Paris, France
September 1937

"What is that?" Maria asked, pointing toward a street vendor's cart. He was pouring some sort of thin batter onto a steaming, round griddle, spreading it around so that it made a perfect circle. Moving it about carefully, he eventually flipped it, so that the raw side would cook, too. Maria watched, fascinated, as he filled it with a mix of berries and folded the thing, which looked like a very flat pancake to Maria, into a neat triangle and drizzled it with chocolate.

"Ah, love," Georg said, eyes sparkling at Maria's obvious desire to go over and watch the whole process up close. He was fairly sure he could see her beginning to salivate at the sight of the fresh fruit and melted chocolate. 'Those are crepes. This is how they're made here on the streets of Paris!"

"I've seen people ordering crepes when we were in Vienna," Maria said, "but they were always rolled!"

"When in Rome," Georg said with a pat of her hand.

"Shall we go watch him work?"

Maria needed no further invitation; she practically dragged Georg over to the stand and watched, transfixed, as the vendor fulfilled various orders: berry mixes with chocolate drizzle, banana and chocolate, plain chocolate, whipped cream and fruit, butter and sugar, ham and cheese. The combinations seemed endless. She found herself moaning as the smell inundated her senses, making her aware of just how hungry she was. On cue, her stomach growled.

Georg grinned at Maria and pulled her into line, ordering a savoury crepe for himself, and for Maria, a sweet crepe filled to brimming with fresh, cold raspberries and strawberries, a huge dollop of whipped cream in the mix, topped off by a generous swirl of chocolate and folded up accordingly, all of this warmed slightly by the piping hot, thin pankcake.

The vendor watched with amused pleasure as Maria bit into her crepe, clearly enraptured by it. "Please, tell him that it is simply the most delicious thing I have ever eaten!" she exclaimed.

Georg obliged, translating, and laughed at the man's response, which he repeated back to Maria: "he says the look on your face is thanks enough, and that you may have another on the house if we happen upon him again."

"Oh, thank you!" Maria cried, and it seemed the man required no translation for this, and he simply waved a hand, broad smile on his face, as if to say "Oh, it's nothing."

"I like Parisians," Maria decided as the two of them walked away together, heading toward the shopping district.

Georg bit his tongue, fighting the urge to correct Maria's perception, but then he realized that Maria had been wildly popular with just about every Parisian they had met, and so she had no reason to expect them to be nasty. She charmed them easily and quickly, and did not even know it. Georg could not quite put his finger on how she managed it, though if he had to guess, it was down to her genuinely charitable nature. He was sure the crepe vendor hadn't had such an effusive thank you from a customer in years, if at all.

"What are we doing tonight?" Maria asked sometime later. "You said something about a dinner invitation."

"Yes," Georg affirmed, "An old friend of mine could not make it to the wedding, but kindly invited us to a big soiree his wife is throwing, on the off chance that we might be able to accept."

"A man you haven't seen in years knew you were taking me to Paris for honeymoon before I did?" Maria asked indignantly.

Drawing an arm tight around Maria's waist, Georg soothed, "I had also been inquiring about last-minute tickets for shows and operas, and he guessed that I, being a creature of incredible romantic habit, would want to bring you here."

"Oh," Maria said. "You brought Agathe here, of course."

Glancing over at his wife as they walked, Georg wondered if she was somehow upset by this, and was not sure how to proceed. She had been more than charitable about his late wife, even claiming that she would like to know everything there was to know about the woman, but it could not be easy for Maria. She must feel at times that she walked in a shadow.

"I brought Agathe here because she wanted to use the time to shop for finery for herself," Georg said finally. "Vienna has some of the best couturiers in the world, but Paris fashion often outstrips it by miles, and she was excited by the prospect. And she was so excited at the prospect of starting a family that she even ordered myriad things for a nursery and had them sent home."

"Why did you bring me here?" Maria asked, filled with honest curiosity. The shops here in Paris were exquisite and the fashion unspeakably breathtaking, but it was hardly a burning desire. She felt a flush rise up her neck at the thought of what she did have a burning desire for.

