A note of exasperation crept into Martin Dekker’s voice. “Miss Peperkamp, if you’re not concerned-”

“I didn’t say that.” Wilhelmina was used to people taking offense at her. Although she wasn’t a cruel or uncaring woman, she lacked subtlety and had long ago quit pretending to have any. She was a direct woman, and that was that. “Have you checked his apartment? He isn’t dead in his bed, is he?”

The Belgian was taken aback by her bluntness. “I checked. He isn’t there.”

“Humph. He hasn’t missed a day of work in years, I’m sure.”

“That’s what I was thinking.”

She sighed, and once more she found herself fighting images of Hendrik de Geer. She’d been fighting them for forty years. Did Johannes’s disappearance have anything to do with Hendrik’s presence at Lincoln’s Center, Rachel’s death, this business with Senator Ryder? Achh, she thought, annoyed, and threw the crumpled leaf into the trash.

“Well, perhaps I should come to Antwerp and see what my brother’s about.”

The landlord agreed and hung up, much cheered to have the matter resting on someone else’s shoulders. It’s so often that way, Wilhelmina thought, and so often the shoulders are mine.

Juliana walked down the quiet, narrow streets of Delftshaven, trying to let the crisp air dispel the all-too-familiar numbness and disorientation of jet lag. She had decided to follow Matthew Stark to Antwerp, but via Rotterdam and Aunt Willie. She didn’t know her way around Antwerp, didn’t speak the language, and didn’t have the slightest idea how to get to Uncle Johannes’s apartment-all, certainly, handicaps shared by Matthew. But she preferred to be one step ahead of him, not shoulder to shoulder and definitely not two or three behind. She wanted to get to Uncle Johannes before he did.

She’d headed straight from her mother’s bakeshop to the airport and had gotten a flight to Schiphol Airport, arriving early that morning. It was a simple matter to get a taxi to Delftshaven, where she’d decided to walk a couple of blocks to clear her head before knocking on her aunt’s door. She’d slept some on the plane, having done what she could about her pink hair in its stainless steel bathroom. If anyone had recognized her, her reputation would have been shot to hell, but, as Matthew Stark could tell her, odds were she wouldn’t be.

She put him out of her mind as she rang her aunt’s doorbell. Wilhelmina Peperkamp wasn’t the most lovable person, but Juliana sensed she was utterly reliable.

The old Dutchwoman answered her door in a shapeless wool dress, heavy socks, and sturdy shoes. Her hair was cut short in no particular style, and she wore no cosmetics.

“Juliana?” Her blue eyes crinkled as she squinted at her niece standing on the front stoop. “That’s you, isn’t it? What’s happened to your hair?”

Juliana dragged her fingers through her hair, stiff with mousse and sticking out in odd places after the long flight, but she didn’t bother to indulge Aunt Willie with an explanation. Wilhelmina was stubborn, sour, difficult, and critical. Nothing ever pleased her. Without any effort, she could make people feel frivolous and silly. She would never understand J.J. Pepper. Suddenly Juliana had her doubts about having come. Aunt Willie could easily tell her she was being ridiculous and send her home.

“Yes, it’s me,” Juliana said, and let it go at that. What the hell, she thought. She was here.

“Come in, then,” Wilhelmina replied without surprise, and opened the door, eyeing her niece’s green velvet dress and the smudged eye makeup. “I had a dress like that when I was younger. But I think it suits you better.”

A compliment? Juliana didn’t know what to make of that, remembering how her aunt had snored through her Dutch premiere seven years ago and afterward had admitted as much.

“Of course,” Aunt Willie went on, “that was fifty years ago or more. But I suppose if we old women hadn’t turned in our clothes to the secondhand shops when we were younger, what would crazy young people have to wear today?”

Juliana surprised herself by laughing. “I was waiting for the other shoe to fall.”

“Pardon?”

“Never mind.”

According to her mother and Juliana’s own limited experience with her aunt, Wilhelmina Peperkamp seldom gave a compliment without some kind of stab. It seemed she didn’t want a person to think she was actually being nice-or maybe she just worried about giving anyone a swelled head. Juliana supposed it was just as well that the world’s second largest ocean separated the Falls and Aunt Willie, although the distance hadn’t prevented her from criticizing her younger sister. She’d expressed in no uncertain terms her irritation with Catharina for not teaching her daughter Dutch. That Juliana had had little interest in learning Dutch-something she regretted later, but not at age eight-didn’t faze Aunt Willie.

“You don’t seem surprised to see me,” Juliana said.

“Surprise is for the young.”

Aunt Willie’s apartment was small and tidy, consisting of a living room, a kitchen, and a bedroom. The furniture was old but well-kept, and there were plants in most of the windows. Juliana followed her stocky old aunt, so familiar and yet a stranger, into the little kitchen.

“I’m packing cheese sandwiches,” Wilhelmina said, going to the counter. She sliced some thin pieces of cheese off a wedge of aged Gouda.

Juliana sat at the table, covered with a faded but still serviceable white cloth, and fingered one of a line of scrubbed clay pots. They were old but immaculate.

“Are you going somewhere?” she asked.

“Antwerp.”

“But that’s where I’m-” Catching herself, Juliana didn’t finish.

Wihelmina nibbled on a slice of cheese. “That’s where you’re what? Juliana, I don’t like playing games. I prefer directness.”

Avoiding an answer, Juliana took a slice of cheese when her aunt offered it on the end of her knife. She wasn’t fond of aged Gouda; it was too strong, too much like eating mold. But it gave her a moment to think: if she told Aunt Willie everything straight off, she might in turn not tell her niece a damn thing. She was, after all, her mother’s older sister.

“Why are you going to Antwerp?” she asked casually. “You told me you haven’t been to New York to visit because you hate to travel.”

“Antwerp isn’t as far as New York.” Wilhelmina carefully wrapped the cheese back up and returned it to the refrigerator. “But it’s true, I don’t care to travel. Once a year I visit friends in Aalsmeer, and they take me to the flower festivals and feed me too much because they pity me.”

Juliana couldn’t hide her surprise. “Why would they pity you?”

Wilhelmina laughed. “Because I’m old and alone. Always when I return home, one of my plants is wilted or dead. Do you have plants?”

“No. Goldfish.”

“Fish? Do you eat them?”

“Of course not. They’re pets.”

“Sentimental Americans,” Wilhelmina muttered, and resumed her lunch-making. She got a half-dozen cookies from a tin and fixed a thermos of hot tea.

Juliana watched, fascinated. “Isn’t Antwerp just a couple of hours from Rotterdam by train?”

“About ninety minutes.” She screwed the top down on the thermos. “Since the war, I always carry food with me. Once you’ve known hunger…” She waved a hand, not completing the thought. “Does your mother know you’re here?”

“No,” Juliana said guiltily. “I came sort of on the spur of the moment.”

“You should call her and tell her where you are.”

“She won’t like it.”

“Of course not, she’s your mother.”

Juliana looked up at her old aunt and winced suddenly at her own rudeness. It had only just occurred to her that she should have offered to help pack lunch. But Aunt Willie always seemed so self-sufficient. “Have you talked to Mother recently?”

“Yes. She called to tell me about Rachel Stein.”