“I’m waiting for her.” Recognising Annamarie’s wrap, she pointed to Florian’s hand. “Did she forget it again?”
He sighed before sitting on the bed. He lay the woollen grey wrap across his knees. It was the wrap Jutta had made for Katharina’s dying mother.
Katharina picked out Annamarie’s christening gown from the box and held it for Florian to see. “Do you remember how she cried?”
“I remember her pushing against you when you nursed her. You always said she was testing her boundaries.”
“She always wanted to get away, somehow,” she said.
Her husband held her gaze.
“I think she knows. I think she’s out there looking for him right now. Hannelore once told me—”
“The old midwife?”
Katharina nodded. “She once told me the soul always knows when something’s missing.”
He looked down at his hands and dug at a fingernail. “What could be missing? I gave her everything any father would.”
She reached out and put a hand on his knee.
“She won’t find what she’s looking for out there,” Florian said.
“She’ll come home. She always does.” Katharina could not explain that Annamarie also had a half brother their daughter knew nothing about and perhaps that was the missing piece in their daughter’s life.
Her husband rose and lay the wrap on the mattress. “I’ll wait for her in the barn.” His hand rested lightly on the garment. “I’ve never hit her, never taken the switch to her, but I told her last time that if she did this to Bernd again, or to us, if she just leaves without permission, she’s going to push me to do it.”
She let him go without further comment. He’d spoken out of fear. This was difficult for him, knowing that Angelo Grimani was in the valley, knowing they’d have to tell Annamarie the truth. It would be up to them—Florian and her—to decide when that would be. At least, she’d do everything to make sure that was the case.
Back at the chest, she reached deep down and removed Angelo Grimani’s blood-stained shirt. Katharina’s emotions compounded with the memory of her choices. What path would the storm take if she told Annamarie about Angelo? Katharina was not ruthless enough to cause heartache for the sake of unburdening her own conscience.
Angelo had been like a tomcat that morning. One that had fought his share of battles: scarred, lean, and cautious, as if he’d wanted to slink past her and into a dark alley for cover. Despite that, there had been something delicate about him, a thin force field that Katharina knew she could easily penetrate by telling him what he did not want to hear.
She stared out the window, and something crept into her middle, hardened. Denial then, she thought, was Angelo’s protective shield. Which meant he would have repressed any fond recollection of her. She lifted the linen cloth to her nose and inhaled. It smelled of pine with just a hint of sheep’s-milk soap. Sights and sounds were always immediate, but smell—scents lingering in the air—revealed events long past.
The memories from that night with him washed over her: the heat, the awkwardness, the fear, and because of that fear, there had been tenderness.
She stood and went to the window, the shirt still pressed to her cheek.
What she and Angelo Grimani had done—there had been nothing wrong with it. Nothing at all. And she knew that if she were to get him to stay true to his word, to make certain that he was personally invested in the safety and future of this valley, then she would clearly have to tell him that Annamarie was his daughter. How, though, without hurting everyone else? Without devastating Florian, the man who had always loved Katharina above everything.
She placed the shirt back into the chest. Further below the pile of cloth reminiscences were her father’s trousers, the standard regimental britches Katharina coveted. She unfolded them and held them up to her waist, then draped them on the bed frame. She undid the buttons of her dress and slipped it off. From the reflection in the window, she saw the blurred outline of herself. Her stomach was no longer flat. Her breasts carried the marks of five children borne from her. Her hips and buttocks were rounder. She had exactly three long, white marks on the side of her right thigh and two on the left. Florian sometimes traced his finger over them. “One for each child,” he would say. Even the two who knew nothing of this world today.
She barely managed to get into the trousers. Whereas sixteen years ago they had been loose on her, now the men’s cut did not fit her womanly shape. She’d worn them to go hunting, to—she guessed—stay close to her father after he was long gone. He’d never returned to Tyrolean soil. She’d also rebelled a little by wearing them. The villagers used to treat her like an alien, and so she had decided to dress the part, give them something to talk about—and why not?
She left the last two buttons undone, the fabric stretched into horizontal pleats across her hips and thighs. The britches were cut for a man’s strong, straight limbs. They were cut for a man who fought in the trenches for his homeland, slept in the mud in them, and protected his women and his country. They were the trousers of a father. And she? She had become a mother. Nothing rebellious about that. Her affair with Angelo Grimani had quickly deflated any rebellion left in her. She had only been desperate to hide from the villagers when she discovered her pregnancy.
When she had told Florian that Angelo was in the valley, he’d reacted with a vehemence she’d never witnessed in him before,
