The secret had grown too big. No thanks to Jutta, it had begun choking them. Angelo Grimani had woven his way back into their lives like a swallowwort, strangling them. Telling Florian all about it now would feel as if she’d been lying to him all this time. Telling her version now would be as futile as cutting back the swallowwort, because it would invade their lives more aggressively than ever. Florian could use a name, a real person, against her or, God forbid, against Annamarie.
She heard her husband yelp, then mutter a curse as he shook his razor. She turned back to the chicken, where Hund had left the feet and was licking at the bloodied stump.
“I said stop that,” she scolded the dog.
Florian went back into the house, the mirror swinging from the wooden spigot.
“Mama, eggs,” Annamarie said, showing her the little basket. “Uova.”
“That’s right,” Katharina said, picking one. “Uova. That’s Italian. Now, go feed the rabbits, and then we have to get to the barn.”
When she was finished hanging up the chicken, she went to the stalls and greeted Hans, who was clearing the sheep stall of manure. She picked up an empty milk tin. Florian was already at Resi, so she moved on to the stall across from him as Annamarie went to find the kittens in the back of the barn.
“Cut yourself shaving earlier?” she asked.
Florian grunted.
“Bad?”
“Razor broke.”
“I’ll get a new one next time I’m in town.”
“No need. Got another one.”
Hans must have lent him one. She clenched her stiff hands before putting salve on them, and heard Florian pick up the tin to weigh and record it before moving to Alma.
“Katharina?”
She looked up. He was half-hidden by the cow.
“I have to bring that rifle into town today.”
“No, Florian.”
“I have to, Katharina.” He gave her a hard look, and she was angry that he was hiding behind the cow to tell her this.
“Fine, Florian. Do what you need to.”
“Would you rather I go to jail?”
She shook her head, trying to swallow the tears that were rising in her throat. “I said, do what you need to. But I’m not coming with you.”
“Didn’t expect you to,” he muttered, and disappeared behind Alma’s flank.
They worked like that, in stony silence, until they’d made their way down the entire row of stalls. She went to Resi to scratch the cow’s ears. That action always comforted Katharina, but now she only felt sad. She remembered when Resi was born, the wolf in the yard, the one she’d shot with Opa’s rifle.
She left Resi when Florian passed by, and still avoiding her husband, she pitched fresh hay into the troughs. She was almost finished when Bernd started crying from his basket. By the time she reached him, he was already trying to crawl out. Florian came out to line up the milk tins, face down, back turned. Walking away again.
Katharina led the children into the kitchen and set out their breakfast. Hans came in, hands and beard dripping from his washing, and he took a seat between Bernd and Annamarie. Bernd pushed himself against Hans’s arm, reaching for the bread, and Hans broke off a piece for him before filling his bowl with whey.
At the stove, Katharina wanted to ask where Florian was, when her husband walked in, touched her shoulder, and moved back to the door.
“Come with me,” was all he said.
She followed him outside and into the workshop between the house and the stable. This was about the rifle. She braced herself for a fight, deciding there would only be one winner anyway, and it was not going to be she. It was never she.
Florian’s carpenter tools were hung neatly on the wall as always, but underneath on the worktable, Katharina recognised her mother’s pine chest and, next to that, her father’s shaving kit and a sheet of paper. It was the drawing her mother had made of the swallows and the nest, the one Katharina had coloured in so that her father could paint them onto the panels. She looked at Florian, surprised.
“I needed a razor, so I looked for your father’s old kit, and I found this,” he said, lifting the drawing. “I remember you telling me about this, but I didn’t know you still had it.”
“I forgot I’d put it in there.”
He lowered the sheet of paper and turned to the box. She wrapped her arms around herself. There was something else. He’d found Angelo. He must have. Her heart tumbled against her ribs.
His voice was abnormally loud as he reached behind the chest. “I wanted to surprise you and paint the box, so I emptied it straight away.”
When he was facing her again, in both his hands was the bloodstained shirt and, on top of it, the blank cream envelope containing the letter she’d written for Annamarie, or for herself, to make sense of it all. It was still sealed.
Angry tears rose, and the image of her husband swam before her.
Softly, he said, “Sometimes, the answers come without having to ask.” He held her things out to her as if they would explode.
She shook her head, refusing to take them from him, and swiped at the first traitor tear. “Jutta told you.”
“No, she did not. I’ll admit, Katharina, I did ask her, but she wouldn’t tell me anything. She said it was not her secret to tell.” He looked down, his hands trembling as if the shirt and the letter weighed heavily in them. “I’m ashamed, Katharina.”
He was ashamed?
“I pride
