“This is a pleasant surprise,” she said, as if they were alone. “It’s been such a long time. Your circles and mine hardly touch these days. We spent my husband’s last days in Rome.” She clasped his hand with both of hers but spoke to Chiara now. “Your son was just here. He said you’ll be attending the wake?” She gazed at each of them for confirmation.
“I’m sorry,” Chiara started. “We’re not able to—”
“I’m expected back at the ministry,” Angelo explained.
Gina squeezed both of his hands, her strength surprising, the grasp bordering on painful. In a low voice she said, “I am very sorry to hear that. Then we must make an effort to meet again soon, Minister Grimani. You and I have much catching up to do. I do hope we do so before another tragedy strikes us.”
She released him, and before he could say goodbye, her hand was already in someone else’s.
Chapter 9
Graun’s Head, August 1937
S omething pressed on Annamarie, the air so still she imagined she was in a box instead of in the hut on Graun’s Head. In the darkness, she felt Manuel’s cool legs pressed up against hers, and Bernd’s arm was thrown over her chest. When the temperatures dropped on the alp, the boys always crowded in on her.
She sat up and leaned into Manuel to cover his bare feet. Through the window, all she saw was the pitch black of night and heard just the gentlest tinkling of bells as a cow moved in its meadow bed. She smelled sun-baked wood and alpine flowers. Their room contained just one wooden platform from one wall to the next, straw mattresses lined up on top to fit up to six, though she and the boys were the only ones here tonight.
When her brothers shifted around her, the smell of dirt and stable wafted from underneath the covers. “Did you not wash up before going to bed?”
Bernd grunted. “Jop. Did you?” He jerked the scratchy blanket from her.
Manuel giggled. He pressed up against Annamarie, tugging on the other end of his lost covers. “Bernd just throws water on himself, like Papa, and thinks he’s done.”
“Do not.”
“Do too.”
Annamarie pinched both of their arms, and they yelped, awake now and finally moving off of her.
“You can’t talk about Papa that way,” Bernd grumbled.
“You two need to get yourselves scrubbed up this morning,” Annamarie said, sounding just like her mother. She felt her brothers settle back into sleep, but soon enough Manuel cuddled into her again, as if he were still a toddler. He applied the advantages of the baby of the family whenever it suited him. Annamarie sighed as she watched his foot inch over her leg in Bernd’s direction, and before she could stop him, Manuel hit his target.
“Stop it,” Bernd shouted.
“He’s just playing,” Annamarie said and kicked Manuel’s legs off hers. His feet were probably ingrained with dirt too.
The boys became more aggressive, and Annamarie raised her knees so as to prevent them from reaching one another. Before giving Bernd any satisfaction, she whispered into Manuel’s ear, “Stop teasing your brother.” Under his layers of dirt, she smelled grass and milk, almost like a baby’s smell.
When the squirming and physical bickering increased, she slammed both arms on top of the covers, like axes. “If you two don’t quit now, you can go to either ends of the room. I mean it.”
Bernd threw the covers off his shoulders, but then a flash of lightning outside made them all pause. Manuel jerked next to her, diving into her shoulder and sending a handful of blanket to land on her cheek. The sky outside rumbled, followed by a violent crack of thunder. And there was Bernd, scrunched at the foot of the bed.
“Just like a scared rabbit,” Manuel called. His own voice was muffled from under the covers.
“Brat!”
“Shut your mouth,” Manuel taunted.
Bernd yanked the covers off both Manuel and her. “You shut your mouth.”
Manuel moved to tackle their brother at Annamarie’s feet. She’d had enough. With both legs, she pushed at the boys until Manuel squealed, and she heard him thud to the floor.
Bernd had not been as easy to budge. He sprawled across Annamarie’s legs, his knee jabbing into her thighs, and taunted, “Manuel fell! Manuel fell!”
Even she laughed, and just as she was about to get up to help her baby brother, Bernd passed wind, long and loud.
“Disgusting,” she shouted.
Both boys howled. She shoved Bernd again, and he landed somewhere near or on top of Manuel. Against the stench, she held her hand over her mouth and laughed so hard she started crying. Before their noises could bring Mother and Papa, she yanked her brothers by the collars of their bedclothes and dragged them back onto the mattresses. They’d have to go out soon enough and round up the frightened herd. There was no sense rushing the inevitable.
As the three of them settled in for a last few minutes of shuteye, it occurred to Annamarie that she would miss the boys terribly when she left.
***
T he hours of rocking in the train had lulled her to sleep. When she awoke, the landscape had changed some, the mountains a little softer, with vineyards and apple orchards on the slopes of a much-wider valley. In the haze of her sleep was still the picture of her mother’s sad face, and Annamarie imagined her parents were already coming after her. She’d been envisioning the scene the whole way south: her mother kneading dough with tears streaming down her face, her father angry and perhaps reprimanding himself for either being too easy on Annamarie or for using the switch on her at all. Then there would be that passive silence Annamarie hated—that repression of thoughts and things one really wanted to say. They’d say nothing about the money
