Chapter 42: Another Summer Goes On

Aigen, mid-June

June began the rise to its midpoint slowly, the heat broken by the thunderstorm. Maria already found herself looking forward to her first Sunday respite in the parish church down the road, what was to be her sole day off each week. It was one of many things Frau Schmidt explained to her that first morning, once breakfast was finished and she settled the children down with their books and papers. "The daily routine," Frau Schmidt began over a fresh pot of coffee. "The Captain is very particular."

Throughout the week, mornings were set aside for the children's lessons, breakfast until midday. After lunch, the children were to march about the grounds breathing deeply; Maria's laughter was only stilled by Frau Schmidt's earnest face. "And if it's raining?" she asked, the steam curling up dainty cup before her face a thin veil for her disbelief.

"They have raincoats and boots. The Captain still wishes them to be outside on their—marches."

Any time after they returned was for additional study until they were sent to their rooms to dress for dinner. After dinner, she was to return to the schoolroom with them for an hour, unless Franz had something to discuss with her. (Maria hoped he never did; she hadn't known him even twenty-four hours, but she already didn't want to know him.) Then, the children were to prepare for bed. Saturdays were scheduled much the same, Frau Schmidt droned on though she tightened her mouth like she needed to stop herself from muttering something very different. At least they're spared lessons one evening, Maria thought as the housekeeper smiled instead. Those evenings, Maria would discuss their progress with both Frau Schmidt and Franz. "You'll be in a world of your own with the children," Frau Schmidt said as she poured the last of the coffee, long ago tepid. "It won't be very long, just enough to decide if there's anything the Captain needs to know."

Maria tried not to think about the Captain—almost a ghost haunting the halls—except to tell herself that she was simply imagining everything. Though if she was honest, there wasn't all that much in the house to imagine anything about. The tiles were polished and shining, the carpets brushed and cleaned as though a shoe had never touched them, the drapes always without a single crease, the tables and chairs dusted...But even while it was large with trophies from every corner of the world...it was hollow. As untouched and lifeless as that musty ballroom. But I suppose that's why the Captain doesn't spend much time here. He won't have to face it if he's away.

Instead, as her first day in the von Trapp household went on and she shuffled through the notes and old lesson plans left at her desk, Maria forced herself to remember the ritual of the abbey. The call to prayers ringing out over her drafty classroom and the slow shuffling of shoes and long robes over the stone floor worn smooth over the centuries, the swell of hymns and the scratch of unfinished wood through her dresses. Even the disappointment in some of the older nuns eyes when she stumbled around a corner— Marta's call for help with spelling a word broke the spell.

With lunch done, the children were content to walk on their own again, and Maria was happy to send them on their way. She didn't forget the day's schedule after the front door closed behind them, but she spent the early afternoon with her guitar and a few short songs instead of their work from the morning. And instead of gathering them again for more studying, she sent them off to their rooms to do whatever they wished, the remainder of her own afternoon spent wrapped up in prayer.

Dinner was much the same as the night before, though without a telegram to briefly distract Franz. Maria wished there had been as he stared down the table at her. "You'll have to dress a little better in the future," he muttered after one of the maids whispered something to him.

Uta, Maria reminded herself as she set her silverware on either edge of her plate. There are still so many names to learn, even after the children's. "I don't have much different," she said, a low giggle circulating amongst the children as she took a sip of water.

"Hmm."

"Well, I would have made myself a new dress, but there wasn't time. I can make my own clothes."

"Well, I'll see that you get some material…" Franz lazily waved the blonde maid away. "As soon as possible." Another swell of laughter up along the table— "For God's sake, learn to keep quiet!"

Maria just tried to think about her food after that, not the thickening gloom in the room.

But when night finally blanketed the house and she crawled into bed after saying her short prayers—marking off 11 June on the calendar she had hastily drawn today after organizing her desk—Maria struggled to close her eyes. It was a gentle whisper—a quiet question that refused to be silenced: what if it is him? No, no, no! Maria told herself as she shrank into a ball beneath the bedclothes. No matter how much I see you here, I know it can't be that! Frau Schmidt said that she thinks—the Captain will want Baroness...I can't remember her name, but he'll ask her to marry him someday. Georg can't. If I can't move on and do anything—like that with my life, then neither can he. And why would Frau Schmidt say that if it wasn't true?

There was nothing to be afraid of, Maria told herself again and again until she fell into dark dreams she was happy to wash away in the morning, desperate for the embarrassment to burn away before she had to see anyone else. "Don't think about it," she told herself as she splashed some water across her puffy face. "As long as I'm here, I'll do better than my best for them. It's all I can do."

It happened slowly, in fits and starts, with twists and turns. She really couldn't understand how it all begun, only that everything shifted under their feet in gentle bursts.

Marta's birthday came and went in the midst of Maria's first full week in the household, the now seven year-old's favorite meals served throughout the day and the afternoon free of the walk Maria refused to call a march. She was a small bundle of pink the entire day, wearing fresh silk ribbons braided into her hair by one of her sisters and the pale pink dress their father had ordered long before he left.