Meeting her gaze, face upturned, her nose looking positively irresistable in its tilt toward the skies, Georg pecked it and said, "Because it is a city that I love for its culture and life, and I knew you would delight in it completely. The operas, the shows, the recitals, the museums, the sights, and even the parties. You take everything you experience in life as a great wonder to be discovered and reveled in entirely, whether you decide at the end of it that you liked or disliked it."

"Oh," Maria said, warmth flooding through her chest at this. "I hadn't known you had put so much thought into it."

"I very nearly did not decide on time," Georg revealed. "I thought perhaps Italy—Florence or Venice—but it did not feel quite right for honeymooning. Paris, though, it has this crackle in the atmosphere, and there's something about how the city is planed that makes its perspective from any vantage point utterly calming, despite the helter-skelter hodgepodge of shops in the streets of the arrondissements of Paris. It is, at once, closed and open, and there is so much history and art here. I also thought that the opportunities to escort you to social gatherings would be more plentiful, and that it would give you a chance to settle into your role as Baroness von Trapp without so much pressure. The French don't think much of Teutonic nobility," Georg grinned. "They acknowledge it, but that is essentially all they do."

Maria laughed at this, but sobered quickly. "I am not jealous, nor am I angry," she assured earnestly. "I did not mean to make you feel you had to justify the choice of Paris—I am hardly qualified to comment on what places in the world would be most appropriate for honeymooning!"

Sitting with Maria at a table outside a small café, Georg took both of her hands in his and said honestly, "I know how it can look, the fact that I have brought you to the place where I brought my late wife. But I was quite sure that the difference would be palpable, and that the two experiences could not possibly compare. You have no ghost to worry over, not with me. I promise."

Maria smiled a gentle smile, shaking her head. "You are a silly man, sometimes. How can I ever envy the woman who brought you such joy and bore you seven children that lit up my life? I told you—I rather wish I could have known her."

"How awkward that would have been," Georg joked, but he could see it in his mind's eye, as though Maria and Agathe, though two entirely different women, were best friends, or a set of conspiring cousins or sisters. Agathe would have loved Maria, Georg was certain. They both had a gentle honesty that seemed to radiate around them, and they delighted in so many of the same things: family, music, faith, him.

Sitting in the front garden of a French café with Maria, Georg felt himself overwhelmed with suddenly with intense gratitude for how incredibly blessed he was in this life. He didn't deserve any of it, by far, and yet it was right here in front of him. He had more than he had a right to have, and he was happier than he had a right to be. It did not seem as though such a thing was fair or allowable, but the fates had aligned, and here he was, well of misery banished and infused with every reason to love life as much as—no, more than—he once had.

He still had crippling moments of self-doubt when he looked at Maria and saw the young, spritely woman that she was, feeling that perhaps he had been selfish to claim her as his wife, the woman who held his heart and soul. There was no returning from that level of belonging.

"Georg," Maria's gentle voice broke through his thoughts, "you're far away. Come back to me."

He turned his gaze from the spot over his shoulder, eyes landing right on hers. She didn't just look at him. He couldn't possibly just look at her. They saw into each other, and she was seeing him right now. She did not ask where he was. She only asked him to return, pulling him so easily and completely from the ditch his mind still landed him in in the quiet moments when he tried to comprehend the magnitude of the gift he had been given in her.

And though it was not quantifiable, by any means, as he squeezed her hands and said, "I'm right here, love," he knew that he could never, ever take it for granted.

Stowe, Vermont
May 1945

"Oof," Maria winced, trying to steer the car carefully over the bumps in the road. "I'm sorry, Max! I'm trying to make this as painless as possible for you, but these roads aren't ideal for those who seem to have broken a rib!"

"I assure you," Max said tightly, clutching his side, "this is but a small tribulation to have suffered with respect to all else I have seen in recent years."

Maria glanced at Max askance at these words, feeling somewhat perturbed by them. "I wish you would tell us what happened to you," she said quietly. "We have seen the papers by now, all of us, and Louisa brought home a copy of Life Magazine. It looks… horrid."

"I had it easy," Max said in a low voice. "I'm alive, aren't I?"

"Still," Maria said. "We would feel better knowing what you've been through so we know better how to help you."

