The Stolen Child(107)

through the bushes. I thought the horrid little sisters had followed me, but then a third movement in the

brush unsettled me. I reached for my car keys and nearly deserted that dark place, but having come so

far, I knocked on the front door.

An elegant woman with a thick mane of white hair swung open the door. Dressed simply in crisp

linen, she stood tall and erect in the doorway, her eyes bright and searching, and welcomed me into her

home. "Henry Day, any trouble finding the place?" New England echoed faintly in her voice. "Come in,

come in."

Mrs. Blake had an ageless charm, a physical presence and manner that put others right at ease. To

gain this interview, I had lied to her, told her that I had gone to high school with her son Brian and that

our class was organiz-ing a reunion  , tracking down classmates who had moved away. At her insis-tence,

we chatted over a lunch she had prepared, and she gave me the full update on Brian, his wife and two

children, all that he had accomplished over the years. Our egg-salad sandwiches lasted longer than her

report, and I at-tempted to steer the conversation around to my ulterior motive.

"So, Mrs. Ungerland ..."

"Call me Eileen. I haven't been Mrs. Ungerland for years. Not since my first husband passed away.

And then the unfortunate Mr. Blake met with his strange accident with the pitchfork. They call me 'the

black widow' behind my back, those awful children."

"A witch, actually ... I'm so sorry, Eileen. About both your husbands, I mean."

"Well, you shouldn't be. I married Mr. Blake for his money, God rest his soul. And as for Mr.

Ungerland, he was much, much older than I, and he was ..." She pointed to her temple with a long, thin

finger.

"I went to Catholic elementary school and only met Brian in ninth grade. What was he like growing

up?"

Her face brightened, and she stood up so quickly that I thought she would topple over. "Would you

like to see pictures?"

At every stage of his life—from the day he was born through grade school—Brian Ungerland

looked as if he could be my son. His resemblance to Edward was uncanny, the same features, posture,

even the way they ate corn on the cob or threw a ball. As we paged through the album, my conviction

increased with each image.

"Brian used to tell me pretty wild family stories," I said. "About the Ungerlands, I mean, the German

ones."

"Did he tell you about Opa Josef? His grandpa Joe? Of course, Brian was still a baby when he

passed away, but I remember him. He was a crazy loon. They all were."

"They came over from Germany, right?"

She sat back in her chair, sorting through her memories. "It is a sad, sad story, that family."

"Sad? In what way?"

"There was Crazy Joe, my father-in-law. He lived with us when we were first married, ages ago.

We kept him in a room off the attic. Oh, he must have been ninety, maybe one hundred years old, and

he would rant and rave about things that weren't there. Spooks, things like that, as if something were

coming to get him, poor dear. And muttering about his younger brother, Gustav, claiming that he wasn't

really his brother at all and that the real Gustav had been stolen away by der Wechselbalgen.

Changelings. My husband said it was because of the sister. If I remember, the sister died on the passage

over from Germany, and that plunged the whole family into grief. And they never re-covered. Even

Josef, still imagining spirits after all those years."

The room began to feel unusually warm, and my stomach churned. My head hurt.

"Let me think, yes, there was the mama, and the papa, another poor man. Abram was his name.

And the brothers. I don't know anything about the older one; he died in the Civil War at Gettysburg. But

there was Josef who was a bachelor until he was pushing fifty, and then there's the idiot brother, the

youngest one. Such a sad family."

"Idiot? What do you mean, idiot?"

"That's not what they call it nowadays, but back then, that's what they said. They went on and on

about how wonderfully he could play the piano, but it was all a trick of the mind. He was what they

would call an idiot savant. Gustav was his name, poor child. Could play like Chopin, Josef claimed, but

was otherwise quiet and extremely introverted. Maybe he was autistic, if they had such a thing back

then."

The blood rushed to my head and I began to feel faint.

"Or maybe highly strung. But after the incident with the so-called changelings, he even stopped

playing the piano and completely withdrew, never said another word for the rest of his life, and he lived

to be an old nun too. They say the father went mad when Gustav stopped playing the music and started