Any semblance of order disappeared when Frau Schmidt announced Marta had a package waiting for her from Vienna. ("From their grandmother, for her birthday," Frau Schmidt told Maria quietly. "She can't visit often, but she always remembers them.") It wasn't that large: long, narrow, white, tied with white string, and filled with delicate tissue paper. Rustling and crinkling gave way to a squeal of excitement that left Maria's ears as Marta excitedly unwrapped the white handle of a small pink parasol. The little girl calmed just enough to be persuaded outside to open it, the delicate fabric blossoming over her head right after her small shoes clattered onto the stone terrace. Persuading it out of her hands and closing its lace clasp was nearly impossible, even when Maria reminded her she wouldn't need it back in the schoolroom.

The next day, it was still propped against Marta's desk when the two little girls hurried up to her, Maria forcing herself to smile down at Marta as she tried not to look at the dark looped pigtails "What is it?"

"Can we write a letter?" Marta asked as she propped her hands on the edge of Maria's desk. Her skin around a few of her fingernails gleamed with silver pencil, like she hadn't been paying attention to her work

"Who do you want to write to?" Maria asked as she shook a piece of paper free from the stack at a far corner of her desk.

"Oma!" Gretl shouted, her head bouncing as she tried to push herself onto her toes.

Marta nodded. "I want to thank her for my parasol."

"And speaking of your parasol, Marta, run to the washroom and clean the pencil off your fingers."

They came back to ask Maria for two more sheets of paper before they were happy, all four of their hands silvery grey from the smeared pencil. Maria offered to read it over for them, but they folded their letter messily, just announcing they were done! "How long will it take to get to Vienna?" Gretl asked as Maria shoved it into an envelope. It bulged a little, but still closed without too much trouble.

"Well, a few days, I suppose," Maria said as she touched a finger to her tongue and then to the top flap, pressing it down for a moment to seal. "I'll give it to Frau Schmidt to add to the mail."

O O O

The Friday after Marta's birthday, Louisa began to find herself at ease with Maria despite the angry looks she threw toward her governess whenever she remembered them. It was her sketches that softened her, really: landscapes and sunsets drawn on the corner of what was meant to be geography work, something she suspected Fräulein Maria wouldn't understand even if she looked at it. But the next morning as they all took their seats, Louisa already hard at work on a pair of drawings she had brought from her bedroom, the governess pulled her wooden chair up beside her with the half-finished assignment in her hand. But there was no reprimand, no demand to finish the dull essay about the local mountains.

"Where did you see those?" Maria asked as she set the essay in front of her, though she didn't seem to be paying it any attention.

"I'll finish it!" Louisa snapped as she reached for her geography paper, shoving her little forest underneath it. She didn't really want anyone to see it anyway; the leaves weren't filled in and the roots remained just lines snaking down from the trunks.

But Maria set the schoolwork out of her reach, up past the other drawing she had been working on through the morning as well. "May I?" Louisa nodded as she wiped a line of pencil from the side of her palm onto her desk. It was already a mess of graphite and shavings and even little bits of paper she had torn while smudging away a line or two. You'll tell me not to things like that just the way Fräulein Josephine did.

"This is lovely, Louisa!"

She turned her face sharply, now seeing her governess reach for the other sketch. "What?"

"Your drawings. Where did you see this?"

"Nowhere," Louisa muttered, now twisting her pencil between her fingers, "not really." This was one of the banks of the lake, the rocks muddy and mossy and shaded beneath a bridge from her imagination. Its rails were spindly and snowy, a few large icicles frozen to the lake's still waves, curving upward gently until it faded back into the paper beneath the edge of an invisible snowstorm. "I just thought it might be nice to draw."

"It's very good. Do you ever paint any of them?"

"No," Louisa said softly as she shook her head. "But—aren't you going to have me finish my paper?"

"It can wait, if you want to finish those trees."

It was hard to continue on with the little plots in the hallway later that night. Whenever a fresh idea arose to sneak a snake or frog into Fräulein Maria's bedroom or add gravel to her shampoo powder, four sets of eyes always turned to her. Ever since the snake that had driven Frau Wimmer from their lives, she had always been the one to climb the trellis. "Do we have to?" she asked. Her sketch of the lake and her imaginary bridge was balanced on her knees, the icicles a little softer than they were in the morning.

"What, you think we should be nice to her?" Friedrich snapped.

"Maybe she's different."

By the start of Maria's second full week in the von Trapp house, Louisa was mostly ignoring her lessons. She dedicated herself to filling her notebooks with lined sketches instead while her siblings' books rustled around her. She even took to daydreaming about how to fill in the lines with the red and green colored pencils she snatched from the governess's desk over the years. And, as she carefully tore one finished page from her notebook before tidying her bed Tuesday morning, how to ask Fräulein Maria about sending it to Aunt Hede once she had the villa's spring sunset colored.