"Sometimes I wonder if it's more for others' benefit that we share our trials and tribulations," Max said in response. At the severe look that Maria cast him, however, he put his hands up in surrender and said, "I know well enough that my appearance alone warrants explanation, Maria, never mind my poor health. It's just… unspeakable. I haven't found the words to say it out loud. But I did keep a journal of sorts, and I have it with me. I will give it to you and Georg. The children are not to know."

Maria blinked at this, wondering if perhaps this journal Max spoke of was the reason he had been content to spend so much of his time in the guest bedroom that she had prepared for him. "You've been adding to it, haven't you?"

He hesitated, then nodded. "Yes."

"We do not mean to nag, or to make you uncomfortable," Maria said, feeling perhaps that an apology was in order, feeling badly for needling the man beside her.

"You all have been more gracious than I ever could have imagined, Maria," Max said with feeling, his voice becoming raspy with emotion. "You have sheltered me, fed me, cared for me, made me a part of your family again, all without expecting much in return. I have felt nothing but love and respect from you and Georg. You only ask now for my story because you believe it will help me to heal."

Sighing, Maria said, "It may, Max. Perhaps it will not, but the past eight years have shown me inexplicably that trials are not meant to be faced alone."

Curiously, Max looked at Maria. "What did happen to the von Trapps after I bid them farewell at the Salzburg Folk Festival?"

Biting back the urge to complain over his question when he would not answer her own, she conceded to answer him. This was the most interactive he had been in the month since she and Georg had gone to collect him from the immigration docks.

"We made it to Switzerland, and then immediately began to make plans to travel to England. We spent about six months in Switzerland and around two years in England, living with Agathe's parents and arranging passage to America under claims of political asylum as war refugees. We arrived in New York by a steamer, prepared to live in a little ramshackle dwelling on the outskirts of the city while we waited for the money Georg had arranged to wire to America to come through. We found this place completely unexpectedly, and bought it after a brief tour of the grounds."

"I daresay it cost all that you had to spend," Max commented, looking pensive.

"Nearly," Maria nodded. "What we had left, we spent on repairs. We took the place based almost solely on the fact that it had enough bedrooms to house us all, and then some."

"And yet you would have lived in that barn, if you had to," Max teased, to which Maria laughed.

"I think perhaps Georg would have put a very firm foot down at that!"

"Hmm, yes, he was never afraid to rough it in a U-boat or on a ship," Max agreed, "but he does enjoy his creature comforts where they are opportune."

"He's been thinking of adding a great hall to the chalet, to make it a real lodge," Maria said. "We get a great deal of traffic during the maple syrup season. We do all sorts of things in winter, from sap extraction demonstrations to great groups coming to watch us boil down the sap for syrup or molasses. Sometimes we even have a bit of a festival, where people can come and make their own maple candies if there is enough snow."

"How do you mean?" Max asked. "Making candy from snow?"

"If you boil the sap to the correct consistency with sugar," Maria explained, "you get this wonderful, tacky paste of sorts that can be drizzled over fistfuls of snow. It freezes and hardens into a sort of soft candy."

"You're making my mouth water just speaking of it," Max said, grinning at his personal chauffeur.

"Georg has been keeping a close eye on the trees this year," Maria said. "He thinks we will have a plentiful harvest. You will have to help! But in the meantime, I have a gallon or two of syrup left from last year's harvest that the children have not yet managed to make disappear. I can make you a pancake brunch when we get home."

"I wouldn't want to impose on your time alone with Georg," Max said, "though I thank you for the invitation. Perhaps on a weekend, we can all have a great big American breakfast!"

Pulling into the town square, Maria parked the car alongside the general store and placed a warm hand on Max's wrist. "I think perhaps Georg and I have had a bit too much time to ourselves, of late, wouldn't you say?"

Smirking as he realized that Maria would not take offense by his saying so, Max agreed, saying, "Alright, I will admit that you two sometimes make an old man's afternoon nap a bit difficult to come by, but," he continued, stopping Maria, who had opened her mouth to apologize, "I cannot bring myself to complain about it. It warms my heart to know that even after all these years, you and Georg are so close and hold each other so dear."

