Daughters had always been the ones sent away to collect other means of income. For as long as Katharina could think back, girls left in droves to work seasonal jobs in the hotels and kitchens in places like Bozen or Meran. There was nothing odd about sending the girls away. Hers, however, had run away. That was a different matter altogether. That was the fault of the Italians. That was the unspoken accusation. Yet Katharina felt it was better that Annamarie had taken her fate into her own hands rather than being sent away from the Hof, something Katharina never dreamt of doing to her daughter.
“Annamarie,” she whispered to her reflection in the window. “You should have been patient. We would have helped you. I would have helped you.”
When she heard Florian calling for her, she swiped her damp cheeks, irritated by the tears, then climbed back to the road.
“So how do you like it?” he asked her when she caught up to him. He’d pushed his hat back on his head, revealing a shining brow and a few strands of curly brown hair. It had thinned over the years and had taken on white and silver streaks, with an occasional patch that had completely discoloured. A wave of tenderness washed over her, and also a sense of comfort. They were slowly growing old together, and it built within her a determined protectiveness around the vulnerability of it. Annamarie had proven that their children would make their own way in the world. Quite possibly the boys too would leave Florian and her. Well, maybe not Bernd.
“It’s a sweet house,” she said to her husband. She gathered her skirt into her hand. The tips of her brown boots were dusty from the trail. “Hans will be happy there.”
“You’ve been crying.”
She nodded, and he touched her shoulder. They walked a while beside their cows before she said, “Life has always been hard here. The people who complain about their children running off think they’re just impatient, uninterested in scratching a means together, but as parents, can we really blame them? Don’t we want something better for our offspring?”
“The way things are developing,” Florian said slowly, “maybe our children are spoiled for choice.”
She thought about that. “We always have choices, don’t we? I could have returned to Innsbruck, you know, after my mother died.”
“Yes, but you didn’t.”
“What did I have in Innsbruck besides relatives I did not know living in a cramped apartment in a big city?”
“You would have studied.” He winked at her. “And maybe married well.”
Katharina smiled a little. “I cannot imagine having whiled away my time shopping and hosting tea parties or some such nonsense.” She took his hand. “I love it here, with you and my…” She took in a deep breath to stop the tears from coming again. “My family.”
“She will send word. And when she does, I will go find her.” He pecked her cheek and then picked up his pace to join the boys at the front of the herd.
Before them, Katharina could just make out the rooftops of their farm. The barn lined up against the mountain. Behind it were the wide, broad fields and the Karlinbach flowing to the lake. Adjacent to the barn was the spacious wood house with its whitewashed foundation. To the south and west of the house, facing the valley, she could make out the patch of garden and the chicken coop. Annamarie should have been tending to that garden. A few metres later and Katharina could make out the dots of red and white geraniums in the window boxes off the small balcony that faced the farmyard. And then the wooden sign above the door. Katharinahof. She smiled at the memory of Florian giving her that sign. When Opa had died and the deed was still with the bank, Florian had sold his mother’s house in Nuremberg and paid off their debts. Although Katharina could not legally own property as a woman—as she had hoped, as Opa had tried to arrange—Florian had renamed the Thalerhof into the Katharinahof. It was hers as much as his, if not more.
Hans’s old farmhouse made up one of the three farms in the hamlet. Katharinahof and the Ritsch’s place were the other two. Hans’s house had been seized by the Farmer’s Bank and rented out to migrant workers. Humiliating for Hans, a dark warning to the rest of the valley.
The Ritsches’ Hof, located just behind Katharinahof, contained a strong, sturdy house with crisscrossed beams, its only eyesore the muddy patch for the pig. The sow was already in the pen, brought down a few weeks earlier from the alp. Beyond Arlund, Katharina could just make out the lakes and houses that were the villages of Graun and Reschen and the other four surrounding hamlets. And then it was all gone, hidden from view by a hill as they descended into the gorge. But even this gorge, the alp, the wilderness, this was a part of their home, and Katharina tried to imagine Annamarie’s need to leave it, but couldn’t.
After her mother’s death, Katharina had only had her grandfather, and anytime she’d thought of abandoning him and the farm, her heart had hurt. She had long before fallen in love with everything in the valley: the green pastures, the white-capped peaks, the sound of the Karlinbach bubbling past on
