“It feels impossible now, doesn’t it?” she said, and then wished she hadn’t. The words invited melancholy. “Never mind.” She shook her head. “I should start back or Marianne will worry.” She extended her hand to Muller. “Will you help me stand?”

He bowed slightly. “Gnädige princess.”

At dinner Benita found the courage to mention Herr Muller.

It was a change from their usual topic of conversation: whom Marianne had received a letter from, and where they were . . . She was engaged in a questlike search for other widows like Benita—the lost wives and mothers and faithful secretaries (a category Benita found deeply suspicious) of Connie and Albrecht’s fellow conspirators. Even now, with the country’s infrastructure in shambles, Marianne managed to exchange letters and telegrams with friends and acquaintances from all over. Mostly these were women Benita didn’t know or had felt snubbed by because she was so young, so uneducated, so unfitting a bride for Connie. But there were others still missing from Marianne’s careful catalog: the wives of men on the outskirts of the group, beyond Marianne’s social circles.

“How long will the Americans keep their prisoners?” Benita managed to ask before Marianne could get started on the subject.

Marianne glanced up from serving the soup: a tasteless cabbage and carrot and potato that neither she nor Benita knew how to improve.

“I don’t know,” Marianne said. “I think they’ll be sent to France for the rebuilding.”

“The terrible ones,” Elisabeth said.

“Really?” Fritz asked, wide eyed. The boy had a grim fascination with all the most horrible details emerging about the Nazis—psychopaths like Josef Kramer, the Beast of Belsen, as they now referred to him, a man who had personally gassed eighty Jews for his collection of skeletons.

“Elisabeth,” Marianne scolded, “you have no idea who they send where. Don’t give your brother wrongheaded facts.” She turned to Benita. “Why do you ask?”

“I was just thinking of Herr Muller,” Benita ventured.

“Ah!” Marianne frowned. “I haven’t asked Peterman how long he’ll be here—but we can get by without him, certainly.”

“Of course.” Benita nodded.

“They can’t keep those prisoners forever,” Marianne continued. “Too expensive. They’ll need them to get back to work.”

“But I like Herr Muller,” Fritz said petulantly. “I don’t want him to be released.”

Elisabeth shot her brother a look. “Do you hear what you’re saying? You sound like Rapunzel’s stepmother. If you like someone, you should want them to be free.”

The next week, a heat wave settled over Burg Lingenfels, a shaggy animal brushing against the hills, panting along the river, quieting the birds and making the castle sweat. The ditches were alive with milkweed, nettles, and creeping phlox. In the warmth, the forest looked soft and dense, a black lump against blue sky.

Benita decided she was well enough to walk down to the farm of Herr Kellerman, the castle caretaker, for the eggs he supplied. She had imagined going with Martin, walking down the hillside with her long-lost son, continuing their reacquaintance, which was still a work in progress. He was a different boy than the one the Nazis had taken from her—at six he seemed a young person rather than a child. But he had wanted to stay with Fritz. So Benita walked alone.