With as much dignity as possible, she rose.

Herr Muller followed, jumping to pull back her chair. When they arrived at the threshold, he bowed. “I will consider your words,” he said.

“Thank you,” Marianne managed, ducking her head.

When she was around the corner she stopped, her chest heaving. She had intended to mention the Russian, Muller’s time in the east, and the fact of Benita’s innocence, her trust, her naïveté. What had happened? Somehow Muller’s lack of argument had rendered her preparations irrelevant. She had gotten what she wanted.

Albrecht, she called out in her mind, I did what was right, didn’t I? But it was almost as if she were talking to herself.

CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

TOLLINGEN, JULY 1950

Benita was meeting Franz to talk about the future. She had not seen him since their engagement—first Clotilde had been sick, then his father, and then work had been too busy (too many dead people, Benita joked in a moment of lightness). But she had finally managed to corral him. Their marriage plans would need to be accelerated. Marianne’s response to their news was even worse than Benita had imagined, and she hated living with her in this new, uncomfortable silence. Every day was like a punishment—and for what? Loving a man Marianne did not approve of? It was insulting, and worse, condescending. As if she had no right to her own future. Benita owed Marianne gratitude for finding Martin when she had given him up for dead, and for that she would be forever grateful. But she did not owe Marianne the rest of her life. She waited for Franz at Bemmelman’s Café in a state of agitation, clinking the spoon in her cup of coffee.

Usually Bemmelman’s made Benita happy. It was new, for one thing, and she liked new. She liked the high, gleaming windows and chic metal tabletops. She liked the sweetened cream and the selection of modern tortes with their bright out-of-season fruits and glossy layers of gelatin.

Benita held no reverence for anything old or historic. History was horrible, a long, sloppy tail of grief. It swished destructively behind the present, toppling everyone’s own personal understanding of the past. It was, in part, why she felt such an urgent need to remarry. For Marianne, history came above all else; for Benita, it was death.

From the moment Franz walked in, though, Benita knew something was not right. His usually calm, placid face was edged with worry. And he looked as though he had not slept in weeks.

“Franzl,” she said, wrinkling her brow. “What is it? You look like a man who has swallowed a monster.”

He shook his head and sat across from her. “It isn’t right” were the first words from his mouth. Not Hello or How are you or You look beautiful. The rudeness was utterly unlike him.

“What isn’t?” she asked.

Franz looked out the window at the drizzle. “I can’t marry you, Benita.”

Benita pretended that she had not heard him.