I had such a hard time coming up with a title for this chapter. I eventually went with Agathe's name because this is the first chapter where any of the children really talk about her. If you have a better idea for a title, I hope you'll share it!

Chapter 22
Agathe

A few nights later, Maria was surprised to find herself waking up from a dead sleep to the soft strumming of a guitar. She sat up in bed and listened harder, tilting her head in the darkness. The sound was soft enough that it probably hadn't woken anyone else, but Maria had left her bedroom door fully open that night, and she'd trained her ears to listen closely even in her sleep, ready to spring up if there was another thunderstorm or if one of the younger children cried out in a bad dream.

She wasn't surprised to trace the music to Liesl's room. She knocked, then gently pushed the door open. Liesl had her own bedroom, and she was sitting up on the edge of her bed, slowly strumming Maria's guitar in her lap. She glanced up at her governess when Maria walked in, then looked back down at the guitar. The expression on her face wasn't the same guilty look that she'd worn when Maria caught her climbing through the window on the night of the thunderstorm; it was more expectant, as if she'd wanted her governess to find her here.

"Liesl?" Maria asked gently, as she shut the door behind her. "What are you doing up at this hour?"

"I couldn't sleep," Liesl shrugged. Maria waited for more, because she knew that there was more to it, and Liesl's expression grew distant as the seconds stretched by. Then she said suddenly, "Father plays the guitar, too, Fraulein Maria. He used to play it in the parlor in the evenings, and my mother would sing, or they'd both sing something together. And he plays the piano, too."

Maria sat down facing Liesl in the little stool at the girl's vanity table. She leaned forward with her elbows on her knees, folded her hands, and tried to don a sympathetic, listening face. She had a feeling that Liesl was about to share something important with her. It was hard for her to imagine the Captain playing any instrument, much less two, but Maria hid her surprise and said simply, "Oh? I didn't know your father played any instruments."

"Well, he did," Liesl corrected, glancing up at her again. "I don't know if he still does."

"I think it's like riding a bicycle," Maria said, even though she wasn't entirely sure that this was true. "I think once you learn it, you never really forget." As she said it, she remembered the gorgeous day earlier that summer when she and the children had all ridden bicycles along Lake Mondsee. Except for Marta, who still wobbled a bit with her short legs, and little Gretl, who had to ride on the back of Maria's bicycle, they had all done splendidly. But would it be that easy for someone who came back to music after years away from it? Would the Captain's fingers fumble over the guitar strings if he tried to play it again. Maria remembered something else: the words that Frau Schmidt had said to her on her first night in this house. "No more music, no more laughing."

Maria turned when she heard a noise, and she saw that Friedrich had just entered the room, too. She thought from his alert face that he hadn't been woken by Liesl's guitar-playing like she had, but was already up. She supposed that late-night conferences between these two were still happening sometimes, like that conversation that she'd overheard after the thunderstorm weeks ago. Friedrich stayed near the door, leaning against the wall in his long night-shirt, and Liesl glanced up at him and gave him a little nod but said nothing. Maria was about to address the boy when Liesl suddenly spoke.

"I can remember the last song I ever heard Father sing," she said abruptly.

From the sudden surprise on Friedrich's face, Maria guessed that Liesl had never shared this memory with him before — and if she had never told him, then she'd likely never told anyone else, either. She was curious to hear more, but she knew that Liesl needed to take her time with this, so she forced herself to be patient and say nothing. How strange that her patience and all her other virtues had improved more than the von Trapp house than they ever did at the Abbey.

"It was... that song about the Rosemary tree... you know the one?" Liesl asked.

Maria nodded. She knew the song, of course, for nearly everyone in Austria knew that old folk song. "It's a beautiful song."

Liesl went on slowly, as a distant, far-away look crept into her eyes — a look that was much older than her sixteen years. "Mother was very sick. She fell ill after Gretl was born, and she never got well again. She had to stay in a room on the ground floor, because she was too weak to climb the stairs anymore, and Father arranged for a nurse to come and stay here with her all the time."

Maria listened closely to every word, leaning forward further. She had wondered about how the children's mother had died, but of course she hadn't dared to bring up such a painful subject. Her heart ached now to imagine poor Agathe — she had learned the woman's name, though not much less — gradually declining in health, growing weaker and paler while her husband and children looked on helplessly. The littler ones would've been shielded by their youth, but Liesl and Friedrich, at least, must have been old enough to understand what was happening.

At some point in her story, Liesl had stopped strumming the guitar, and the silence seemed to magnify each word. She took a deep breath and went on, "One night, I was too worried to sleep, and I crept downstairs and stood outside her room. Mother was awake, and Father was with her, talking to her, and she... I remember her voice was very weak, but she asked him to sing something to her, and he sang that song. I stood outside and listened, and his singing made me feel better, and I went back up to bed."

Maria gave a tiny smile. It sounded as if music and singing had brought at least a little comfort to the Captain and his dying wife during her final days. How could he have turned his back on it? On his children?

And then Liesl added, "And the next morning, when we woke up, Frau Schmidt told us that Mother had died during the night."

