Ah, he said, bowing his head when she finished explaining her search for Martin. I will make inquiries. Then he looked at Benita and her Georgian escort. It was clear that he was not a man who did favors for nothing. So this was how she became “his,” which was, in its way, a mercy.

He was a hard man, but not a cruel one. And his affection, if it could be called that, protected Benita from the others. The Georgian was forced to retreat, tail between his legs, back to his dreams of the apple orchard.

But it didn’t matter. Nothing mattered after the news. Martin was dead. This was what the captain told her. He was among a number of “orphans” from a Nazi Children’s Home sent on the last train to Buchenwald. The captain delivered the news matter-of-factly. He was not a man to mince words, and even if he had wanted to, he did not speak enough German.

Benita stared at him and felt the world darken around the edges. Everything she knew seemed to fall away until she was left perched on some last, invisible outcropping of solid land in a great and empty universe.

After that, when the captain came to her, she left her body—the body that no longer meant a thing to her, that would soon turn to rot. Instead, she went to her boy, to her little Martin, and curled around his sleeping form, stroked his fine blond hair, and kissed the crown of his sweet head. She hummed the lullabies she used to sing at night when he was frightened and crawled into her bed. And she filled him with all the love he would ever need in his next life.

That was the end of Benita Gruber, the girl who grew up at 7 Krensig and dreamed of marrying a rich man. That was the end of Benita Fledermann, Connie’s wronged wife, silly little chicken locked up in her flat, feasting on her own disappointment. The grim details of Connie’s execution, the time in prison, the miscarriage of her daughter—these were nothing compared to the loss of her son. For Benita, “The End” that Germans spoke of in the years to come boiled down to this.

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

BURG LINGENFELS, DECEMBER 1945

Martin was too young to remember Christmas before the war. The stories Elisabeth and Katarina told sounded as improbable as fairy tales to him. Roasted goose for dinner, Glühwein, and baked Zimtsterne, oranges pierced with cloves. Packages filled with new socks, hair ribbons, chocolates, and books. Once, Elisabeth told him, her father gave her a real white rabbit in a painted cage.

Martin was especially interested in the parties—so many people coming together in celebration, rather than fear. The only large gatherings he could remember took place in bomb cellars or rallies or on crowded, terror-filled streets.

“We will make a fine Christmas this year,” Marianne announced on the first day of December. Never mind that it was freezing and that food, even here at the castle, was in short supply. This was her plan. On the first Sunday of Advent she was determined to bake a Stollen. Everyone was skeptical, not only on account of the rationing, but on account of never having seen Marianne bake. But she insisted. She had been setting aside flour and sugar for this purpose since September.