Lauren Fox - Send for Me

also by lauren fox

Days of Awe

Friends Like Us

Still Life with Husband

this is a borzoi book published by alfred a. knopf

Copyright © 2021 by Lauren Fox

All rights reserved. Published in the United States by Alfred A. Knopf, a division of Penguin Random House LLC, New York, and distributed in Canada by Penguin Random House Canada Limited, Toronto.

www.aaknopf.com

Knopf, Borzoi Books, and the colophon are registered trademarks of Penguin Random House LLC.

library of congress cataloging-in-publication data

Names: Fox, Lauren, author.

Title: Send for me / Lauren Fox.

Description: First edition. | New York : Alfred A. Knopf, 2021.

Identifiers: lccn 2020017934 (print) | lccn 2020017935 (ebook) | isbn 9781101947807 (hardcover) | isbn 9781101947814 (epub)

Subjects: gsafd: Historical fiction. | Love stories.

Classification: lcc ps3606.o95536 s46 2021 (print) | lcc ps3606.o95536 (ebook) | ddc 813/.6—dc23

lc record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/​2020017934

lc ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/​2020017935

Ebook ISBN 9781101947814

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

Cover photograph: TopFoto

Cover design by Emily Mahon

ep_prh_5.6.1_c0_r0

Contents

Cover

Also by Lauren Fox

Title Page

Copyright

Dedication

Section One

Section Two

Section Three

Section Four

Section Five

Author’s Note

Acknowledgments

A Note About the Author

For my parents

and my daughters

Section One

I can hardly speak.

It starts with the panic, the sound of sharp knocking. The pounding on Annelise’s door, a crash in her skull, jolting her from sleep. They’re coming. Her heart slams, and she sits up, blind in the darkness. Her arms reach out. Where is the baby? Fear floods her lungs. She’s drowning.

They’re coming. Breathe. Hold the baby close, keep her quiet.

Is there something else in the churning flood of terror? In the squeeze of panic, the slightest slackening, relief? She’s been waiting so long for this moment, dread her constant companion, and now it’s here. Whatever horror is about to befall her, she won’t have to fear it any longer.

In the room, silent now, she strains to hear. Her heart is pounding so hard her body is thrumming, her hands trembling. Is that her husband next to her, snoring softly? Is that the warm, reassuring shape of him? They will take him, too. They’ll take all of it, everything and everyone she has ever loved. In an instant. A flash.

—

Years will pass, a long, surprising slant of light, and this terror will abate. She will pick her daughter up from school, stand in her kitchen with her hands on her hips, sip from a glass in the evening, slip under smooth sheets. But this will always be her frozen moment, the definition of her days. They will always be pounding on the door in the middle of the night. They will always be coming.

An hour doesn’t pass that I don’t think about you.

There is so much work to do. Toil is a constant in her life, the ongoing story of her years. In fact, Klara takes some comfort in its predictability, the way that a Sunday afternoon of polishing silver or washing floors can ease her nerves and stretch her mind into a pleasant blankness. And there is the undeniable satisfaction of a task completed, the pleasing order and gleam of a finely tended home.

Of course, there’s also the bakery: her pride and livelihood, yes, but oh, those dreadful dark mornings, the midday heat, the relentless specifics of the measurements, the unforgiving timing of every little thing. Some days she wakes up, dawn still hours away, and the exhaustion of the day before clings to her; she would want to roll over and go back to sleep if she allowed herself even to want that.

Klara can never let on, can never show this weakness. Annelise grouses and mutters and yawns dramatically, stares with sullen dark eyes and refuses to speak for hours, the spectacle of her displeasure so varied and colorful, she’s like a peacock of disdain.

She envies her daughter’s extravagance. But Klara can’t allow herself to crack. A word of complaint from her could loose an avalanche.

The precision of the bakery does, in a way, appeal to her nature, but it’s such a precarious balance. They can’t make any mistakes or they pay double, triple the price in lost revenue.

It changes a person—all of it, the tasks at hand. Klara has changed—of course she has! She’s become someone who is entirely focused on the work she must do. But that’s simply what it is to be a woman of good standing, to be alive in the world. It defies consideration.

Early in her marriage, there were mishaps: the loaf of bread that almost burned down the apartment, the boiled egg, forgotten, that exploded in the kitchen, sending bits of shell like shrapnel flying around the room. She cleaned up every last splinter before Annelise woke, before Julius came into the kitchen for coffee, and so only Klara herself, who accidentally knelt on a sharp chip of eggshell, was even slightly injured. She considers that injury…what? Not a punishment, exactly, but a reminder, the quick, searing pain a covenant. She learned not to make those mistakes, and in learning, she has become intolerant of laxity. And so, she has become intolerant of her own daughter.

How did such a girl come from her? Annelise was such an industrious child when she was small, so cheerful and competent, her dear little helper! But now she’s almost fifteen, and a fog has settled over her. Now Annelise is alternately dreamy and resentful, her work at the bakery halfhearted at best. She suffers no remorse when she leaves a domestic task half done, when (sighing) she mops around the kitchen table instead of underneath it, when she takes the feather duster to the living room and then, halfway through, for no apparent reason, simply abandons her task.

Yes, Klara adores her daughter, of course she does. It’s just that it is so much easier to adore her after the work is done. But this is the problem: the work is never done. And so, when Annelise complains—or when she mumbles under her breath, or dallies, or says, “I’ll do it in just a few minutes,” frustration blooms in Klara like deadly nightshade.

There was the warm Tuesday evening, just last week, when Klara dragged herself home after a long day at the bakery (poor, dependable Julius was still there, finishing the orders, closing the store). Klara trudged up the apartment stairs, expertly finessed the stubborn lock and opened the door to their apartment, and walked into an unholy, godforsaken mess: breakfast dishes still on the table (not even soaking in the sink), Annelise’s books and papers strewn about the living room, her cello propped against the wall, dressing gown on the floor like a puddle of pink cotton, an apple core on the piano. And there: Annelise herself, draped across the sofa, face slack and peaceful, asleep. Asleep!

Well. A flame ignited inside Klara; she could almost hear the pop. She had been at the bakery since four in the morning. Her ankles were swollen, her feet practically screaming out loud with pain. She was coated in sugar and flour and oil and sweat, a slick organic grime. She had asked Annelise to start dinner, to boil the potatoes and peel the carrots, but there was no sign of any work having been done. My God, she was bone-weary, and now this: hours ahead of her.