“Mama, you’ll like this. It’s about our old home.”
And Anna did. End.
They sat in silence. Outside, a tram rattled past—the same model that once crossed from East to West. Anna realized she had been building a museum of her mother’s past, room by careful room.
“You’ve been my Alex,” Margret whispered. “The curtains. The neighbor’s voice on the phone. The old toothpaste brand.”
Every Sunday, Anna drove to the nursing home on the outskirts of Berlin. She brought fruit, old photographs, and a laptop. Her mother, Margret, had been an East German party official’s wife—stiff-backed, proud, and increasingly lost in a fog of time.
Anna had prepared for this. “Because sometimes we need to read what we hear. To believe it.”
Anna’s throat closed. “I wanted to protect you.”