O O O

The daily routine disintegrated quickly. Structured lessons were confined to the mornings and with the rolling in of dense clouds at the beginning of Maria's second full week at the villa, daily walks were often abandoned despite the children's raincoats. While Marta and Gretl amused themselves with their little clapping games during the afternoon—their governess sometimes joining them—and his siblings variously drew, journaled, or read, Kurt studied the rocks and fossils he had gathered over the years. But Fräulein Maria never seemed to mind or chase him to his history books. Once, she even told him to run back to his shared bedroom to retrieve one he had forgotten and asked if he could explain what was so interesting about it. Just like Louisa, he was a little less interested in any tricks they might play on their governess, when the chatter rose up later that night.

And the walk they took that Wednesday as the showers broke, exactly two weeks after Fräulein Maria appeared...Kurt was left even more confused. No one really cared for the old line anymore, though Liesl and Friedrich still tried to keep to themselves at its frayed head. As he often did whenever he could, Kurt hurried off the path—his own personal way to irritate their governesses over the years—toward the edge of the wilder grounds that always threatened to creep onto the manicured grass. (He still wondered why one patch far beyond the lake had been cleared years ago.) He expected a shout, a call for him to return that would only send him running as fast as he could deeper into the woods.

The shout came, but even though it was muffled by the thin edge of the wood already behind him, it wasn't what he expected. "Kurt?" Fräulein Maria called. Turning around, he grabbed for a branch on the nearest tree and hoisted himself up with a grunt. He stuck his right foot onto a thick knot on the trunk and pushed up—threw his left hand up to catch the next branch. Again and again until he could see over the shorter saplings in front of him. "Kurt?" Fräulein Maria shouted again. "Where are you?"

"Just over here!" he yelled, now pulling himself up along another slippery branch. A veil of green leaves swept over him, but Kurt shoved a chunk of the foliage aside. The new governess was talking to his younger sisters, now sending Gretl off to Liesl—

And now, she was traipsing into the grass and weeds laying between path and forest, her hands up around her mouth like a cone. "I don't see you!"

"I'll be down soon!" Kurt shouted as he dropped the handful of leaves and thin snappy branches. He settled back against the trunk for a moment, his uniform's kerchief snagging on a rough patch of bark as one of his feet came loose. Pressing his chin down against the top of his chest, he shivered; the tree's bark was still damp after the days of rain.

"I just need to be sure you're all right!"

All right? Kurt thought as he steadied his foot, squinting as he tried to look through the leaves. "Aren't you…" Turning his face, he coughed into his shoulder. Aren't you going to shout at me?

"We can climb trees tomorrow if you all would like, but we just need to get back inside before it rains again."

He didn't linger in the tree as long as he might have a year earlier, laughing and scrambling higher as the governess stomped through the woods yelling for him to come back. Instead, he was back on the ground in a minute or two, nearly scraping his hands in his hurry. He fell back into an even more crooked line as he smacked the dirt away between his palms and then wiped them along his trousers, still wondering if Fräulein Maria had really meant it, that they might climb trees tomorrow.

O O O

Through the end of June, Brigitta kept to herself. As a few of her siblings clung to Fräulein Maria, she withdrew a little more, content to be alone with the thick books she snuck from the library or, more frequently, her journal. When her work for the day was done, even her novels were often now ignored as she scribbled in her notebook.

"What are you writing?" Maria asked as Friday's morning lessons wound down as the clock in the hall chimed. "You often are these days."

Brigitta didn't answer, just sliding to the side of her chair and slapping her notebook closed before her governess had a chance to decipher a word of her still awkward childlike script. "Nothing," she muttered as she folded her arms over the thin diary and tossed her pen aside.

Maria crouched down beside her, an arm over her shoulders. "You've been quiet since Marta's birthday party." Brigitta shook her head, then sniffed, her nose stuffy. "Is something—"

"Fräulein Maria!" Across the schoolroom, dulled crayons scattered in front of her, Gretl was waving an arm wildly in the air, eyes wide. "Fräulein Maria!"

Smiling a little, Maria waved back. Standing straight and brushing Brigitta's long loose hair away from her upper arm, she said, "I'll be back—"

"Fräulein Maria?" Brigitta said loudly as she spun quickly in her chair, snagging her governess's sleeve before she could step away.

"Yes?" she asked quietly.

"Do you know when—Father will be back."

Maria tugged her arm free and pushed Brigitta's hand back onto her journal. "I really...I have no idea."

Brigitta huffed, already reaching for her pen again. "He just comes and goes all the time."

She nodded gently. "I know, Frau Schmidt told me he's often gone."

"She said…" Brigitta opened her journal back to the last half-filled page as the binding cracked. "She said that..."

"What?"

Brigitta began a sentence on a fresh line, the words scratching heavier and heavier into the paper—until the nib cut through the page. "That he doesn't want to see us."

