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Jane’s father announced their moves as if they were dinner menus. Pasta with mushrooms. Now, Berlin.

He had a better offer (always) from a fine company. Transferring from her London school into a school in Germany would be no problem. (He would probably feel contented for a year before he got restless again.)

You will like Berlin, I promise, he said.

He had also said this about Dublin, London.

Berlin was spacious, expansive—air cleanly cold in winter, clear in summer. Students rode free on subways, buses. Studied English. Summer light lasted so long a day felt double-wide. Lots of art and music, he said. Everything you love. I promise.

Jane said, You always promise.

Maybe when your mother died young, you became instantly old. A double-wide child, mother and baby mixed together.

Your mother loved Berlin, he said. Her favorite city.

What?

Sometimes Jane resented her father’s guarded style. Why didn’t you tell me before?

He stared out the window at the trees they were saying good-bye to.

We weren’t there. What good would it have done?

In the airplane Jane watched her father drinking a German beer and eating chips. He didn’t look that old, really. A bit handsome, with his messy dark mop, sad eyes. She thought, It is not his fault she died. Maybe he thinks he can leave his sadness behind him and that is why we keep moving.

*  *  *  *  *

Germany felt bright, awake. Green fields, silver windmills. The apartment in Berlin would be ready in a month. Till then Jane and her father were moving into a hotel called Bleibtreu. We will navigate the city, her father said. Discreet, gray façade, Bleibtreustrasse Number 31.

While her father did paperwork at the desk, she looked around.

There didn’t seem to be a door. Three passageways, a bar, a deli, shop selling antique roses, courtyard with long blue tiled table surrounded by a moat of glittering blue chips. Two metal dog sculptures, one sitting in a cement chair.

Where was she?

On the wall, hearts with words, Stay True. White chair sculpture with lights under feet. Glass art, painted plates.

Daddy? she said, which she rarely said. How did you find this place?

Grinning. He had navigated.

They rode excitedly up the glass elevator to Three. Two low white beds, soft cotton sheeting, puffy comforters. Mysterious wooden ladders on the walls next to the beds. Jane unpacked immediately. Placed her favorite picture of her mother on a rung—face turned up, as if to breeze or gentle rain. She turned the handles of the wooden windows, pulled them open.

Across the street, a man watered geraniums on a balcony.

Her father said, Do you want to go with me to check in at the office?

She shook her head.

Okay, feel free, go out, look around.

Jane always felt free. Didn’t she?

*  *  *  *  *

She ran down the stairs, circled the block. Then three, collecting details for return. Windows lined with checkered shirts, burgundy peonies in buckets. And what was this large pink pipe supported by purple poles?

Ponytailed women in dressy clothes and high heels riding bicycles, miniature dogs in their baskets. Couples gripping hands. Tattoos, canes, studded purses, prams, clicking and humming of the planet. Something snazzy in the pace here.

Jane stared at a street sign, Kurfürstendamm, wondering, Will a name that long ever feel familiar in my head? Sometimes it felt thrilling to be surrounded by someone else’s language. Wrapping “bitte” and “danke” around her tongue felt hopeful. “Handgebügelt” scrawled in a window; pastry shop, frilled cakes; Deutsche Post. Stationery stores made her happy. Her father had slipped her twenty Euros—she bought a notebook, blue paper, envelopes, a fistful of thick German pencils with nice dots on them, a wooden sharpener. . . .

By the time she’d rounded many blocks, not even counting anymore, a hunger for absorption overtook her, warm waves on a beach, desire for colors and sounds. How long since she had felt this? A couple approached, pointing at a map, speaking slow English, as if they thought she were German. Though she had arrived only hours before, she could answer. Kurfürstendamm! Pointed, and they smiled—Americans. She never let on that she spoke English.

She stepped back into the hotel, sharpened, stirred. Eyes more vivid. Rocklike handles on cupboards. Deep white-tiled soaking tub. Could she be happy here?

Stay true. True to her Scottish accent? Her mother’s smile that never left her? The green rims of land where they used to walk?

She thought, This beautiful city Berlin never wanted to be rubble. Before the war, proud of its boulevards, leafy parks, bustling trains—this city never wished to be struck by bombs, ruined, none of it.

And look at it now. Restored.

*  *  *  *  *

Her father had not wanted to be a widower.

Most importantly, her mother had not wanted to die.

But when something happened that you did not want . . . later there might be a long avenue with a German name stuck to it. Ways you could turn.

Jane stared out the window. The watering man was gone now.

Sometimes after long sadness, you needed a new thought. Hold it awhile. Stay true to it. She thought, If I am true to my mother, what do I do? Lift my face up, as she did in this picture? Would she prefer I remain true to gloom?

Jane closed her eyes. A life could change in ten minutes. Then she stepped back toward the hallway, the quiet elevator, rode it down to blue stones in the moat and the colorful chairs placed at angles around the table, and thought, I’ll sit here a while. Watch people. There’s a man drinking a ginger ale with an orange slice in it.

Already I could write a letter, and I haven’t been here a day yet.

When my dad comes back, I’ll see a different dad.