Chapter 5

He had driven to his father's place prepared to act like the grownup man he was, and tell his old man that he was a lying bastard. But when Paul Carter opened the door, he had forgotten all of his good intentions.

"You're engaged?!" he barked, shoving his father aside to enter the apartment. "You're getting married without telling me about it!?"

"Nice game, Luke, why don't you come in?" Paul asked dryly.

"Cut the crap! I just had a reporter ram her microphone in my face and ask me whether I'll give you my blessing!" He was more in the mood for a crucifixion right now.

Luke marched through his father's spacious apartment, opened the fridge, and grabbed a beer.

Paul Carter had followed him, and Luke registered the guilty look on his face. "So it's true?" he flared. "You've really gotten engaged?"

"Yes, it's true. And of course I would have told you, but it's just …"

"Does Mom know?" Luke twisted the bottle cap, but it wouldn't come off, and bit into his palm. Fancy beer that needed a bottle opener. He finally opened it with the help of the edge of the kitchen counter and his hand. "You're still legally married after all!"

"No, we're not."

Luke choked on his beer and coughed loudly. "What?"

"We got divorced a month ago, when she was here. She's already met Nadia – and she says she's happy for me."

He had told his mother, but not him?

"What the hell, Dad? Don't you think the detail is too important to keep it from me? Or were you scared that I couldn't handle my parents' divorce, after twenty years of separation?" His knuckles turned white as he clutched the sideboard.

"Calm down," his father said in the calm, collected voice the lawyer usually reserved for his clients.

"I don't want to calm down right now! You're getting married, and you didn't tell me shit!"

"I would have told you …"

"You would? When, for fuck's sake? After it has already been a US Weekly headline?"

He started to swear in German and kept shaking his head, and then he chugged down half his beer quickly. His father had only a rudimentary command of the German language, which made it highly likely that he didn't recognize all of the swear words. He did understand the crudest bits though.

"If your mom was here, she'd cut out your tongue."

"Mom would at least have told me if she was getting married!"

His father looked him straight in the eye now. "I'm sorry you didn't hear it from me first. I asked you to come by tonight to tell you. How could I know that the press would beat me to it? I only proposed to her yesterday. This didn't go according to plan …"

Luke didn't care what his father's plan had been. "But you must have known her before!"

Paul nodded slowly.

"Of course I have," he said, somewhat sobered, "and believe me, I wanted to tell you earlier, but she didn't want to shout it from the rooftops. You are constantly in the limelight, so she was worried it would be touted by the press right away."

Luke snorted and drank the rest of his beer. "Worked out really well, your little scheme, did it? And … who is this woman anyway? How long have you known her?"

"A little more than six months …"

"Six months? And you're ready to marry her? Dad, are you crazy? I sure hope you're getting a pre-nup and–"

"Luke." His father took the empty bottle from his hand, which Luke had just used to gesticulate wildly, and set it down out of reach.

"I understand that you're angry. I'd have preferred to tell you in person. But as I said, we had good reason not to say anything …"

"Because of the goddamned press? Because you thought I would babble to the press?"

"Of course not!" Paul protested, his voice now raised as well. "But have you ever read a paper within the last two years? They run an article about you virtually every day! Those reporters have set their sights on you, and no matter how hard you try to keep your private life private – it obviously doesn't work. That is why I didn't tell you anything yet!"

Luke pressed his lips together. The press circled him like vultures their carrion. But that didn't change the fact that he couldn't simply calm down and move on. He barely had any people he could rely on. If he could no longer trust his own dad to be honest with him … who was left that he could trust?

"You haven't answered my earlier question," he ground out. "Can you trust her? Are you sure she doesn't just want to use you? And did you draft a pre-nup …"

Paul Carter sighed and went around the counter. He was only an inch or two shorter than his son, so he could easily put his hands on Luke's shoulders.

"Luke, I know that you have zero faith in relationships. Maybe it's because people were only with you, or wanted to be your friend if they thought they could get a piece of your cake. You're deeply suspicious, even wary of people who tell you they love you – and I sincerely hope that that will change someday soon. But the fact is that I love Nadia and she loves me. Deeply and sincerely. And I really wish that you and she will get to know each other soon."

Luke uttered a dry laugh. "So you became a liar and a psychologist at the same time?"

Paul gave him a pleading look. "I didn't lie to you – and yes, she would really like to meet you."

Of course she would. Everyone wanted to meet him. She would have to wait her fucking turn! "You know what, Dad? Why don't you start reading US Weekly? I'm going to let the reporters know once I'm ready to meet your fiancée!"

And with that, he left the apartment without looking back.

***

"Oh God, I love that you're finally here, I love it, I love it, I love it!"

Emma's sister hugged her so tightly that she could hardly breathe. But she didn't care. She had missed Milla so badly, she didn't care about the skeptical glances one of the airport security guards was giving them. He would yell at them any moment now, "Move!", or something like that. If sisterly love was really too dangerous for the U.S. of A., she didn't want anything to do with the country.

"Will I have to listen to you ladies go on in German from now on, with no chance of following what you're saying?" Milla's husband Steve piped up from behind the stroller.

