Marianne felt a swell of love for him. He was more like her than her own son, who had pronounced the book unrealistic and dull.

“It was my favorite,” she said.

They were silent. The milk simmered on the stove, and the light ticked overhead.

“You’re happy here, aren’t you, Martin?” Marianne asked. “I mean living with us—all together, you and your mother and my family?”

“Of course!” The boy looked surprised.

“You don’t wish”—she turned off the milk, placed two cups and saucers on the counter—“that your mother were remarried, that you lived somewhere else with a stepfather?”

Confusion crowded across his young face. For a moment, Marianne regretted the question.

“No,” he said. “Why—do you think my mother and I should be on our own?”

“Oh, no! No, no,” Marianne exclaimed, nearly scalding herself. “Certainly not. I just wondered how you felt about it.”

She studied his already shockingly handsome face. He looked away from the intensity of her gaze.

“Martin,” she said seriously, “you know your father would have wanted it this way.”

When Marianne awoke some hours later, she was hungry and filled with a sense of resolve. It was nearly eight A.M. Fritz and Martin had already left for school. Benita was sitting stiffly at the parlor table, making one of those hideous stuffed dolls that had become her hobby of late. When Marianne entered, she looked up and her face was pale, her eyes swollen from crying.

“Marianne—” she began. “I’m sorry I never told you before—I couldn’t sleep. I—”

“Never mind.” Marianne cut her off. “I cannot give you my blessing to marry Herr Muller,” she continued. “I have thought about it and it is not right.”

Benita regarded her with a plaintive face. “Why? Because he was a Nazi? But everyone was a Nazi. He is a good man—”

“Because it isn’t right that you should marry someone who worked for everything your husband died fighting against!” Marianne could hear her own shrillness.

Benita began to cry. She looked childish and delicate in her distress. It made Marianne feel old. Here she was, cast again as the stable, unemotional foil to Benita’s damsel in distress.

“Do you even know what he did in the war?” Marianne asked. “Do you talk about it?”

Benita wiped her eyes. “I don’t know and I don’t care.”

“He was in the Orpo. You know that much, don’t you?” she demanded. “But do you know what they did there, in the east?”

Hastily, Benita rose and moved to the window. When she turned again, her face was illuminated by a new desperation. “Don’t you ever want to put it away, Marianne? To be done with it? I don’t want to know what they did. I don’t want to look over my shoulder forever. It was a horrible time. And now it is past!”

Marianne stared at her. It was so selfish and cowardly! It made her blood boil. Benita was always looking out for her own interest, her own comfort. “You think the past is like one of your dolls? That you can just—tear it up and begin over again? Like that! And you are the wife of a hero! A man who died to make the past a little less horrible than it is. Don’t you think you owe him at least a little respect?”