Maria could not argue with this, though she felt the need to amend, "We are not always so… disruptive. Sometimes we take a walk through the grounds, or read poetry, or look at the papers together."

Waving a hand as he moved gingerly to open his door, Max said, "Please, do not feel the need to justify a thing to me. You are husband and wife, and I am a guest in your home, after all! The accommodations cannot always be so grand as that lavish villa back in Aigen."

Maria sighed, shaking her head at Max's impossible priorities, and moved to help him cross the street and enter Dr. Stiles' office. Laverne looked up from her place at the reception desk with a concerned smile, gesturing for Maria to sign him in. "I'll take him back this minute," she said. "James can see him straight away."

"Thank you," Maria said gratefully, taking Max's hat and walking stick from him as he accepted Laverne's proffered arm with good grace and hobbled slowly to the examination rooms in the back of the building.

Maria sat quietly in a chair that was placed in the cozy reception area, waiting for Laverne to reappear. She cast about for a crossword or Life magazine to look at while she waited, having no one to talk to in the empty waiting room.

Laverne returned after about ten minutes, and Maria looked up from the crossword puzzle she had begun to cypher through, making a split decision. "Laverne," she said, prompting her friend to look over and smile at her, "does your husband by any chance have some time free after he examines and treats Max? I want to speak with him."

"Everything is alright, I hope," Laverne said, a worried eye traveling over Maria. "You are alright? Georg and the children are healthy?"

"Oh, they're all fine, and I'm fine—or, at least, I hope so, but I just want to be sure of something."

Laverne's expression relaxed, and she smiled reassuringly. "You look fit as a fiddle, dear friend," she said, "but yes, James can see you right after he finishes with Max. It has not been a particularly busy day."

"Thank you," Maria said, relieved.

A half hour later, Max emerged from the back rooms, moving slowly, but unaided. "He gave me a wrap to wear," Max indicated, pointing to his ribcage, "and some painkillers to take until things have had a chance to heal some."

"Ribs take a few months to heal properly," came Dr. Stiles' voice from behind Max. He smiled when he saw Maria waiting with Max's things, greeting her hello. To his patient, he said sternly, "You are not to overtax yourself, Mr. Detweiler!"

"Hardly," Max said, eyes meeting Maria's amused ones.

"Max, if you can make your way to the car on your own, I would like a few minutes to talk with Dr. Stiles myself," Maria said, getting to her feet and handing Max his things. "It shouldn't be long."

"Certainly," Max said, but his brow furrowed.

"Nothing to worry about," Maria assured, "I just need a quick word."

"What can I do for you, Maria?" Dr. Stiles asked as he followed the woman into an examination room and shut the door behind him with a click. "You're well, I hope?"

"Oh, yes, I believe so," Maria said quickly, "I just wanted to ask you if you knew of a specialist I could see, just to be sure that I can become pregnant."

Gesturing that Maria should take a seat on one of the chairs in the little room, the doctor sat down on his stool and asked, "Has there been anything to give you particular cause for concern? Are your cycles regular?"

"Like clockwork," Maria affirmed, "usually give or take a couple days. It's just… with the war over now, we, I, am ready to begin attempting to conceive a child. I was thinking, and the amount of time we've spent using the diaphragm is roughly equal to the amount of time we spent not using anything other than a general idea of where in my cycle to avoid intimacy, and we have always been somewhat… enthusiastic."

Smiling slightly at Maria's struggle to find a word that fairly described relations with her husband, the doctor said, "You're wondering if it was more than sheer dumb luck that you didn't conceive, then?"

"Well, yes," Maria confirmed, "especially with the knowledge that our six-week honeymoon did not even produce the question of whether I had perhaps conceived."

Dr. Stiles was about to say something to the effect of honeymoons not being bona fide grounds for conception in the marriage bed, no matter how long or short, but he realized quickly Maria's meaning: "You engaged in relations daily, if I understand you."

Maria nodded, admitting, "Nearly. And most days it was… more than once."

