“Not now,” Katharina said. “The rooms upstairs need to be swept first.” If Jutta’s visit had to do with something Annamarie had done, she wanted to hear it alone.
Annamarie pouted but went up the stairs. When Katharina heard the sound of the broom against the floors, she said, “Girls are not always easy.”
“Boys are much easier,” Jutta agreed, then looked down at her fork again. “Or maybe not. Speaking of boys, well, men really—”
“Wait. Are you and Hans finally getting married?”
Jutta looked taken aback, but blushed. “This isn’t about Hans and me.”
“No? Then what?” The coffee began percolating, and Katharina rose to fetch the enamel blue pot from the stove. She poured them each a cup and served a slice of cake apiece.
When she sat down to face Jutta again, the woman’s eyes darted to the door. Katharina picked up her cup, frowning.
“I have a guest,” Jutta said. “He came in yesterday. Someone you know. He’s here again.”
Katharina’s set her cup back on the table and folded her hands into her lap. “Florian said there were men about the dam here. He didn’t say they were from the ministry.” She locked eyes with the older woman, a whole history drifting between them like a river of hot tar. “Does Florian know he’s here?”
“I don’t think so. Imagine! Angelo Grimani checked in to my inn. My inn. Well, I didn’t know what to do, Katharina.”
“What did you do then?”
Jutta’s eyes flashed with amusement. “What else? I put him into Widow Winkler’s old room.”
Had this been any other situation, Katharina would have laughed. Jutta putting someone into a room rumoured to be haunted was almost enough for her to reach out to her old friend and perhaps start anew. But Katharina’s head reeled with the news.
“Signor Grimani,” Katharina said, the name heavy in her mouth. “He never responded to my letter all those years ago. The one Opa made me write to him.”
“Your grandfather made you write that letter?”
Katharina nodded. When had she begun keeping secrets from Jutta? Probably long before Jutta had said Angelo Grimani’s name aloud to Florian.
“My grandfather wanted me to give Signor Grimani the name of a geologist in Munich,” she explained. “Opa said that what I’d done—saving Signor Grimani’s life, I mean—could help.” It was so long ago, all of this. How careful she had been to put it behind her, to make herself believe that what she and Florian had built together was indestructible, this little world of theirs. As if her history, and Annamarie’s, had begun with Florian’s arrival in the valley.
She realised Jutta was waiting for her to finish. “I guess somehow I’d thought I had managed—in my own way—to convince Signor Grimani with that letter. It’s vain really. I don’t know why I would think I’d have been so important.”
“You thought your letter had put an end to the reservoir? The money ran out, child, that’s all. Then that catastrophe with the Gleno reservoir happened. Yes, Angelo Grimani put a stop to it, but I don’t believe it was ever meant to be permanent. Either way, Katharina, your minister is back, and this time, we really must do something to prevent his plans.”
Her minister. Katharina looked hard at Jutta. “What do you want from me?”
“Me? I expect nothing.” She was twisting the top pewter button of her navy-blue cardigan. A few more good wrenches, and the button would pop off.
Katharina knew she had not come up all this way just to tell her that Angelo Grimani was back in the valley. Heat rose up from her belly to her throat, an anger that threatened tears. “If you really must know, Opa also wanted me to contact him, for me to blackmail him to stop the project. Use the fact that I had saved Angelo’s life as a way to get him to work for our cause. Use the fact that I’d gone to Angelo…” Her cheeks flared, realising she’d been using his Christian name. Just as in the past, she was revealing to Jutta her earlier intimacy to the man.
Grief rippled through her. “Opa knew,” Katharina said. “That’s what that letter was about. Opa knew.”
“Child, you’ll have to make your peace with that. If your grandfather knew or suspected what had gone on with that man—”
“Shhh!” Katharina put a finger to her lips and rolled her eyes to the ceiling. Annamarie’s footsteps sounded along the hall and into the room above them, followed by the steady sweeping along the wooden floors.
Jutta lowered her voice. “You know what we say. People always meet twice. I thought you’d rather hear it from me that he’s back than accidentally run into him in town.” She seemed to make up her mind about something and stood up. She hadn’t touched the coffee and cake. Neither of them had.
Katharina accompanied her to the door, but before Jutta went out, she looked up at the ceiling, where they could still hear Annamarie working. “She saw them.”
“When? How?”
“She was at the inn yesterday. Was there when they arrived,” Jutta said. “There’s a boy, Katharina.”
“A boy?”
“He’s about Annamarie’s age.” She put a hand on Katharina’s lower arm. “Think about it. Grimani has money. He has the power. If you tell him about—”
Katharina jerked away from her touch. “You have some nerve. You want me to hold this over his head, blackmail him the same way Opa wanted me to. I won’t do it, Jutta. I won’t. For as much as I love all of you, and I know that the Nogglers will lose their land, and you, your inn, and the Planggers, and”—she threw her arms out—“all of you down there! I know that if they turn those lakes into reservoirs, all of you will lose everything you have left. What
