to take our sketchpads and draw by the river all afternoon.”
    “Josef will be there.” She stuck out her tongue. “That’s why you want to go, I know it.”
    I snapped my leather valise shut and walked past Marta, tugging playfully on one of her braids.
    “It’s only for two weeks,” I reassured her. “Take good care of Mama and Papa, and don’t eat too much chocolate.” I blew up my cheeks like a fat toddler and winked at her. I remember how her pale skin reddened with fury in response.

     
    At the station, Věruška and her brother stood together. Josef was in a pale yellow suit; Věruška’s sundress was poppy red. When she saw me she leaped to greet me and thrust her arm through mine.
    Josef stood there watching us. His eyes were firmly on me. When I met his gaze, he turned his eyes in the direction of my suitcase. Without asking, he took it and carried it in the direction of the porter, who had a trolley filled with his and Věruška’s things.
    The ride to Karlovy Vary would take three hours by train. Věruška’s parents had a house in the country, only a short ride from the famed spa where one drank the curative waters.
    It was my first trip there. “Take a cure for us,” Papa had said sweetly. “You’ll come back even more beautiful.” My mother looked up at me from her needlepoint when Papa said this, and I had the distinct feeling that she was trying to memorize the way I looked, as though her young daughter was becoming a young woman before her very eyes.

     
    I had packed a small sketchpad, a tin of vine charcoal, and some pastels so I could sketch the countryside during my two weeks at their house.
    After nibbling on smoked fish sandwiches and some tea at the station’s café, the three of us headed back to the first-class compartment where the porter was already waiting with our things.
    Josef unbuttoned his jacket and folded it on top of our suitcases on the upper rack.
    It was unseasonably warm, even for the month of June, and I envied the casual way Josef had taken off his coat. There was little I could do about the heat, and I was jealous that I could not also lose a layer. Certainly my dress was not too heavy, but with my slip and stockings, and the closeness in the compartment, I worried I might start to perspire. The thought of stains spreading underneath my arms was horrifying. I wanted to sit there in my dress like a medieval Madonna, not a tattered street urchin with moisture under my arms. My plan to attract Josef was coming undone.
    We still had another twenty minutes to wait before the train departed for our long trip, and I hoped that Josef would open the window. Instead, he just sat across from Věruška and me, his legs crossed and his fingers absentmindedly running through his hair.
    “Josef!” Věruška complained shortly to her brother. “Why don’t you please pull the window down?” He stood up and forced it open. The noises