"I cannot speak for why you never conceived then," Dr. Stiles said, "though I could wax on long about various theories that have come to light these days, some of which postulate that frequent intercourse results in lower sperm counts in the male. Nothing in the research literature has supported this consistently, and there are only a handful of not-very-scientific studies," he said, "but it is not entirely unreasonable to assume it is part of the equation."

"Hmm," Maria said, "I suppose… well, it doesn't explain how we went four years with nothing. We are not always so prolific, after all!"

"You did say you were keeping note of your cycle, though, and that you find it is fairly consistent," Dr. Stiles pointed out. "Did you continue once you obtained the diaphragm?"

"Not quite so strictly," Maria confessed, "but I did, yes."

"If you have discontinued use, then I don't see why you wouldn't fall pregnant within the next six months," Dr. Stiles assured. "You are very aware of your body by necessity, and you can use that to your advantage. I see no cause for concern. Is it possible that you've already conceived?"

Maria shook her head. "I don't think so… my cycle has come and gone, actually."

"If it would make you feel more at ease, I can give you the name of a good friend of mine that is a well-respected obstetrician. He practices in Montpelier." Turning around to the counter behind him, Dr. Stiles turned to scribble the name and address of the obstetrician on his prescription pad. Handing it to Maria, he reiterated, "I don't think there is anything particularly alarming, here, Maria. Sometimes sheer force of will is the key to these things. You have been very determined that you not conceive during wartime, understandably. Now, things are shifting about. Just give it a bit of time."

Folding over the paper and tucking it into her coat pocket, Maria asked, "Do you think he could see me soon?"

"I can telephone him and give him a heads up for you, if you like," Dr. Stiles smiled warmly. "I have included his receptionist's number for you, but I can call him directly. He won't want to see you if you are menstruating, though. A week or two past tends to be best, in the case that he needs to perform an exam."

"Right," Maria nodded matter-of-factly. Holding out her hand, she took the doctor's hand and shook it firmly. "Thank you, Dr. Stiles," she said earnestly. "I feel much more reassured, now."

Maria offered Laverne a cheerful smile and mouthed "talk later" to her friend on her way out the door, and once she was out in the sunshine, released a breath she hadn't realized she'd been holding. It had been so long since she had a need to speak so frankly about such matters with a man who was not her husband!

If the presiding doctor had been anyone else, Maria doubted she would have been able to find it in her to be so candid, but this man was of an easygoing spirit, he made it easy to talk to him, and Maria never felt as though he was judging her personally for whatever malady came to his attention, whether it was one of intimate importance such as this one of her own or some illness with her seven children over the years. Once, she had even dragged Georg to see him, demanding that her husband allow his broken foot to be examined and set to heal properly. He had given her husband a firm scolding, but had known better than to say anything particularly patronizing to the man, fully aware that he would not take kindly to it.

Walking across the square to where Max sat waiting in the car, Maria smiled brightly at him and called, "All is well!"

"That is wonderful news," Max smiled, eyes crinkling as his head swiveled to follow Maria, who came around to the front of the vehicle, slid in, and started the engine.

"Do you have to work with Mrs. Higgins, today, Maria?"

Driving away from the town square, Maria shook her head. "No. I thought I would spend some time in the gardens today and hand graze the horse. He has not got out much, of late." Glancing at Max as she turned down the narrow, dusty road that led to their lodge, Maria asked, "Why?"

"I would like to give you my records from the war for you and Georg to go over at your leisure," he shrugged.

"Max, if you would rather not, I will understand," Maria said quietly.

"No, I have meant to tell you both, but as I said… I could not find the words. I still feel as though my tongue has been fastened to the roof of my mouth every time I try to articulate what sorts of things happened in the time that you left and I arrived here. And… part of me is deeply ashamed."

"Ashamed!" Maria cried, "What ever do you mean by that?"

"Do you remember, Maria, how when you and Georg arrived home from honeymoon, that I told you he should at least attempt to get along with the new Nazi regime?"

"Yes."

"And how angry Georg became every time I declared ambivalent political allegiance?"

Thinking of some particularly impassioned rants she had been subject to while alone with Georg in Paris, Maria nodded.

"Well, he was right," Max said. "And I was wrong. Very, very wrong. And I have paid a steep price for it. In some way, I can't help but think that I deserve it."

