Obviously they had discussed the job already; Benita was their mutual problem to solve.

“I’ll go tomorrow,” Benita said.

She had tried to find work already. First at the local kindergarten, but she had no experience. Then with Frau Kurtzdorf, the town seamstress, but she did not know how to work a sewing machine. She had even applied at a department store a long bus ride away in Bremel but was told she was too old. Too old! The portly Dutchman conducting the interview had given her a lascivious once-over even as he pronounced this. It made her furious and despairing in turn.

But what could she do but keep trying? Lotte needed money for coal and provisions. Gephardt either could or would not work; it was unclear which. In any case he contributed nothing by way of household income, and beneath her scornful demeanor Lotte was worn out. She worked long hours in the canning factory office. Benita could not blame her for wanting support, and she did not want to be a burden.

Standing in the small, chilly parlor with its familiar lamp on the table—the same one Frau Gruber had kept in a place of honor in her own dingy parlor—Benita knew she should sit down beside Gertrud and help shell the walnuts, that she should make conversation and inquire whether there was any news of Gephardt, or ask what the church had planned for the first Sunday of Advent or whether Gertrud’s children were over their colds. But she could not. “I have a headache—I’m going to lie down a moment,” she said instead.

“Of course you are,” Lotte retorted, raising her eyebrows in Gertrud’s direction. “That’s our Benita.”

Upstairs, Benita sank onto her narrow bed and looked at the photograph of Martin that hung beside it. In it, he was about nine; his arms were outstretched, his hair ruffled by wind. It was taken in the field below Burg Lingenfels. The grass rose to his knees, and Benita could almost hear the skylarks and swallows, the papery rustle of grasshoppers. It had been a beautiful, warm afternoon—a picnic with Marianne and Ania and all the children, at the end of their time living in the castle. There had been resistance to the plan in the beginning—Elisabeth had wanted to stay inside and read her book, Fritz had complained of a toothache, and Benita herself had wanted to go into Tollingen to shop for a new hat. But Marianne had prevailed—it was the perfect day for a picnic, she insisted. And she wanted to take photographs with her new camera. Photographs of a picnic! Both Ania and Benita had been appalled. In their experience, cameras were precious, delicate tools, reserved exclusively for formal portraits—not toys to be toted along to take pictures of sweaty, disorderly children running wild. But how right Marianne had been to insist! The day had been wonderful—one of the happiest of Benita’s life. And in the photograph of Martin running, Marianne had captured a rare and unguarded moment of joy. Here was the thing Benita was most proud of: She had raised a boy capable of such feeling. Somehow, despite everything, he could experience this.