Circumspect as always, he extended his hand.

“Oh, stop,” Benita said, wrapping her arm around his waist. She turned her face up to his. “You can at least give me a kiss!”

He obliged with a furtive peck on her lips.

“You would think I’d be the one who didn’t want to be seen!” She laughed.

“Come.” He swung her bag over his shoulder, where it perched ridiculously.

Benita thrust her hand into his. Wrapped in the warmth of his calloused palm, her own felt like some small, vulnerable mollusk. She trailed a step behind, enjoying the feel of following, of being led by someone so much bigger and stronger than herself. And of knowing it was an illusion. When they were together, she was the one in charge.

When Franz had been released from the internment camp, he was a thin, hollow-eyed man with an apologetic stoop. He had hitched a ride to Braunschweig—first with a transport of American soldiers, who called him “old man” and offered him a candy bar that later had him retching in a ditch, and then with a friendly Tommy driving a jeep. This was the freezing winter of 1946. Benita knew all this from the letters he had written her soon after his release. Such sweet, simple letters, asking how she was, what Martin was doing, whether the castle was warm enough . . .

At first she had been self-conscious about writing back. She had never been good with words or spelling in school. But then it had seemed cruel not to answer. And she liked Franz Muller. She missed his strong, quiet presence in the woods. So she had made herself respond.

And what fun this turned out to be! It made her notice more, think more, and find the humor and interest in little things. The chickens Marianne was raising proved endlessly entertaining—it was a miracle that they survived under her care! And Fritz and Martin’s mischief became less galling when she wrote about it. Life was so much brighter and more vivid once she had a reason to observe it closely.

Everything was fodder for her letters. Except for the Russian.

But of course he hung between them, their personal ghost. A man she had killed and Franz had buried. To everyone else he didn’t exist. He had simply vanished from the face of the earth. On that day in the woods, Franz had seen Benita’s most hideous self, and still he did not hate her. Somehow it saved her from hating herself.

Through their letters, they learned more about each other. Franz was the oldest son of a carpenter, who made fine cabinets and furniture. At nineteen, he had married the daughter of his father’s partner in order to consolidate the business. She was a sickly girl, five years older than he was. They had one daughter, Clotilde, and his wife died two years later. So Franz and his father had raised the girl, who was now eleven, the same age as Martin. He was not conscripted until 1942; he was older, for one thing, already thirty-five when the war began, and the sole proprietor of a business. But finally he had been sent east as part of a local group of reservists. What it was like there, where he had been . . . he did not write about this. Anyway, she knew where he had ended up: Burg Lingenfels, cutting down trees.