Maria was horrified by this pronouncement, and said sharply, "No! Max, surely not! No one deserves the atrocities Herr Hitler inflicted! Not only did he try to obliterate an entire race, but he also ruined the strongest, youngest generation of working age, crippling them with the burdens of all they had done in the name of their Führer!"

"You've been reading the papers," Max joked feebly. "Don't pity them too much. Or me."

"Many innocents were unwitting victims of the Nazi manifesto even as they carried it out," Maria said quietly. "Some of them were fellow countrymen." She was thinking of Rolfe in this moment, and how he had been so young—only seventeen, according to Liesl. Caught up in the glamour of a purpose greater than himself, assigning his life meaning and importance. She could never say such a thing to Georg, who would surely turn apoplectic at the mere mention of the boy, never mind to hear that she even had any feelings of pity for those a part of the Nazi machine. But Max, she knew, was less likely to view such a thing as this in absolutes of right and wrong, good and evil.

"Perhaps you are right in that," Max said, "but they all managed to contribute to horrible suffering."

The drive home continued in silence, and Maria accepted the things Max handed to her before he shuffled off to his bedroom without a word. There were several full journals and a file that seemed fit to bursting with sheaves of paper.

Taking them to Georg's private study, Maria left them on the desk and went to fetch her husband. Now was as good a time as any, she decided. It was time to know what had happened to their friend.

"Max is ready to give us his story," Maria said to her husband, kneeling down to crouch beside him.

"He'll tell us now?" Georg asked, eyes wide.

Maria shook her head. "No. but he kept journals. He gave me several, with a file full of other papers. I left it in your study and went to find you. He asked that the children never know what he's giving us."

Georg stood slowly, brushing his hands together, and then onto his pants. "Let me wash up. Put some tea on. We'll go to my study and read everything together."

The journals read like a nightmare one could only dream of. Max had not been arrested by Zeller and his cronies in the night of the festival from which the von Trapps had escaped, but eventually, a posse showed up at the villa in Aigen, where Max had agreed to stay, keep the place maintained and waiting for the von Trapps to return to.

They had grilled him for information and threatened him with his life, but left eventually, allowing Max to breathe a great sigh of relief. They left him to fly inconspicuously under the radar for several months, then the anti-Semitic laws began to roll out, and Max knew he had to flee.

His mistake had been to resist the urge to do so; instead, he enlisted a friend of the Nazi party, hoping to fly under their radar by ingratiating himself with them, one of the things that Max knew best how to do. It was so ludicrous, and yet it bespoke his typical character. If the situation had not been so dire, it would have been comical, too comical for words.

He had new papers forged, erasing the records of his Jewish lineage, and took up with a woman, living with her as a lover, their situation agreed upon and she, paid generously. It worked, and it worked admirably well: Max had become a curator of fine art and instruments, and the assignment had sent him all over Central and Eastern Europe, collecting and appraising and exploiting precious art from all over, in all the places that the Reich aimed to touch one day.

He mingled amongst the elite of Nazi brass, making sly friends and believing himself slyer still. He forged great connections, acquired considerable wealth and prestige, and then, four years into a charade that was working so beautifully for him, his live-in companion announced that she was with child, and she threatened to reveal Max's identity as a Jew for the danger it posed to her to carry his child. For what it was worth, Max believed she was lying about the baby's parentage, and wondered if this child even existed, for her terms were to give her an exorbitant amount of money and she would remain silent. Caught in an ever-worsening state of affairs, Max had taken the chance, gambling a great deal of his fortune on the woman's demands, hoping that she would take it and continue to live peaceably.

That was not to be. A week later, Max came home to find an ambush waiting for him, his mistress in their company and quite unbound. In fact, she was dressed smartly in a severe dress suit and bearing the Nazi armband, eyes stone cold as she gazed on him and utterly unfeeling. He had been double-crossed. Completely duped. His live-in companion had been a double agent keeping tabs on him from the day he left Aigen to pursue a career among his enemies, believing that he could compromise and lie his way through it, as long as he did nothing to draw overt attention to himself.