But—you wouldn't have done that, you couldn't! Maria thought as she glanced toward the door. The housekeeper sometimes wandered past, often with a gentle shake of her head about something. Whether it was the mess of papers and books on her desk or the freer days within the schoolroom, Frau Schmidt always appeared a little disappointed. "I don't think the Captain will want that," she had said a few days after Marta's birthday when she pulled Maria aside before the evening lessons. But even if…"She what?"

Brigitta slumped back in her chair as she twisted her pen in the little hole in her journal's page. "Just before she left."

Then she can't mean—Frau Schmidt is still here. "But—who said that?"

"Frau Wimmer."

"I don't know who that is."

"Our first governess."

Maria knelt down beside Brigitta, pulling the pen away and setting it atop the open notebook. "I'm sure she didn't mean it."

The young girl frowned, her nose wrinkling before she rubbed at an itch. "She did." Then a cough and another, the second one deeper. "She never liked us—and Father was never here to see."

"I'm sure he was away for a reason—just like now."

Brigitta turned toward Maria again, dark hair swept down across her face. "But he's always gone in the summer."

"Sometimes fathers are." Her eyes darting up, Maria still saw Gretl waving at her, nearly jumping out of her chair. "We can talk about that later, if you would like." Bracing herself on the edge of Brigitta's desk, she stood up. "And why—why don't you write him something. Something you can give him when he comes back?"

"Maybe," Brigitta said quietly as she sat up and reached for a new pencil. "But I don't know if he'll want it."

"You won't know if you don't write it."

But I don't know either, Maria thought later that night as she finally slipped into her own bed, her room quiet and still. The thought had taunted her since she left Brigitta to her journal and with no more children to distract her—no more prayers to leap from her tongue—she couldn't quite forget it. Or...I don't know what you would have said either, she thought, shiny bedspread dragged right up beneath her chin. I didn't know then and I don't know if I don't want to know now.

She didn't dare look at those never read letters now, more than ever: his memory was sharpening a little bit more every day. In the faces of the children—Liesl still haunted her if she wasn't quite on her guard—and the corners of the house where the little hints of the old navy and the sea still drifted free. There's nothing to think about, she told herself sharply, now with the quilt up over her head, hot breath steaming her own face. I can't—I won't—or I'll think about you instead of them. And—and I can't, not again. I just need to worry about them until I'm back at the abbey in my classroom. But the memories of her first classroom still haunted her, especially whenever Marta tugged on her arm.

O O O

As July began, the heat refused to ease despite the afternoon rain. Any paths and lanes that had begun to dry were once again transformed into mud, the lake and surrounding grounds sodden as a few inches of the bank disappeared. Maria and the children only went for a walk on Monday—the final of June—but quickly retreated to the schoolroom despite their raincoats. (A spare for Maria had been uncovered in the attic.) Maria no longer even expected them to sit at their desks unless it was the morning. Instead, Louisa and Brigitta were often sprawled on the edge of the large dark rug spread over the bowed wooden floor, books and blank pages and pencils in their hands. Kurt usually had a book as well, though nothing he was supposed to be studying, and Marta and Gretl were wherever Maria was. Sometimes, they played one of their clapping or string games. Other times, they were content to listen to yet another fairy tale as they sometimes had been in the afternoons. They had devoured so many, Maria had to bring her worn book along to find ones she didn't remember all that well herself! Brigitta and Louisa often crept closer for these, and as the grey lingered over the villa, Kurt grew curious as well.

The need for stories growing as the rain dragged on, Maria more often found herself eagerly telling her own. Picking up the dwarves and elves from tales past and dropping them down in the little forests huddling behind the shimmering curtain of rain, sending them down those muddy paths to leave tracks they might find on their first walk once their world began to dry. And as their lessons solidly turned to daydreams—at least for a part of the day!—so too did their little hopes for an unexpected visit from their father. Maybe he would want to see how the lake had risen up along the stone landing, or how the birds in the grass along its banks had nudged their nests up away from the rising sea! Maria usually just nodded as her own hopes and dreams flooded back. But before she could really think about the wait for her father or, worse yet, her husband, she began her stories again, a little louder. She wasn't willing to give him another moment...a task was easier said than done whenever she peered at the children.

While the rain drummed on the roof, Maria always had her guitar in the schoolroom's corner. Whenever the children were focused on their schoolwork and she had marked everything from the day before, she picked at the strings: tightening one and loosening another to bring them in tune; clumsily strumming them as quietly as she could; and stopping once she realized one or more of the children kept lifting their eyes from their work. And though they asked about her guitar during their new free time after lunch, Maria mostly taught the five younger children the basic notes to sing.

"Let's think of something to sing for your father," Maria said as she sat on the floor, the five younger children gathering around her. (They weren't too keen to focus on their studies, though most of Friday mornings lessons were still in progress.) Pulling one of her feet closer, she dragged her dress hem under her calf as she checked the tension on the top string. "Just in case he does come home sometime soon."

Lying on her stomach, elbows digging into the rug with her chin propped on her hands, Marta shook her head. "Father doesn't like us to sing."

