Standing hopelessly beneath the heat of the blistering summer sun, Captain von Trapp pinched the bridge of his nose in a vain attempt to dispel his impending headache.
"Georg!" Baroness Schraeder howled, her flailing arms flinging cloudy water droplets across the sun-soaked terrace, the slimy green tendrils dangling from her clothes shaking menacingly—like an enraged sea monster taken from the pages of a child's storybook.
Five minutes. He'd left her alone with his children for five minutes.
She glared at him expectantly. Her previously elaborate hairstyle lay limply across her forehead, which—in a rare occurrence—bore prominent wrinkles of displeasure. Drops of pond water meandered down her clenched chin and along her rigid neck. Crossing her arms against the thoroughly soaked fabric of her blouse, she fumed. Georg could practically see the steam rising from her saturated head.
It was the second time within the span of just a few short weeks, the captain recognized with a twinge of discomfort, that a woman had stood before him furious and sopping wet with lake water.
The sun's unforgiving waves reflected oddly off Elsa's streaked face; her running makeup and tangled mop of ringlets gave her an unearthly look, as though she were physically melting under the sweltering heat. He glanced at her foot, clad in its ruined suede shoe, tapping incessantly in the growing puddle pooling around her drenched body.
This time—unlike the last—Georg was confident that the scathing woman before him would certainly not be jumping to the defense of his unruly offspring.
He turned reluctantly in the direction of his children, raising his eyebrows in silent question: What have you done this time?
Above, the sky blazed a cloudless, heartless blue, and the fierce sun blanched the surrounding greenery, bathing the environment in a cruel, hostile glow. Long rows of pink tulips, beaten down by the heat, leaned toward the terrace at savage angles, shouting their displeasure. In the breezeless swelter, the heavy trees were close and stifling, their paltry leaves providing little shade from the sun's blazing fury.
Georg rubbed his tired eyes, and transparent blobs danced merrily across his sun-dazed vision. God it was hot.
The children kept their gazes fixed on the spiny clumps of grass and crushed petals littering the now-damp cement.
Georg cleared his throat uneasily. "What—"
"We didn't mean to, really!"
"It was just a game, Father!"
"She said she wanted to play!"
"It was all Kurt's fault!"
That last remark, a low-blow delivered by an obstinate Louisa, prompted the captain to shift his attention toward his youngest son.
A sheepish Kurt stood slightly apart from the group, captured in a menacing stare-down with his second-oldest sister. He shook his head forcefully, his sandy hair sticking wildly across his sweaty forehead.
"Kurt?" Georg finally spoke, a habitual harshness creeping into his voice despite his efforts to suppress it.
His son snapped to attention, eyes blown wide with trepidation, his pink face shining more from apprehension than from the heat. Georg's heart clenched at the familiar expression of alarm flitting across the boy's candid face.
"Well, Father," he mumbled, tracing the toe of his shoe along a jagged crack in the cement, "it's a game we play. With—with Fraulein Maria."
Friedrich snickered from somewhere behind him.
"We were just throwing the ball," Kurt glanced pleadingly at his brothers and sisters, seeking support. "I suppose I...perhaps I threw it a bit too hard, and Baroness Schraeder—well, she fell in the lake."
The captain blanched. His disbelieving eyes shifted slowly back to the baroness. Kurt made a poor effort to hide the boyish smirk that graced his pleasantly sunburned face.
From her pitiful puddle, Elsa scoffed emphatically. "A bit too hard? Georg, that thing was like a missile—"
"Fraulein Maria always catches the ball when I throw it like that."
Georg scowled, his lips curling back from his teeth. "Kurt!"
Kurt clucked his tongue, mumbling a terse apology toward the worn laces of his patent leather shoes.
Redirecting his attention, the captain gestured toward the baroness' clothes, still ingloriously dripping water onto the sizzling concrete beneath her soggy feet.
He fiddled with his ear awkwardly, wishing he were locked away in his study—alone, cool and quiet with a tall bottle of whiskey in his hand. Or anywhere else, for that matter. His fingers twitched limply at his side. He couldn't think. Not with the sun beating down on his neck fierce and white like the indomitable wrath of God Himself.
"It's, uh, just water, Elsa. Surely, well I don't know, surely they'll wash—"
She gaped at him, thunderous gray eyes blazing behind bleary smears of dark mascara. Red-rimmed and bloodshot from the lake water, her eyes had an eerie supernatural quality about them. Unbidden, Georg recalled a timeless myth from his collection of Greek legends: "flee, for if your eyes are petrified in amazement, she will turn you to stone." That was it. Medusa.
He felt, for a brief instance, that he truly would become fossilized right there in the middle of the torrid terrace—just another garden ornament for time to abrade. He glanced uneasily toward the marble pegasus heads adorning the wrought iron gates behind him, shivering in spite of the heat.
Overhead, two large buzzards soared through the boundless blue like heavy black kites.
"Wash?" Elsa's sharp exclamation propelled him back to the present. "Are you—I can't possibly keep these! They'll smell like putrid pond water forever."
He groaned inwardly. He could feel the sweat rolling down the back of his neck. Georg tilted his face up at the sky, willing a meager little cloud to position itself in the path of the sun's violent rays. The creases between his brows were deep. His nostrils flared in and out with his labored breathing. Airy clouds of gnats had begun to swirl in the periphery of his vision. He worked his fingers spasmodically against his thigh.
"Elsa, darling, I really don't think—"
"Fraulein Maria!"
God, it's about time.