He was arrested that night and held for nearly a year for interrogation as a political prisoner before being sent to the work camp Ebensee, newly established in Austria. Max spared all facets of this experience, except to describe with great detail the myriad underground armament tunnels that the prisoners were forced to help build until they literally dropped dead or were shot at near death. Though Max did not consider himself to be a great navigator, he had always kept certain papers hidden in the sole of his shoes, and had used that to draw maps of the tunnels, detailing the massive network. With the skilled help of some fast friends in the tunnels, Max was able to plan an escape route by building a tunnel under the jurisdiction of a young, green Nazi officer that did not understand what was expected of this sector of the tunnels, and was simply relying on the knowledge of his superior officers and the prisoners under his command to get by.

A smooth and consummate sponge, Max had oiled the man's already-inflated sense of ego, showing him from the maps he himself had created how if this tunnel were built just so, it would allow another quick point of entrance for emergency parachutes, and make a quick means to arrest and punishment for foreign air force pilots that were shot down from overhead. That it had worked at all was a miracle, for Max and several accomplices escaped on a night when this green officer was busy examining a gold watch he had just shot an old Roma man for possessing: the planned foil, this man had insisted it would be his contribution to the escape effort, and as he was an old man, he was ready to die and meet his maker. Besides, he had reasoned, he would rather die now from a quick bullet through his head than from being worked to the death.

Closer to Germany than any other country, Max and his company had relied on the knowledge of one of their number about the Austrian Resistance groups, which was sketchy and volatile at best, and though some miraculous feat, arrived in the sole remaining safe haven, Switzerland, several months later, wholly indebted to total strangers for their kindness and hospitality; of course, the relationship was not so one-sided: the Resistance members were more than glad to extract whatever its patrons knew of Nazi plans and movements—here, Max found himself only too glad to hand over the maps that had been made in his nearly two years in the armaments tunnels, considering it his best contribution to the war effort against the Nazi regime.

It was my greatest mistake to ever believe that I could get along with these animals, he wrote. The depravity that so many of them displayed was incomprehensible to me, and yet even as they would talk casually of murdering Jews and Catholics and Roma and homosexuals, their grabby hands all over the latest pretty Aryan girl waiting to earn the favor of one officer and have him impregnate her with the future of the Reich, I turned a blind eye, believing myself impervious. Believing that as long as I continued good work and kept my chin down, I would arouse no cause for concern.

Perhaps I should have been more concerned that I would be connected to the escaped von Trapps, even with a new name and new papers. But Gauleiter Zeller's status did not last when he lost the Reich's prized crown jewel to elective exile right under his nose. I did not think I would have much cause to worry, creating a new life and new identity.

But as it turns out, my actions resulted in some of the worst possible consequences. I can only hope that the von Trapps have found peace, comfort, and happiness. As I recall the utter hell I lived through from the day I was arrested as a traitor to the regime, I know I was always in the wrong.

A lost empire jaded me when I was young, making it hard to believe in casting allegiance so staunchly, though von Trapp lived and breathed lifelong allegiance. Perhaps that is what allows him to find such a woman as Maria Rainer and take her as his helpmeet and wife and lover. That I could have been so lucky. I tried it, and it failed so miserably. I walked blindly into a dire situation, having believed Georg to be the mistaken one for his blind allegiance to a time, and empire, a life gone by. Out with the old and in with the new, so to speak.

I should have realized the error of my ways long before this. But I am a foolish man, aged now far before my time. It has been altogether humbling and terrifying, and I hope every night when I close my eyes that I might not wake. It would be so much easier than escaping an identity that I never claimed as my own once in my life, much to the chagrin of my mother. Perhaps I should have. Perhaps my eyes would have been opened sooner. I have never known what pain it was to live with regrets. This kind of tortured existence does not suit me. I don't know if I shall ever arrive back to myself ever again. Those days of champagne and parties and merriment and music seem so far away now, as if it were only a dream. A dream we were all so terribly foolish to dream.

What a horrible prospect, believing that to envision a better world for ourselves and the children of the future is a folly. Maybe one day I will find a reason to change my mind.