"Well, perhaps we can change his mind," Maria muttered. One more pluck left her satisfied and she smiled as she the full weight of the guitar's body dropped onto her thigh. "Now"—the instrument groaned as she flattened her hand against the row of strings—"what songs do you know?"

Behind his sisters, Kurt shook his head as well. "We don't know any songs."

"Not any?"

Cross-legged with Gretl in her lap, Louisa nodded slowly. "We don't even know how to sing."

"Then we'll have to start at the very beginning," Maria said, already picking out a little tune. "Do-re-mi-fa-so-la-ti-do, that's all you need to start..."

As the first full week of July began, everything was completely transformed. If the children had changed in fits and starts, so had Maria. While she had initially counted the nights eagerly, scratching off the days until she would return to Nonnberg—the hymns and chants, the bells and prayers—now she forgot to mark them off, to even note the beginning of July on Wednesday! She tried not to think about how the days were suddenly rushing by, how quickly the weeks had begun to pass. I suppose I'll always look back on this with fondness, she thought occasionally as she fought against sleep.

But as she grew closer to so many of the children, Friedrich somehow remained an enigma. While his brothers and sisters were happy to draw closer to her—well, except for Liesl as well—Friedrich hung back. Silent, sullen, always frowning. Quiet and mysterious. A little familiar, if Maria was honest. And perhaps that was what worried her, no matter how she always tried to throw her thoughts anywhere else but him. Just as her worries over the children grew, so too did the niggling worry about Georg.

A captain with seven children, she thought another night as the damp summer heat clung to every wall and window—and she clung to the day that had just died. She couldn't decide whether she wanted to bury herself in her quilt to hide or throw it aside so that she didn't swelter. But I can't keep thinking about it—him. I don't even know the Captain's name, I only know yours. Tossing around in her bed again, the quilt won and Maria yanked it over the top of her head, arms and legs and torso all curled into a little ball. I just have to keep reminding myself that he doesn't have any claim to that name over anyone else—or being a sailor or captain. I just have to remember that these children need someone to love them, just the way I did.

But the heavy quilt and years of fighting against Georg's memory couldn't quite keep him out. Night after night, he loomed larger in her dreams. Their walks along Salzburg's winding roads, that day on the lake when Georg might as well have been far away on the open ocean...And in her deepest moments of sleep, Maria relived her starkest moments of weakness, like the house itself was beginning to stoke those old flames. The delightful shivers as his rough hands roamed her bare skin exactly as he pleased, the fitful moans when his hot breath singed her ravished body, and the final guilty sighs of carnal satisfaction as the heat of his ejaculation filled her.

It was most often right then that her eyes opened, her body stiff and wooden and her breathing labored as the stifling heat ebbed away. And always...that little hiss in her ear: "Now you belong to me. You'll always be mine." She scrubbed the hardest at her arms and legs in the morning as she showered, once or twice leaving a raw patch of red skin between her breasts. I'm not yours, she reminded herself each morning as she pulled on her fresh clothes. No matter what the paperwork says, I never was—and I won't be!

But Maria left it behind in her bedroom as best she could, and whatever hints of her old life that haunted her footsteps were easily banished as the children swarmed around her. Waving, calling her name, asking for her to look at this or that...It wasn't much of a struggle to smile or laugh, to forget the world buried in her carpetbag and her wardrobe until she stepped into her room again for the evening. But in the midst of her own troubles and the other children, particularly Friedrich, there was Liesl...Oh, Liesl.

O O O

Maria wasn't sure what to do at first, still wasn't as the weeks added up to nearly a month. Almost as much as Friedrich, the eldest girl kept to herself, really only coming to life whenever she noticed one of the maids or the butler holding a telegram. You're not too subtle, she thought over as they sat around the table for lunch one afternoon, Liesl suddenly impatient as a maid handed the little yellow paper to Frau Schmidt. It was worse whenever they arrived in the evening, though. If there was ever one handed to Franz, she was almost squirming in her seat, sometimes asking to be excused—only for the butler to snap for her to be quiet.

Maria still didn't quite know why she joined them on their walk that first Monday of July. Even the younger children knew their way around around the grounds better than she would by the time her service ended and no matter how much she enjoyed her time with them, she still needed a little time to herself. There was no decorum to maintain, no line for her to order them into; these days, some of the children didn't even bother wearing their uniforms! Perhaps it was just the first hint of sunshine after the days of rain. But whatever it was, something wouldn't leave her alone as they all left the dining room that afternoon like a little school of fish swimming toward the front door.

She didn't quite know where they were going, or if there was even a set path at all. By now, Maria trusted the children not to lead her astray, but she still glanced back now and then, the ruddy shingles still a little shiny and damp. Maybe it was time that I was out here with them, Maria thought. Turning around, she took a few backwards steps, her heels sinking into the still drying mud path. I'll have to make sure we all take their shoes off before going inside. There's always enough to do, even if the children look after many of—

Maria grunted as she stumbled forward, the breath knocked from her chest like she backed into a tree. And then shuffling behind her, now a little groan and a gasp. With a couple of paces forward, Maria turned around—to see Liesl right in front of her, wiping her hands down along her uniform's pleated skirt. "Oh!" the girl said softly, her cheeks reddening.