Maria's smile vanished like a candle blown out by the wind. Suddenly, it all made sense. Captain von Trapp had sung to his wife just before she died, and he'd never sung another song since — never even allowed singing in his voice. Maria wondered if perhaps ever since that night, even the thought of singing made him remember his wife's weak voice asking him to sing. Had those been her last words? Had his singing been the last sound she'd ever heard?

"I'm so sorry, Liesl," Maria said, even though the words felt inadequate.

"I... you never told me this," Friedrich says, a bit hurt. "You never told me you heard Father singing that night."

Liesl glanced at him sadly, then looked away again. Maria could tell that it was easier for her to say this without having to look at them. "Frau Schmidt told us that Mother had died," she repeated, "not Father. And I held Gretl at Mother's funeral. I did. Father wouldn't take her. He would barely even look at us."

Maria imagined Liesl at all of eleven-years-old, wearing a black dress, standing in front of her mother's coffin and holding her baby sister in her arms, as if she were her mother now. She had to bite the inside of her cheek hard, to keep from tearing up.

"And he didn't cry," Friedrich muttered, his anger still raw and fresh.

Friedrich would've been... about nine years old then? He and Kurt always tried to act so tough, so brave, and now, Maria understood why. Friedrich had seen his father not crying at his mother's funeral, and so he'd tried not to cry, too. He'd followed his father's example, and Kurt had followed his, and those two sad little boys had been trying to be big brave men ever since — for as long as Liesl had been trying to be these children's mother, instead of just their older sister.

"I went over to him with Gretl," Liesl went on, "and I remember, I said, 'She's getting heavy,' and I thought he would have to hold her then. But he didn't. He just said, 'Put her in the stroller, then.' And he put an advertisement in the newspaper for a governess the very next day."

There was a long, heavy moment of silence before Maria asked gently, "And who was your first governess? Do you remember?"

"Fraulein Hedwig," Friedrich answered. "She was the first one. She stayed for the longest, too. She stayed for... almost a whole year, I think?" He looked to his sister for confirmation, and Liesl nodded. Maria must've looked surprised, because he added, "We weren't trying to get rid of them yet."

"She was nice enough, I suppose. I liked her, at first." Liesl's face darkened. "She stayed until Gretl started talking."

"And what happened then?"

Liesl and Friedrich were silent for a long moment.

"When Gretl started talking," Liesl said, clenching one hand tightly around the neck of the guitar, "she called Fraulein Hedwig mama. I remember. We were in the nursery one day, and Fraulein Hedwig was holding Gretl, and she was just babbling, not really talking yet, and then suddenly she looked right at Fraulein Hedwig and said mama, and Fraulein Hedwig, she just sort of laughed, like it was funny."

Maria felt a swell of pity for Fraulein Hedwig — there was no easy to smooth over that awkward situation — but she saw Liesl's hand still clenched around the guitar and kept her pity to herself. She said instead, "Perhaps she was surprised and didn't know what else to do."

"Well, anyway," Liesl replied shortly, in her old I-don't-need-a-governess voice, "I went over to her and took Gretl from her, and I told her to get out of our house and never come back."

"After that was when we started trying to get rid of them," Friedrich put in.

Maria did some quick calculations in her head. Agathe had died when Gretl was only a few months old, so she'd been dead for about five years. Then the children had been with Fraulein Hedwig for one year, and the Captain had told Maria that she was their twelfth governess. That meant that there had been ten other governesses between Hedwig and her. Ten in four years! Four years times twelve months equalled forty-eight months... It averaged out to less than five months per governess, though Maria suspected that the latter governesses, like poor Fraulein Augusta, hadn't even lasted that long.

After a pause and a quick prayer for guidance, she took a deep breath and spoke again. "And I know you got to be very good at driving off your governesses. That play you performed about Fraulein Augusta was quite ghastly." Liesl and Friedrich shot each other looks of guilt and a little pride, too. "But things are differet now, aren't they? You aren't trying to run me off anymore."

"Well... you're so different from our other governesses, Fraulein Maria," Friedrich said softly, and Liesl nodded in agreement. "You were different right from the start."

"And that goes to show that there's always a possibility for change — no matter how settled into our ways we get sometimes. I think that perhaps when your father comes back from Vienna with the Baroness, things will be different then, too. I said a prayer about it on my very first night here."

Liesl blinked her blue eyes, which had grown quite bright and wet while she'd talked about her mother and Fraulein Hedwig. "Did you really?" she asked in surprise.

Maria nodded. She could still remember the words that she'd prayed before she'd been interrupted by a soaking-wet Liesl climbing in through her bedroom window. Dear God, now I know why you sent me here: to help these children prepare themselves for their new mother. And I pray that this will become a happy family.

Maria still hoped that that prayer would be answered. She had been hoping all summer that when the Captain and the Baroness returned from Vienna together hand-in-hand, this whole family would be changed for the better and would be happy again.

But now, suddenly, an unbidden thought slipped into her mind from out of nowhere. Once, long ago, Gretl had called one of her governesses mama. It wouldn't be so implausible, would it, if she called one of governesses mama again?