He stood in the middle of the hut, his only company the smells of briny water and musty life jackets. He thought of all the fights he’d been having since the Gleno, and with it came the remorse for that night at the Laurin with Gina. He should never have taken his frustration out on her. Not like he had. He could have had an ally in her, a friend, and had ruined it with his lust, had revealed the worst of himself to her.
How had it all gotten that far? He thought back to the beginning: meeting Chiara, marrying her, settling down with her family, gaining Pietro’s trust and then the job. The instructions and the journey to the Reschen Valley. The lakes. The attack on him by that maniac smuggler.
The girl.
That was where this had all started. She was at the root of all his problems: his reoccurring panic, that nightmare about the lake. She was a whole other world away, so what did she hold over him to make him care so much? He owed her for saving his life, certainly, and the project was probably morally wrong, but he was no longer convinced that the Reschen Valley was worth the greatest conflict between him and the Colonel. Or losing his wife over it.
There was a hollow thud outside. He waited for the door to open, for Gina to call to him, and when that did not happen, listened for more clues. The thudding returned again, pounding with each wave. Someone had not pulled a tread boat far enough up shore.
It had to be long past eleven by now. Maybe she had become distracted, more interested in someone else’s cause. He’d been a fool to come here.
He opened the door to a solitary, moonlit beach. He let it fall closed behind him and walked to where he and his family had spent their day. It served Gina right if she arrived now, left to wonder if he’d come at all. Just past the rows of abandoned loungers, he turned and walked backwards, watching for movement near the boathouse. She would see him if she looked.
He stumbled, and a sharp pain ripped through his heel. When he grabbed his foot, the right shoe fell into a shallow pool of water. Cursing, he retrieved it and shook it off, his foot still throbbing. Looking for what had hurt him, he recognised the pit. The Colonel’s dam.
The waves had washed most of it away, but there was a dark object in the sand. When he bent over it, Angelo saw the rock Marco had used as the church. St Katharina.
Shame had prevented him from doing many of the right things. All the decisions he had taken since the Reschen Valley had shaped him into nothing he had imagined for himself. Redemption was too far to reach from where he now stood. When he remembered the offer the Colonel had made to relocate Stefano, Angelo laughed. At once he wished he could be one of those men his father was so good at making disappear. Or like that employee of his who’d gone off to America to be, he’d said, far from the eyes of his patriarchs.
He turned to face the boathouse again, but he knew she was not there. Even if Gina had come, he could not have told her any of this. He’d already lied to her. She would only be another person he would disappoint.
He picked up Marco’s rock, carried it far from the sea, and set it straight up in the sand. Beneath the hotel’s veranda again, he searched out the windows and balcony of his room. The lights were still on.
Chiara, as promised, was waiting for him.
EXTRACT from BOLZANO
Chapter 1
Reschen Valley, April 1937
T he grasses were just ankle high as Annamarie ran through the meadow. Her mother’s last words, You’re a young woman—behave like one, dispersed on the spring wind.
Being a young lady meant no longer playing house but keeping house. It meant everyone else had only one plan for her future, one wrought in tradition and old-fashioned beliefs. And a man. Another farmer.
She imagined her family discovering that she’d fled the Hof again. Mother would smell the scorched milk, find the kitchen empty, and move to the doorway, the ends of her headscarf flapping like a frantic truce flag in the Föhn. She would ask Bernd, as he pitched manure, if he’d seen his older sister, and Bernd would complain that Annamarie had again shirked her chores to find escape in running. Manuel could look up from the garden and still see her.
“Annamarie,” her baby brother might call. “Wait for me.”
She waited for no one. She had no time to wait. Her father, cleaning out the milk pails, would hear of it, and he would be resigned. “She’s sixteen,” she imagined him saying, as if that should explain his position on things. That thought made her laugh, and every impact with the spongy ground created a gasp, a sound not unlike sobbing.
Yes, she was sixteen, and she was running because she still could.
***
D own the back road leading from Arlund to the valley below, she anticipated the tree roots, her arms outstretched with each hazardous leap. At the wayward crucifix, she stopped long enough to make the sign of the cross. Graun’s Head, the peak that marked where their summer alp was, was still covered with snow, and as she continued to run down the road, she felt the rest of the alpine mountains closing over her. On the valley floor, the lakes shimmered in the spring sun, still crusted with ice and snow on the shady sides. The air was warmer when she reached