"What are you doing? It's too early to turn around."

"Well, I just—" Those deep blue eyes were on the ground now.

"We've only just left."

"I know." Liesl pushed herself onto her toes for a second, teeth cutting into her bottom lip.

"Then where are you going?" Maria asked as she turned back around. Just the same path with their patchy footsteps—Gretl, Marta, and even Brigitta's already smeared away—twisting and vanishing back toward the front of the house. Toward the courtyard with its heavy gate and the main road. Oh, Liesl. You're too young for that—but I know you won't think that. It's just what I would have said.

"Nowhere."

"Then are you expecting—"

"You don't know him—" Liesl huffed as she crossed her arms and scowled. "I'm not—"

"Or—who are you looking for?" Maria asked softly, trying not to laugh as Liesl's cheeks flushed. "I was sixteen once, too." Liesl didn't answer, so with a quick step forward, Maria caught her wrist gently. "Shall we have a talk while we catch up with the others?"

Liesl scrubbed one white shoe into the ground, the front of the sole now caked with mud. I don't have anyone else—and she probably won't be here very long anyway, she thought as she nodded faintly.

"Who are you looking for?" Maria asked again.

"Someone—I know."

Dropping her hand, Maria stepped around to Liesl's side, her first stride encouraging the girl forward into the shadow a few paces ahead around the bush. "I was sure of that."

"A—I don't want to call him a boy because he's not!" Liesl snapped, her arms falling free and her hands balling up. "Just like I'm not a girl."

Maria nodded. "I know you're not."

"I'll be seventeen at the beginning of October." Liesl's face went red again. I sound just like Marta, she thought as her fists loosened. Like I am a little girl.

"That's not what I asked," Maria said as she pushed aside a thin branch growing over the path.

Following her governess, Liesl darted to the path's other side before the branch snapped back. "Rolfe," she said after a moment.

Maria paused, just waiting for Liesl to be at her side again. "And who is he?"

"My...friend."

"How did you meet?"

This time, Liesl shoved a branch out of the way, dangling down from overhead and covered with a dozen or so little vines that snagged their hair. "He works delivering telegrams, in the summer or when he's not in school." She giggled to herself as they stepped through a patch of sunlight that had fought its way through the leaves. "One day, Father sent one from Vienna and it arrived when we were outside on our walk." You didn't quite look old enough to be doing that with your hat almost falling off your head. "He was lost, even though he said he had been here before not too long ago."

Maria clasped her hands behind her back, shaking one ankle before a small thorny plant could catch her stocking. "I suppose that's better," she whispered. Maybe it would have been different if you had just thought I was lost and sent me on my way before I—

"What?"

"Oh—" Maria pitched forward a little over a small root that had risen up through the leaves, one she hadn't seen. But her other foot landed and she brought herself upright quickly. "Nothing, really. I was just thinking about someone I used to know."

"Who—"

"Fräulein Maria?" someone called from up ahead, dull footsteps growing louder. "Fräulein Maria?"

"Yes?" Maria called as she bit her lip. An itch was growing along her ankle, like the little thorny bush had gotten through her stocking after all. "Is everything all right?"

Kurt appeared from behind the next bend in the path, rusty blond hair a little mussed and his cheeks tinged red like he had been running, one leg of his short trousers hiked up over his knee. "Yes...Are you coming?" he asked before he paused for a long breath.

Maria nodded as she finally gave in, leaning down to one side to dig her fingernails into the bottom of her calf to try and calm the itch. "I—we'll be there in a moment." Kurt nodded, though Maria still saw him breathing deeply. "Go on—and be careful!"

As he turned around, Kurt shouted a muffled "I will!", then vanished with a faint "Ow!" muddled with the crunch of branches and brambles. As Maria stood up again, she couldn't stop her own laugh—and neither could Liesl.

They walked in silence for a couple of minutes, a little faster to keep the noise of the rest of the children a little closer. Maybe it won't be too bad if we are friends, like you said at first, Liesl thought as the path twisted around the last of the wooded edge of the estate, finally emerging onto the open grounds behind the lake. The house rose up dark and solemn behind the glistening water, the breeze whistling past the walls and across the grass, rippling like a windy gust over the ocean. Still up ahead, the younger children were already shouting and running and chasing one another in some game of tag already spreading across the bank. Except...

"Do you really know him?" Maria asked quietly, her gaze following Friedrich as he walked away from his siblings, hands shoved deep into his pockets. He didn't even look up at their noise, just swatting something away from his face before kicking a rock up from the muck around the bank. I don't know if you can. Or at least I didn't.

"Yes!" Liesl said loudly. "Or...I want to. I think I do, or that I could depend on him if I had to." Her gaze darted to the house, the rosy shingles still dull after the endless rain. I don't want to go back when I know it's all going to be the same as it has been for years. "Were you…" No, I shouldn't.

