“There are always choices.” Franz looked at her. “I can choose to let you go. You can begin a new life.”

“But I don’t want to begin a new life.” Benita was crying now. “Not without you. I don’t care what you did! It doesn’t matter! I would love you if you were Hitler himself!”

Franz stared at her and his face was a stranger’s.

“You have no shame, Benita,” he said finally. “And for me, shame is the only right way to live.”

Benita sat back.

This was the end. Her own stupid words repeated in her head. In the silence, Benita could see the future: no pleasant homey flat with flowers in the window and a place for Clotilde and Martin to study; no wide, soft bed to sleep in; no lovemaking; no new, ordinary, from-scratch life, full of simple things like cooking and marketing and Sunday walks along the river. No mornings of sunshine and coffee and growing old together.

For Franz there was only the motion of these things. His soul was already in hell. It was not Marianne who had come between them, but the past.

CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

MOMSEN, AUGUST 1950

When Ania’s water broke, the convent hospital in Ehrenheim was still under construction. So Carsten drove her to the American military hospital outside of Momsen. It was nearly empty. And as soon as he handed her off to the nurses, he turned around and drove home.

Then Ania could moan and clutch her belly and stop gritting her teeth. The nurses were kind, albeit alarmed. They were young American girls trained to bind wounds and dress amputations, not deliver babies. The doctor arrived and proclaimed it too late to induce the “twilight sleep,” and the nurses squeezed her hands and smoothed her forehead in terrified support. But Ania was not concerned. She had already delivered two babies without such interventions—she knew only that she wanted to return home as quickly as possible. She had secrets to keep.

Improbably, she had managed to keep Rainer hidden. Like some awful Rapunzel, he was locked in the castle, only he was free to come and go as he pleased. From the moment Ania saw him, she had understood what he wanted. It was not exposure or revenge. For all his anger and despair, he did not wish to destroy the life she had created for their sons. He wanted to see his boys. He was deathly ill and, like a shamed and beaten animal, he was looking for a safe place to die.

Burg Lingenfels was closed down. Last fall, Carsten had boarded the windows as she and Marianne had covered what little furniture remained. They had planned to reopen it this summer, but then had not. Marianne was busy with her new project—sorting Albrecht’s papers—and traveling a great deal. And last year, the local teenagers had used the empty castle to get into trouble. It was better to keep it shut up. There were only mice and swallows nesting in the stone walls, water rats and frogs burrowing into the chinks of the moat. No one went there except for Wolfgang, whom Carsten had tasked with checking on it from time to time.