Just One Day 02: Just One Year Read Online Free PDF

around in her drawers until she pulls out a box of hard, chewy chocolates. I take one and let it melt on my tongue.
    She starts explaining what I’m signing, though it doesn’t matter because my signature is only required due to some bureaucratic formality. Yael never took Dutch citizenship, and Bram, who used to say, “God is in the details,” when it came to the meticulousness of his designs, apparently held the opposite view when it came to his personal affairs.
    All of which means my presence is necessary to finalize the sale and set up the various trusts. Marjolein prattles on as I sign and sign and sign again. Apparently Yael’s not being Dutch, and no longer residing here or in Israel either, but floating around like some stateless refugee, is actually a big tax boon for her. She sold the boat for seven hundred and seventeen thousand euros, Marjolein explains. A chunk goes to the government, but a much larger sum goes to us. By the end of business day tomorrow, one hundred thousand euros will be deposited into my bank account.
    As I sign, Marjolein keeps looking at me.
    “What?” I ask.
    “It’s just I forgot how much you look like him.”
    I pause, the pen poised over another line of legalese. Bram always used to say that though Yael was the strongest woman in the world, somehow his mild mannered genes clobbered her dark Israeli stock.
    “Sorry,” Marjolein says, back to business. “Where have you been staying since you got back? With Daniel?”
    Uncle Daniel? I haven’t seen him since the funeral, and before that only a handful of times. He lives overseas and rents out his flat. Why would I stay there?
    No, since I’ve been back it’s almost been like I am still on the traveler circuit. I’ve stuck to the tight radius around the train station, near the budget youth hostels and the disappearing red-light district. Partly this was a matter of necessity. I wasn’t sure I’d have enough money to last the few weeks, but somehow, my bank account hasn’t hit zero. I could’ve gone to stay with old family friends, but I don’t want anyone to know I’m back; I don’t want to revisit any of those places. I certainly haven’t gone anywhere near Nieuwe Prinsengracht.
    “With a friend,” I say vaguely.
    Marjolein misreads it. “Oh, with
a friend
. I see.”
    I give a half-guilty smile. Leaving people to jumped conclusions is sometimes simpler than explaining a complicated truth.
    “Be sure this friend doesn’t have an angry boyfriend.”
    “I’ll do my best,” I say.
    I finish signing the papers. “That’s that then,” she says. She opens her desk and pulls out a manila folder. “Here’s some mail. I’ve arranged for anything that goes to the boat to be forwarded here until you give me a new address.”
    “It might be a while.”
    “That’s okay.
I’m
not going anywhere.” Marjolein opens a cabinet and pulls out a bottle of Scotch and two shot glasses. “You just became a man of means. This deserves a drink.”
    Bram used to joke that as far as Marjolein was concerned, every time the minute hand of the clock passed twelve, it was cause for a drink. But I accept the shot glass.
    “What shall we toast?” she asks. “To new ventures? A new future.”
    I shake my head. “Let’s drink to the accidents.”
    I see the shock in her face, and I realize belatedly that this sounds like I’m talking about what happened to Bram, though that wasn’t so much an accident as a freak occurrence.
    But that’s not what I’m talking about. I’m talking about
our
accident. The one that created our family. Surely Marjolein must’ve heard the story. Bram loved to tell it. It was like a family origin myth, fairy tale, and lullaby all wrapped together:
    Bram and Daniel, driving through Israel in a Fiat that broke down constantly. It was broken down one day outside of the seaside town of Netanya and Bram was trying to fix it, when a soldier, rifle slung over the shoulder, cigarette dangling, ambled