"Hmm?"

All she can do is not answer. "Have you ever been in love?" Liesl asked quietly as she and her governess finally stepped into the grass, already well past the tops of their shoes and tickling their legs.

"I—what?"

"I know you're from the abbey, so I suppose you aren't. From what I know, at least. But I know you aren't from there."

"No, I came to Salzburg from Innsbruck and—Vienna." Maria licked her dry lips, stopping to push herself up on her toes to find the little girls. They were just sprawled in the grass, she saw as she relaxed, just at the lake's end. "And…" She smiled as another gentle breeze flitted across her face and swept the humid air away for a moment. "I was, once."

"In love?"

Maria nodded as they stepped farther into the grassy waves. "That was the problem."

"How could that be a problem?"

"It wasn't, at least it wasn't at first."

"How could it ever be?" Liesl asked as she pulled her skirt free of a few flowers pushing their way up toward the sun, the hem a little wet from the drops lingering on the petals.

"It's easy to just see what you want to see, Liesl. In people. But someday, you have to see the world and—the people in it for who they really are. Not who you want them to be."

"I'm sorry."

Maria cleared her throat—blinked heavily to clear her eyes. "It was years ago and I don't—I try not to think about it."

Quiet fell between them again, just the rustling and crunching of grass and little stems cutting through it. Marta and Gretl's shouts were louder, but the words were still a jumbled mess as the growing shadow of the house sharpened just past the lake's opposite bank. "Sometimes I wonder what would happen," Liesl said softly.

"Hmm?"

She tugged her kerchief from her neck as a little sweat rolled down her back. "If I just went. Somewhere out there."

"With Rolfe?"

As her arm dropped, Liesl shrugged. "Maybe, though I don't think we'd get very far. He told me once his bicycle is for speed, but he worries if his bag is too full sometimes. But...maybe that's what I like about him. We're shut in here so much." Liesl spun around—then again. No matter where she looked, it was all somewhere she had been before, time and time again. "Without school, I forget the rest of the world is out there. And we do everything together, my brothers and sisters and me. We always have, but it's so different when it's just us."

"I wish I knew what that was like," Maria said as she reached for Liesl's arm to steady her on a little bump rising up in front of them. "I told Marta and Gretl I don't really have any, just a brother almost twenty years older than me."

They continued on into the afternoon sunshine, the din of the children growing as the approached the lake. The youngest were back on their feet and stumbling through the cattails, Marta's arms outstretched as she chased after Gretl, shouting about something that wasn't fair all the while. Louisa and Brigitta had dropped into the grass, both lying on their stomachs as they swung their feet through the air, laughing and probably whispering between themselves. None of our old governesses would have let us do this, Liesl thought as Kurt suddenly popped up from a crouch a few feet from her sisters. They always just wanted to do what Father wanted. "Did you ever wonder about that, like I do?"

"About the world I don't know?"

Liesl nodded.

"Yes," Maria said softly as she waved at Marta, the little girl yanking to free her hair from something stubborn growing up through the earth. "Sometimes I think maybe I should have found a reason to stay. Instead of looking everywhere else." But— Maria shivered and swallowed, the sour taste of bile coating the back of her throat. I could have stayed in Vienna, but I would have had to find somewhere else. "But I couldn't have stayed, I—"

"You'll always be what you are, you little wretch." Her nose burned, the pain from the fresh break already swelling as the blood dribbled down onto her dress.

"What? Why?" The blood already coated her entire mouth. "Why are you—"

"Don't talk back to me, you little whore—and I'll see to it you know it, the rest—"

"Fräulein Maria? Are you coming?" Liesl's voice was far away—Maria's eyes slack and vision blurred—her fingers brittle and frozen—everything cold and distant. "Fräulein Maria?" And looking up from the blurry grass, she was several feet away, as though Maria herself must have simply stopped. "Is everything—"

"Yes," Maria said quickly, shaking her dress free of yet another bramble as she hurried up to Liesl. "That's...Why don't you tell me more about him. Rolfe."

Finally joining the younger children, though still a little ways from them, Liesl quietly wandered through her conversations with Rolfe. His sandy hair and dark eyes, what he wanted to do when he finally left school, how his three younger sisters played their own tricks on him when their parents weren't looking, what they might do sometime if she could ever join him for a day out...Maria didn't say much, really just listening unless she needed to say something to one of the other children. (She reassured Kurt more than once that they would be able to check with the cook to see about something to eat before dinner.) And they sat on the grass long after Liesl fell silent, Gretl curled up at Maria's side snoring gently as she took a short nap.

Friedrich remained off on his own, sitting at the narrow end of the lake far enough away Maria would have to shout for him to hear her. As her thigh tingled under Gretl's face, she twisted around to try to get a better look at him, though the cattails rippling in the breeze hid him now and then. "He's very quiet today," she finally said as she nudged Gretl away from her and onto a small lump of grass.

