“So what now?” he asked when they reached the dock. Waves crashed against the rocks of the shore and sucked back out, leaving eddies scurrying in the crevices.

“There is a ladder at the end,” Marianne said. “You should go in first”—she handed him the inner tube—“and hold this for me.”

“All right.” Martin accepted the plastic ring. The metal planks whistled in the wind.

Martin yelped when his bare feet came down on the dock’s gleaming surface. He ran forward and, with one ungraceful jump, dove into the water.

A shock ran through his body at the cold. He swam out a few lengths and watched Marianne as she navigated her own cleverly aqua-sock-shod way along the dock, holding the rails on either side. At the end, she removed her glasses and looped them over the railing by their strap. Then she stood, squinting down at him.

“It’s bracing!” Martin called, shielding his eyes with one hand. “Are you sure—?”

By way of answer, Marianne began the serious business of lowering herself down the ladder. Her foot paddled the air once, twice, before finding purchase on the top rung, and in the bright sun, her pale, naked limbs shone like some dangerous evolutionary beacon, beckoning the darkest forces of the sea. The ropy veins on her legs seemed treacherous and parasitic—strangling her fragile limbs. But when her feet entered the cold water, she did not flinch.

“Bring the donut here,” she directed. “You hold it steady while I sit.”

Martin did as instructed.

And then, with a surprisingly tremendous splash and a great bobbing jerk, she was in. Through the spray and the swelling waves, Martin held on. The water peeled away from his eyes, and there she was, in her donut, like some delicate hatchling in a post-apocalyptic nest.

“Are you all right?” he asked, tossing his hair from his eyes.

“Yes,” Marianne said, adjusting herself. “Yes.” And as she repeated it, her look of discomfort disappeared. “This is lovely.”

“It is,” Martin echoed, realizing it was true. His body tingled pleasantly in the cold. The water rising and falling around his neck was featherlight.

“See?” Marianne said, smiling through the spray. “Now promise that you’ll come back to Burg Lingenfels with me.”

And looking at her small, frail form, Martin felt all the resentment and resistance of the afternoon fall away. How could he refuse? She was Marianne von Lingenfels.

“All right,” he said, taking hold of the string to her inner tube like some marine beast of burden and swimming out to sea.

CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE

CAMBRIDGE, MASSACHUSETTS, JULY 1991

Ania Kellerman had flown 5,000 kilometers, taken the train another 120, filled extra heart and blood pressure prescriptions, suspended bread and milk delivery for three weeks, found, washed, and packed her old but still good trench coat, and filled half her suitcase with good German chocolate, in part so her daughter could show her the house that now stood before them. It was large and gray and beautiful, built in that graceful American style with wooden clapboards and columned porches Americans referred to as “Victorian” in a confusing homage to an empire they had overthrown. It was certainly unlike most of the houses in England. Or in Germany, for that matter, where homes were built of stone or stucco or brick—never something as precious and impermanent as wood.