Maria looked up from the entry she had just finished reading, tears pricking her eyes. She sniffed, wiping her nose with the back of her hand, and thumbed through the little book, marking her place. She could not bear to keep reading right now. She was in the last little book Max had given her, and as the journey he had traveled came closer to the end, he grew increasingly introspective and despairing, a sorrow that was too close to her own heart at times, and most certainly to her husband's.

"Maria," Georg said a few minutes later. "You should see this."

He was holding out a yellowed newspaper clipping from the stash in the folder Max had given them. To the outside observer, most of the clippings were a haphazard collection of little importance, but Georg had recognized most of what he read as being related to the imprisonment or promotion of their fellow imperial navy officers and juniors. The man chosen to fill Georg's role as Naval Commander of the Third Reich had been one of Georg's most promising subordinates in the Great War, and a good friend to Max, especially on the days where Georg was too tense to serve as a drinking mate and poker opponent. Another spoke of the imprisonment of their own commanding officer for his refusal to declare his allegiance to the Nazi Party. Having also been assigned immediately to the new order as had Georg, he had been court marshaled and shot.

But the bit of interest to Maria was an article describing how the abbess of the Benedictine convent in Salzburg, along with the mistress of postulants and the mistress of novices, had been put on trial for conspiracy and sentenced to work in a camp in Poland. The article emphasized the muted outrage and sadness of those in the city who had known of the firm and steady guidance these women had brought to the convent, as well as their efforts to alleviate society's ills.

Maria read the bit article, aghast, hand covering her mouth by the time she reached the end. She looked at Georg, eyes wide, fear etched in them. "I never thought… of course, our being there that night endangered the abbey—but this, this is diabolical." The unshed tears were glistening in Maria's eyes now, and she felt as though she would be violently sick. "Convents carry no political affiliation," she whispered. "They are untouchable and do nothing but good for those that they serve…"

Closing her eyes and letting the tears fall to her cheeks, Maria moaned, "Why? Why, Georg?" Her words were choked. "Oh, we never should have gone there. What have we done?"

Georg moved to embrace his wife, but she balled her fists and pushed him away.

"No! Don't touch me!" she snapped. Her voice was shaking and low pitched, a reflection of the wild despair and bitterness that Georg had never once seen in his wife through all the trials and tribulations they had faced, and never imagined that he ever would.

"Darling, we cannot afford to blame ourselves—"

"Stop." She uttered the word in a cold, hard voice. Drawing herself up as straight as she could, forcing her shoulders back, she said, "Do not dare think to tell me that they made their own choices and were prepared to suffer the consequences in order to help us. They willingly helped us under the assumption that one does not violate the unwritten code by involving godly women in gross and disgusting political ends." Turning away from Georg and wrapping her arms about herself, Maria said, "The abbey is meant to be a safe and sacred thing. What a fool I was to ever suggest we go to the convent in the first place. I violated that sanctity by ever thinking that it would be a place for us to go."

"Maria," Georg ventured carefully, "you must not blame yourself for this. We do not even know their whereabouts. Maybe they were never transported to Poland."

Maria gave her husband a withering glance over her shoulder. "Right," she said sarcastically. "Max aged a century of his own accord, did he? And I suppose Herr Hitler's countless other political enemies merely marched themselves to their own deaths!"

"No—"

"I am not daft. I have read the papers, and the magazines, and seen the newsreels. You have. Simply surviving reaches untold probabilities!" Turning back around to face her husband, she asked, "Can you honestly look me in the eye and say you feel no guilt for our own part in this?"

Wishing that he could reach out and steady her as he watched her sway, Georg swallowed. "No, Maria, I cannot."

"We have to find out what happened," Maria said, turning a sad face toward her husband. "We must."

Tentatively, Georg spread his hands out in front of him in a sign of surrender. "We shall."

Maria's stiff posture relaxed slightly at this pronouncement and she stepped into his embrace, resting her head down on his left shoulder. "I just hoped… I hoped the hell had ended, but now it feels like it has only just begun." Sniffing and swallowing, Maria began to weep, shoulders shaking. "I'm sorry, Georg, I just—I am no military officer. I cannot see war in terms of black and white, winners and losers. We have won, but what has been lost that we will never know?"