Liesl nodded as she looked up from the little chain of white flowers Marta had strung together. "He always has been—"

"Not always!" Brigitta shouted.

"He's just like Father."

Still stretched out beside Brigitta with her chin in her palms—her kerchief long ago thrown on the ground—Louisa nodded as well. "He doesn't talk when he has something on his mind."

Maria stretched her legs out as well, her toes filled with pins and needles. "Oh, I see." Gretl sniffled beside her, then rolled onto her other side, elbow slapping at her knee just beneath the hem of her dress, a little hiked up from her own twisting as well as the little girl's squirming. "I'll have to think about that, then."

Maria and the rest of the children sat on the grass for a few more hours, chatting and soaking up the fresh afternoon air until the sunshine began to darken to orange on the western edge of the sky. They were all gathered around her by the time it was time to hurry inside for dinner, no time to change into their fine dresses and jackets. By the time they were scampering up the stone steps, the children's uniforms covered in grass stains and all their shoes laden with dirt, Maria had variously promised them a picnic somewhere and singing lessons, and even some time with her guitar for Liesl and Louisa.

Friedrich never joined them.

Just before midnight, the first Monday of July

Something was whistling in Maria's ear and against her cheek. She wasn't really awake, just feeling the sheets against her arms and legs with her eyes still tightly closed. With the heat and humidity back to stay, she hadn't been able to stand the thought of the satin bedspread, instead leaving it roughly folded at her feet when she finally climbed into bed after her prayers. As she tossed and turned through the night, her sleeves and the bottom of her nightdress and bunched up, most of her skin now bare beneath the sheets.

There it came again, soft and sounding a little deeper. Rolling onto her other side, Maria dragged the sheet with her. As it wrapped around her calves, Maria shivered and squirmed, both of her arms suddenly tangled as well—

"Maria, keep still. Neither of us will fall asleep if you won't stop squirming."

She opened her eyes, her breath caught at the back of her mouth. I know what it felt like, she thought as she yanked her arms free. It was your snoring, Georg. Hands and arms free, Maria tore at the sheets around her legs, finally pushing them down past her feet. I don't know how it suddenly felt like that. It was still licking across her face as she sat up, the sheets now piled up right alongside the bedspread. Or why I keep thinking about you—

It blew over her face faster, and now it wasn't just whistling but a banging as well. Maria pushed herself to the edge of her bed, toward the sound...Just the window, she thought, her feet down on the carpet. With the heat and humidity back to stay for the nights as well, she had left it unlatched, not expecting a breeze strong enough to leave it rattling. "I wonder what time it is?"

Hurrying across the carpet to the window, Maria blindly reached out for small handle. The world was still dark, a few owls still hooting into the night. "Not too close to morning," she whispered as she dragged the window closed. "Or I guess you'd be asleep the way the children all are." She pulled the window closed—but it bounced back open, like something was wedged into the hinges. "Oh…" Another attempt gave the same result. "Well, it doesn't matter too much."

She inhaled deeply, the cool air smelling of the grass and summer flowers surrounding the house. It can't be too long until sunrise. And now taking a seat in the chair right by the windowsill, crushed against the far arm against the pale wall, Maria propped her elbow on the edge and her jaw on her palm. Even if I can't really see the stars right now. She scratched an itch through her nightdress. I know that way is east, because I know where the sun rises—and the way I came. The window snapped back toward her face as a stronger gust of wind rise up along the house's façade, and she gasped as the hinge creaked loudly. "I might get you closed if it rains again," she whispered as she twisted her lips together. "Or at least you could not scare me again."

Leaning forward, now Maria just saw the stars peeking out from the eaves above. Sparkling and twinkling, just the way she always thought a crystal or diamond must. It's always so much to think about, Father. So many stars up in the sky, all the grand things You made—and You still make the time for us. She pulled her face back as the window swung in for another moment, then back out with the breeze. It's hard to understand. It's just me right here—but the rest of the world is still looking up at the same stars and the same sky, at least if they want to. Even…

Twisting her neck around, Maria wiped her eye against her shoulder. Even you, if you can now. But I suppose time wasn't your friend, just like it wasn't mind when I finally went back to Vienna. You couldn't have been the only one in my class, but I still think I should have known something. "Well, I did," she muttered. "But I...I know you're out there somewhere." Sliding her elbow from the windowsill, Maria folded her hands in her lap, nightdress snagged between her fingers. "Or I hope so, even if I'll never know." She cleared her throat—then had to tear one hand free to wipe away more hot tears before they could run down her face. "I'm sorry, Sonja," she whispered as she drew her feet up into the chair, one side of her face falling against the windowsill. "I wish I could say I didn't know." Maria winced, a small sliver of wood scratching her skin—but it just tore a little when she moved, a warm speck of blood now sliding down toward her jaw. "But I just didn't want to know."

A/N: As a reminder, Sonja was one of Maria's students back in 1933 who simply stopped coming to her summer classes one day.