Hotel on Shadow Lake , livre ebook

Hotel On Shadow Lake
Daniela Tully


Legend Press Ltd, 107-111 Fleet Street, London, EC4A 2AB
info@legend-paperbooks.co.uk | www.legendpress.co.uk
Contents © Daniela Tully 2018
First published by Thomas Dunne Books, an imprint of St. Martin’s Press, Flatiron
Building, New York City, New York, United States
The right of the above author to be identified as the author of this work has been
asserted in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. British Library
Cataloguing in Publication Data available.
Print ISBN 978-1-7871988-9-0
Ebook ISBN 978-1-7871988-8-3
Set in Times. Printed in Bulgaria by Multiprint
Cover design by Simon Levy www.simonlevyassociates.co.uk
All characters, other than those clearly in the public domain, and place names, other
than those well-established such as towns and cities, are fictitious and any resemblance
is purely coincidental.
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in or
introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form, or by any means,
electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior
permission of the publisher. Any person who commits any unauthorised act in relation to
this publication may be liable to criminal prosecution and civil claims for damages.



Daniela Tully was born in Germany, but has lived all over the world, including
Mexico, New York and Dubai. As a film-maker she has been involved in projects
such as the critically-acclaimed Fair Game, box-office hits Contagion and The
Best Exotic Marigold Hotel, as well as the Oscar-winning The Help.
Hotel On Shadow Lake is her first novel and the rights have already been sold in
North America, Denmark, France, Italy and Serbia.



