in remembrance of me

“Who do you want to remember?” Heike asked.Helmut set the mug down and let out a breath. His eyes met hers; the brandy had cooled down now, and he was alone in his honesty, that soft and fragile thing.“My mother,” he said. That self-effacing smile still leaning against his lips. His gaze almost flickered away in self-preservation, but he took the risk of being braver tonight.“And you?” he said. “Whose story do you wish to know, Novak?”Maybe it was the drink talking. Maybe it was the poetry of the moment, the overwhelming earnestness of a young woman who will bury her face in his sweater and keep him in her lungs, who will betray him in order to save him, who does not know any of this will happen yet. But she was right now nineteen, and of all that she did not know, she knew the answer to this.“Yours,” Heike said.-A love story, a war story, and a ghost story, in three parts.