A novel about a grandfather, a little girl, and the things love remembers when the mind cannot.
The first thing Karl Adler taught his granddaughter about buildings was that every good house needed a way out.
Emma was five years old then, small enough to stand beneath his drafting table without bending her head. She wore yellow Wellington boots regardless of the weather and carried a stuffed rabbit whose left ear had been repaired twice.
They were sitting on the floor of Karl’s study in Dresden, surrounded by wooden blocks.
Emma had spent most of the morning constructing a tower with six windows, no doors, and a roof that extended so far beyond the walls it looked as though it might crush the occupants.
Karl examined it with professional seriousness.
“Very impressive.”
Emma smiled.
“Is it a castle?”
“It’s a castle if you say it is.”
“It’s a castle.”
“Then I have one concern.”
She looked at him suspiciously.
“What?”
“How are the people supposed to get inside?”
Emma studied her construction.
“They can climb.”
“Up the walls?”
“Yes.”
“Every day?”
She nodded.
Karl considered this.
“What about when they’re carrying shopping?”
Emma picked up a wooden figure and placed it on the roof.
“They can fly.”
“Ah. Well, that changes things.”
She laughed.
Karl had been an architect for more than forty years. He had designed schools, apartment buildings, community centres, and several public facilities in and around Dresden. In retirement, he still approached ordinary objects as though they were problems that required a drawing.
He could not look at a staircase without considering the height of the risers. He had strong opinions about poorly placed windows, narrow corridors, and the modern tendency to build kitchens without adequate storage.
His granddaughter was the only person who took these opinions entirely seriously.
She moved two blocks aside, creating an entrance.
“There.”
Karl leaned forward.
“Better.”
“Now they can go inside.”
“Exactly.”
She placed the wooden figure near the entrance.
Then she moved it back outside.
“Grandpa?”
“Yes?”
“What if they forget where the door is?”
Karl looked at her.
“Then we make it easier to find.”
“How?”
He selected a red block and placed it beside the opening.
“A landmark. Something they can recognise.”
Emma studied it.
“Like the red door at our house?”
“Precisely.”
She smiled.
Karl watched her move the little figure toward the red block.
He had no reason to remember that conversation more clearly than the countless others they had during her visits.
At eighty-four, he still trusted his mind.
He could explain the complicated geometry of a staircase he had designed in 1976. He remembered where structural supports had been placed in buildings that no longer existed. He could name the year the Frauenkirche’s reconstruction had been completed and tell Emma why the darker stones in its exterior looked different from the newer ones.
He had begun forgetting appointments, occasionally, and once misplaced his glasses inside the freezer.
But those seemed like ordinary inconveniences of growing old.
He could still read a drawing.
He could still recognise his family.
He could still find his way home.
By the following winter, he would no longer be certain of the last of those things.
The Adler family lived in a three-storey house on a quiet residential street in Dresden’s Blasewitz district.
It was a handsome old building, with pale cream walls, tall windows, and a red front door that Karl had repainted himself every few years until his daughter-in-law insisted that he leave the ladders to someone younger.
The interior had high ceilings, wooden floors, and a staircase wide enough for two people to pass comfortably.
Karl had bought the house with his wife, Ingrid, in 1983.
At the time, it had needed considerable work. The roof leaked, the electrical wiring was outdated, and one of the upstairs rooms had been badly damaged by moisture.
Ingrid thought they were making a terrible mistake.
Karl assured her that the house had excellent bones.
She told him excellent bones were of little comfort when rainwater was dripping into the bedroom.
They argued about the renovation for nearly two years.
Then they spent the next thirty years refusing to move anywhere else.
Their son, Matthias, grew up in the house. He left for university, found work in Dresden, married a woman named Anna, and eventually returned with his young family after Ingrid’s death.
By then, Karl had been living alone for almost three years.
He insisted that he was managing perfectly well.
Matthias found unpaid electricity bills in a drawer, food past its use-by date in the refrigerator, and a cracked step on the back staircase that his father had apparently been planning to repair for six months.
The arguments began immediately.
“I’m not helpless,” Karl said.
“I didn’t say you were.”
“Then stop looking through my cupboards.”
Matthias stood beside the kitchen table holding three overdue letters.
“Dad, the electricity company has written to you twice.”
“I was going to pay them.”
“When?”
Karl looked at the letters.
“I had other things to do.”
Matthias knew better than to ask what those things were.
His father had always disliked being questioned about matters he considered private.
After several difficult conversations, Karl agreed to let Matthias, Anna, and Emma move into the house.
He described the arrangement as temporary.
Anna privately suspected it would become permanent.
She was right.
The change suited Emma immediately.
She had spent much of her early childhood visiting the house, usually staying for an afternoon while her parents worked. Living there felt like being granted permanent access to a museum where she was allowed to touch nearly everything.
