This time, Hannah asked real questions.
What were the Christmas markets like?
What did the food taste like?
What did it feel like to stand inside cities where some buildings had existed for eight hundred years?
“Does being somewhere that old make you feel insignificant?” Hannah asked.
“No.”
Linda thought carefully.
“It makes me feel placed. Like I’m part of something much longer than my own life.”
Hannah considered that.
“I’ve never been to Europe.”
“You should go.”
“I keep meaning to.”
Linda smiled.
“I spent eight years meaning to.”
She looked directly at Hannah.
“Meaning to go somewhere and actually going are two very different things.”
There was a small silence.
Then Mark asked:
“Tell us about Patricia.”
So Linda did.
She told them about Patricia beginning again at sixty-eight.
Gerald and his history lessons.
Greta.
The hidden Alpine town.
Robert on the airplane.
Mark smiled.
“You made friends.”
“I did.”
“You always told me you weren’t good at making friends.”
“I’m not very good at it here.”
“Why?”
Linda thought.
“History.”
Hannah frowned.
“What do you mean?”
“At home, everyone already knows who you’re supposed to be. The mother. The widow. The person who makes the pie. The woman who’s been managing alone for eight years.”
She smiled.
“When you travel, nobody knows any of that. You’re simply whoever you are at that particular moment.”
“That sounds freeing,” Hannah said.
“It was.”
Hannah became quiet.
Then, unexpectedly, she said:
“Sometimes I feel that way too.”
Mark looked at her.
Linda waited.
“Like everyone already decided who I am,” Hannah continued. “And sometimes I’m just performing the part.”
She seemed almost surprised by her own honesty.
Linda nodded.
