Somehow, with the help of Martin, who swoops in from the side, Marianne makes her way over to her friend.

“Frau von Lingenfels!” Ania’s daughter exclaims with a smile—she has a kind, attractive, if slightly beleaguered face.

Ania is silent, but her eyes are bright as she reaches for Marianne’s hand. And grasping it in her own—brittle, aged, claw on claw—she gives it a squeeze.

“I always knew we would see each other again,” Ania says.

“Of course,” Marianne answers, though to her, this did not always seem evident.

The last time Marianne saw Ania was the day before Rainer died. It was late November 1950 and winter had set in. Before that, she had not seen her friend in weeks, not since that horrible day she had walked up the hill to the castle and discovered Rainer.

Wolfgang had appeared at Marianne’s door, blue with cold, stamping his feet, blowing on his hands. He was thin and rawboned in the manner of a growing calf and shifted uncomfortably on his feet. For the first time, possibly ever, Marianne had felt something soft and genuine for him. “Don’t just stand there letting in the cold air,” she ordered, as if he were her own son.

Uneasy silence descended as she opened and closed the bare cupboards to find coffee and milk to serve.

“How can I help you?” she asked when he was seated at the kitchen table with a cup of coffee between his palms.

Wolfgang cleared his throat. At age thirteen he still had a boy’s manner, although his voice was low and his chin awkwardly whiskered. “Herr Brandt—my father”—his eyes darted to meet hers and then away again—“is very ill. He can’t sleep. My mother wondered if you had any laudanum.”

Marianne regarded the boy. His face betrayed great discomfort: Embarrassment? Pain? Sadness? Probably all three.

“I don’t,” she said. “But I imagine I can get you some.”

“Thank you,” he stammered. “My mother will appreciate—”

“You have been dealt a bad hand,” she said, cutting him off. “But it isn’t your fault.”

He shifted uncomfortably in his seat.

“You are not responsible for your parents’ mistakes.”

The words emerged from her mouth without forethought, inspired by the young man’s miserable face. But were they true? Hadn’t she taught her own children to accept their father’s heroism as part of their inheritance? So wouldn’t this also be true in the reverse?

She stood for a moment, staring at him, until he lifted his eyes.

“When do you need this?” she asked.

She delivered the medicine herself.

Inside the castle, it smelled of coal smoke and sickness. The man lay on a mattress beside the stove. He was paler and more skeletal than he had been when Marianne first saw him. Sweat shone on his face.

When Marianne entered, he did not appear to notice.

She held out the bag of laudanum for Ania to take. Doktor Schaeffer had been generous. A toothache, she had told him.

Marianne did not venture far into the room. What had once been a sanctuary had been perverted.