Milla laughed and pulled away from her sister. "Your loss, my dear. You didn't want to learn my language. You'll have to live with the consequences."

He groaned and pulled Emma into an embrace to welcome her. "I did want to learn German, trust me," he whispered. "And I'm sure I'd have persisted if it wasn't so damn hard."

Emma hugged her brother-in-law, whose cow-lick blond hair, glasses, shirt and tie made him look like the prototypical American banker, which in fact he was.

"You would not," his wife chimed in and socked him in the ribs. She turned to her sister and added in German: "And it's better that way, too, because I can always point out the cute guys to you, without him noticing anything."

Emma grinned. "Alright, you keep your eyes open, sister. But first of all," she said, turning to face the stroller and squatting before it, "I have to gobble up my nephew, because he is just that sweet! You're going to be a real heartbreaker one day, won't you? Yeah, I can see it in your eyes."

She kissed his soft baby cheek. "He really looks like you, Milla." She had switched back to English, for she didn't want to irritate Steve unnecessarily. "And I'm really glad you decided against naming him Ron Ronsen. He'll have an easier time in high school as Randy Ronsen."

Milla rolled her eyes. "Nobody has an easy time in high school. That's an international rule. I think it's even set down in the constitution and in our Grundgesetz."

"I'm sure it is," Emma chuckled. "The American Dream: Life, Liberty, the Pursuit of Happiness, plus the same psychological damage for everyone, administered through high school attendance. I think that is written down in the Declaration of Independence."

Steve shook his head and grabbed Emma's suitcase, heading for the exit. "I see, education and history are taken very seriously in Germany."

"You're a fine one to talk; you don't even know when the Wall came down!" Emma defended her home country.

"Isn't it sufficient to know that there was a wall at all?"

Milla shook her head in a show of pity, took over the stroller, and kissed her husband on the cheek. "Honey, don't let Angela Merkel hear that."

"Angela who?"

She sighed. "Let's go already."

Milla and Steve had parked in a lot not too far away from the exit, but Emma wouldn't have cared if she'd had to walk ten miles. The sun was shining, she was with her sister, and tomorrow she'd start her new job, which would earn her a third more each month than what she had received back in Germany. Life was beautiful, and so was Philadelphia.

When they reached the car, Milla's husband hefted her baggage into the trunk, before buckling Randy into his gigantic car seat. Emma was happy to get into the backseat with him. She had a mere five months to teach him to say, "I love you, Aunt Emma." She should start right away, she thought.

Her sister's remark, namely that it would take another while before Randy was ready to speak in complete sentences, didn't faze Emma at all. Randy possessed the necessary intelligence, she could see that. And she'd be satisfied with something along the lines of "Da, da, Emma."

"Where do we need to go?" Steve demanded as he turned onto Route 95.

Emma fished a small piece of paper from her pocket, and tried to read her own handwriting. "12, Paddington Road, Philadelphia," she read, "that's where they have a furnished apartment waiting for me. They said all I should bring was myself."

"You didn't bring anything else from Germany? No furniture or anything?" Steve asked and stepped on the gas.

"Well, yes, I brought a suitcase full of clothes … and myself."

The rest of the drive, Milla kept talking about all the things they'd need to do together, and she kept slipping into German, and Steve kept clearing his throat to remind her that he wanted to be part of their conversation. His wife excused herself saying that she never had a chance to speak her native tongue.

Emma thought that that was a rather weak argument, since her sister taught German at Philadelphia University, but she didn't say anything.

They stopped at the address she'd given them, and Milla apologized for the umpteenth time, because she and Steve couldn't come in and help Emma get settled. They had an appointment with a realtor to see a house, and they couldn't let that go by.

Emma knew the tiny apartment they were living in, so she hoped and prayed they would find something more spacious soon. Preferably before Milla and Steve were at each other's throat in their cramped surroundings.

"I'll come by your office at lunch time tomorrow, and we can eat together," Milla promised, before the car pulled away from the curb again, and Emma was alone.

But she didn't feel lonely. She felt free! She had always wanted to spend a longer period abroad, and she could barely believe that she was really here now – and she would even make a nice amount of money!

She cheerfully breathed in the stuffy air, which didn't feel half as unhealthy as she had imagined it would. Then she went up to the front door of the tall building that bore the number twelve, and unlocked it. The bell panel gave away that the house held about a dozen apartments, and when Emma pushed the door open and stepped into the hallway, one of the other occupants approached her from the other end of it.

A woman in her late thirties, the mousy brown hair fashionably bobbed, gave her the once-over, nosy and suspicious at the same time. She wrinkled her nose. "You must be the new neighbor."

Emma smiled and nodded. "I'm Emma Sander, hi."

"And I'm late, so could you please get out of the way with your suitcase?"

"Oh, I'm sorry." Emma stepped aside quickly, letting the door fall shut behind the harried-looking lady.

Well. She guessed her welcome party would be held another day …

But even that could not put a dent in her exuberant mood, and when she saw her apartment, which was approximately half the size of her place in Cologne, but possessed a lot of atmosphere, she felt that she had finally really arrived.

Nothing could throw her off track in this town.