Edith stares at her hands, the veins that run over her slender wrist. She has pale skin; it neither burns nor turns freckled in the sun. As if she were kept under glass.

She interrupts his thoughts: “He wishes you would confide in him.”

“Ah, I see,” says Josef, trying to buy some time.

“Can you do that?” she asks.

What can he say to her? Sure, I’ll do it? Again he is silent for far too long. Edith’s body tenses up; her fingers intertwine. He almost feels bad for her. Now it’s clear to him that she’s under instructions from Carl to ask him. And she doesn’t want to go back to him empty-handed.

“I can’t confide in him because I myself don’t know what happened.”

She looks at him in disbelief, yes, almost angrily. “Did you not have enough time to think it all over when you were in prison?”

He leans back, smiling, sneering a bit at her question. “You can’t think freely in prison.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

All he says is “Hmm” and rests his arm on the bench behind her, which makes Edith slide forward a bit.

“Look, Edith, I’m not one of those people who go to prison and write great books or find God. Some people become religious in prison. Not me. I never had any kind of profound insight.”

“That wasn’t my question at all, Josef.”

No, that wasn’t her question.

He sees the dress fluttering in the sun, then he hears the door, which closes with a creak behind her.

He’d clipped articles from the newspaper. He’d started at Sandstone. Then Lauren crumpled them up right in front of him. She didn’t dare go so far as to rip them up. She’d wanted him to stop. Had he? No. Of course not.

One of the first articles he’d clipped was about Canaris. The man they’d been working for. Canaris had neglected to inform Hitler that US troops were already in North Africa.

That evening he keeps peering over at Edith, trying to tell if she’s still angry with him. No, everything seems the same. The children concentrate on pushing their peas onto their forks and taking care that none should fall off or, worse yet, fall from the plate to the floor. This draws a stern look from Carl. Or a question. “What did you two learn in school today?”

The son speaks fearfully into his plate.

“Look at me, please!” says Carl.

“We gathered herbs for medicine,” says the son and lists off the varieties: stinging nettle, birch leaves, coltsfoot, dandelion greens. When he’s finished, he blinks. Clink, clink.