Georg turned at the sound of his children's delighted shrieks just in time to see them scrambling clumsily toward their governess, their little hands clutching at her desperately.
There she stood—lanky and sunburned, playful eyes shining as she petted their heads. She'd been gone for less than a day, and yet they clambered into her arms like she'd been missing for weeks.
A visit to the abbey.
Back at noon! she'd assured, whistling past him on her way through the front door that morning.
It was nearly dinner time.
Punctual as ever. He gritted his teeth.
The captain watched as she embraced each of his children, pinching Kurt on his red cheek and laughing melodiously as Gretl whispered something gravely into her ear.
Then, without warning, their eyes locked over the cacophony around them.
She beamed at him, her freckled, shiny face and tousled hair the picture of mischievous innocence. He could practically hear her voice. The familiar sing-song, careless lilt that would undoubtedly offer some senseless excuse for her lateness. Lost track of the time! The sky was just so blue! Such fragrant flowers today!
He gave a curt nod, his anger somewhat subverted by embarrassment. How could he have lost control of his children so quickly? Captain von Trapp did not lose control, and certainly not in his own household. He'd been doing so well lately, too—he'd been so involved.
Abruptly, her brilliant gaze shifted from his, and he watched as she slowly grasped the gravity of the situation unfolding on the terrace. She gasped.
"Gracious, Baroness Schraeder!" Maria looked empathetically toward the lake, lifting a hand to her forehead. Her face flushed with dawning realization. "You didn't fall out of a rowboat too, did you?"
The children burst into fits of giggles, and their father shushed them with a stern glance.
"What? No! I—" Elsa fussed with her hair, carefully removing a miry strand of some ungodly pond debris and clinging desperately to the little bit of pride she had left. "There was a small incident. Oh, never mind what happened," she declared, chin held high, as if she were balancing on it some heavy object which was quite likely to fall. "It's all forgotten."
The baroness managed a cheerful, artificial smile in the direction of the children. Excusing herself, she shuffled up the stairway toward the villa, her water-logged heels squelching with each laborious step.
Georg, half-blinded by the sun, turned to glare at his children. He tried impossibly to rear in his thoughts despite the roaring headache just beginning to settle behind his eyes.
"What in the world were you thinking?"
The seven of them shifted uncomfortably, their rueful faces turning everywhere but toward their father.
"We really are sorry, Father. We should've been more careful. We know the baroness isn't used to...games," Liesl ducked her head, her dreamy, blurred features awash with guilt.
"More careful indeed," the captain sighed in exasperation. "Now, run along inside. Get changed for dinner," he looked at them, brows rising expectantly, "you will apologize at dinner, yes?"
"Yes, Father," they chorused, glancing slyly amongst themselves before flying up the steps and inside the house.
Maria sidled over to the stairs, fruitlessly trying to avoid the captain's attention.
"You're late."
She spun around, her liquid eyes gleaming, her smile too broad. "Well, yes, I suppose I-"
"You lost track of the time?" he finished, his arms crossing firmly against his chest.
"Something like that!"
Her eyes found the significant trail of water marring the stone steps, and her sheepish smile faltered. She thumbed a small button on the bodice of her dress.
"Oh, captain, I am sorry. I feel awful. I should've been here to keep them preoccupied."
He hummed. She hadn't been gone for more than a few hours, and yet the house had already descended into utter chaos. Worse, he hadn't any justifiable reason to be angry with the girl. It was her day off, after all. She'd earned her right to spend it however she liked (though why she'd want to spend her time locked away in the claustrophobic, dreary walls of the abbey, he'd never understand).
Still, it was easier to be irritated with the governess than to face his own guilt, his unbearable shame at being unable to run his own home. God, was he really that incapable of controlling his children? He certainly had an arduous journey ahead of him to make up for the four long years of absence in the wake of—
"How was the abbey?" he blurted, unwilling to dwell on past tragedies for any longer than necessary.
"What? Oh! It was lovely, thank you. I'd forgotten…"
She gazed prettily at the lake. The sunlight gleamed against her bronze hair like a celestial halo.
By now, the sun was dropping further toward the west. Though the heat remained heavy over them like a thick woolen blanket, the light was golden and mellow. It enveloped them in its glittering glow.
The captain stared as she stretched her arms lazily toward the water, a strange glimmer flickering in her bright eyes. She tilted her head, admiring the towering mountains mirrored in the lake. Her light dress rippled and fluttered against the sudden breath of a warm summer breeze.
She was pretty, Georg decided, privately. In her awkward, vaporous way.
Pretty? Why should it matter if she's pretty? he startled, frowning at himself. His ears burned red against the dark slick of his hair.
"Ah, well," she sighed contentedly, smoothing her hand along the warm curve of the iron gate. "I suppose I ought to see to the children now...just to make sure they haven't thrown anyone else into any water."
He narrowed his eyes. Cheeky.
"Sorry, perhaps that was a bit insensitive," she cringed, ducking her fair head as she swept past.
Alone, the captain surveyed the horizon, seeking solace—as he so often did—in the indelible brilliance of the Alps.
A/N: Hello! So, brief unnecessary backstory:
Several years ago now, I started a story here that was very rushed and extremely unplanned. I never got around to finishing it, and recently I've been receiving a few notifications asking me to write the ending. Unfortunately, that story was so all over the place that I think it's absolutely a lost cause, and I can't even bring myself to read the whole thing. HOWEVER, the only thing I hate more than reading my old writing is the idea of leaving something unfinished, so I've FINALLY decided to just rewrite it—hopefully—in a more enjoyable way, so here we are. Oh boy.