To my parents,
my husband,
and my newest love, my daughter MaeP r o l o g u e
The fall of the wall in Germany freed people, minds—and also long-lost secrets.
Secrets that otherwise would have remained buried. One came in the form of a
letter that arrived only a couple of weeks after sixteen-year-old Maya Wiesberg
had departed on her year abroad. The year Maya’s and her grandmother’s life
would change forever. “Do for me what I couldn’t,” Maya’s grandmother had
whispered in her ear when they parted ways at Munich Airport in 1990.
Maya never saw her grandmother again.M a r t h a
1 9 9 0
Martha Wiesberg was a woman of strict routine: Sunday, church; Monday, lunch
with her neighbor; Tuesday, book club; Wednesday, laundry press; Thursday,
aerobics—all at exactly the same time each week. Even a slight deviation was
destructive to people like Martha. She needed routine like air to breathe. Only
those who knew her very well—and they were far and few—knew why: it was her
way of numbing her mind, of silencing the past and calming the voices that would
remind her that life could have been so different, if only...
It was four thirty in the afternoon. The sunlight was fading slowly, the way it
does when the cold of early autumn starts to creep in. Martha had just fixed
herself her daily afternoon cup of coffee (decaf), sat down with her daily crossword
puzzle, and put on the television to watch her daily show. But her show wasn’t on.
Instead, a special program in honor of Germany’s recently created Tag der
Deutschen Einheit, “German Unity Day,” was airing. Martha immediately switched
off the TV.
The silence in the room engulfed her like a dark blanket, allowing the voices in
her head to become louder. This time it wasn’t simply the interruption of routine
that got to her; it was the most recent milestone in Germany’s history: the
reunification. Most of the population seemed happy about it, chatting about it in
interviews on the TV, about what had caused the separation in the first place: the
war, a dark chapter. For her part, Martha had moved on, or so she liked to think.
But of course, there were the memories. Her mind was just about to dive deeper
into that muddy lake of painful remembrances when the doorbell rang and jolted
her from her thoughts.
Martha opened the door and stared into the face of her postman, who had
been delivering the mail to her for over ten years. The setting sun was breaking
through the heavy clouds one last time, providing a backlight that gave him an
almost ethereal appearance.
“Grüß Gott, Frau Wiesberg,” he said with a nervous smile. Martha had never
liked that salutation. Greet God? Okay! She sang to herself, I will when I see him!
She had always felt a bit out of place in Munich. She was a Zugereiste, after all,
an “outsider” not born there.
“This is for you,” the postman said with outstretched arms. Martha had never
been too fond of him, partly because she suspected that he was reading her mail,
as letters would often arrive torn open on the side. His curiosity, too, had become
a staple in her diet of routine.
Martha took the letter, wondering why the man had bothered to ring the
doorbell rather than simply leave the letter in her mailbox. She was about to close
the door when he gently tugged her back.
“Yes?”
“Well, in the name of the German Federal Postal Services, we would like to
apologize very much for the delay.”
Confused, Martha studied the envelope, which had been—or appeared to have
been—ripped open by the transport, the letter sticking out one side. Adolf’s face in
the upper right corner looked out at her sternly. She brought the envelope closer
to her eyes. The postmark read December 27, 1944.“Are you joking?” she asked, and looked up at him.
“No, Frau Wiesberg, believe me, you are not the only one. There are a couple
of others who have also been affected.”
She gazed down again at the envelope, chills running up her arms. “Affected
by what?”
“The wall?” he said, surprised. “This letter was held up, and,” he started to
explain, “now that the wall has come down, it finally found its way to you.”
Martha was still staring at the letter when it slowly began to dawn on her.
“The German Post will of course not charge you any delivery fee.” He giggled,
and Martha glared at him.
“I mean the German Post stopped charging so little postage a long time ago,”
he went on.
“I understood that the first time. I just don’t find it at all funny,” she told him.
The grin on his face died suddenly, and he shuffled his feet nervously. “Is there
anything else I can do for you?” Martha asked impatiently.
“No, no. Have a great day.”
He was about to turn around when Martha heard him mumble something else.
“What now?” she barked.
“Who is Wolfgang Wiesberg?” Martha slammed the door.
Leaning against the inside of the door, she shut her eyes. She felt like a huge
wave was breaking over her. Memories were flowing back into her mind, making
her dizzy.
She stared at the handwriting on the envelope. Wolfgang Wiesberg. Her twin
brother. How she had suffered when she and Mother had been informed of his
death, when the war had ended. Yet she and Wolfgang hadn’t been close at the
end. In fact, she had probably wished his death at some point. What was there to
say, forty-six years later? Whatever was in that letter couldn’t turn back time,
couldn’t bring back the love that life had held in store for her only to have cruelly
snatched it away.
I don’t want to remember, I don’t want to remember, I don’t want to remember,
she told herself over and over again, like a mantra. Martha started to tremble
uncontrollably. She had always known that the secrets were only sleeping. Now
they had finally woken up and come back to haunt her.1 9 3 8
Up and down, open and close, they were moving in unison in the summer heat.
“Martha, you are always a little too fast.” The rebuke came from the beautiful
long-legged Else, her blond hair done into two thick braids. She was sitting next to
Martha on the floor, performing the same leg movements. From above, the circle
of young women was supposed to resemble a flower that opened and closed as it
reacted to sunlight. A gymnastic practice.
“Sorry,” Martha mumbled, her skin itchy under the shorts that barely covered
her upper thighs, and the white shirt of her uniform.
Else shook her head. “What are you always thinking about?”
Before Martha could respond, Else got up and stopped the music, then waited
for the other girls to gather around her. “We still have the chance to be selected to
perform for our Führer at the Party Day in Nuremberg in September! Clementine
zu Castell herself will soon come and assess us!” Else’s words were met with
great enthusiasm. Clementine zu Castell was the new Führerin of the organization
Faith and Beauty, which Hitler had initiated in January for all working women
between the ages of seventeen and twenty-one. Martha was the only one in the
group who didn’t join in on the cheers. Else’s eyes lingered on hers, just long
enough. But by the time Martha had forced herself to bring the palms of her hands
together, it was too late, and her clapping got lost in the midst of the departing
girls.
As she walked over to her bike, Else caught up with her. “I ask myself every
time why you keep coming to these meetings,” she hissed at Martha. “You know
you don’t have to.”
“I know,” Martha said to Else as she mounted her bike. “I’ll see you at
Traudl’s.”
She sensed Else’s eyes following her as she drove out of