Hermann lived on a farm on the other side of Obertraun, the youngest of five children. When they were in primary school, he’d often joined Max, Annika, and Sarah for swimming and boating.Once she’d even dreamed about them spending a lifetime as friends, Sarah and Hermann marrying in the village and, of course, her and Max becoming husband and wife, living here part of the year and the rest either in Vienna or traveling the world together.
Now Hermann visited three days a week, though time for swimming was past for him as well. He was a year older than Max and spent his summers working here and at his family’s farm. She’d asked Sarah once what she thought of marrying Hermann, but her friend said her parents would never allow her to marry a Gentile boy.
Annika snatched the chapel key off the hook by the front door, and Hermann followed her silently out of the cottage, to the family chapel set against the mountain. She’d visited the chapel almost every day this past week to deliver lunch or help her father and Hermann work on the platform they were building near the altar, but she didn’t linger as she used to in the library or Frau Dornbach’s dressing room.
While the plaster walls were supposed to house God in this chapel, she didn’t think one could box Him up, though Sarah told her that God once lived in a gold-plated box. In the Bible, people carried God around with them as they wandered through the wilderness. God traveling in a case of gold, Annika could imagine that, but not trapped between walls of gray plaster with a dusty tapestry and dirt-smeared windows, two wooden pews and a stone floor.
Mama taught her all about Jesus before she died. She used to speak of God’s presence like it was a song, stealing across the lake and the trees, over the Alps and up into the sky.
Did a song ever die, or did it keep traveling?
Surely it kept traveling, she thought, all the way up into theheavens, threading through stars and knotting itself around the fullness of the moon.
She’d volunteered last year to clean the chapel, but Vati insisted that the Dornbachs wanted to leave it in its dismal state. If they demanded a clean house, but not a clean chapel, it made her wonder what Herr and Frau Dornbach thought about God.
“Do you know why they’re adding the platform?” she asked.
“Didn’t your father tell you?”
She shook her head. “He never talks to me about such things.”
“It’s for the casket of Christoph Eyssl.” The salt manager from centuries ago who’d built this castle.
“Why do they want his casket here?”
“His testament states that pallbearers should bring his body back to his home every fifty years. The Dornbachs are a decade late, but Frau Dornbach has agreed to accommodate this.”
Annika shivered at the thought of the man’s casket displayed here. “I wonder why they are just now agreeing.”
“Because they, like everyone, are trying to maintain a sense of normalcy.”
And, she suspected, they wanted to maintain good standing with the local parish.
Perhaps, when the platform was complete, the Dornbachs would add a new tapestry in here, something vibrant and cheery, a garden scene or one with the lake. If Vati would let her borrow the key, she’d collect wild daffodils and primroses during the spring months to brighten the chapel and cover the musty scent.
God must live in flowers as He did in a bird’s song.
The engine of a car startled her, and she rushed to the window. The fog was still so thick that she couldn’t see past the trees that separated this chapel from their cottage, but seconds later ablack-and-burgundy automobile broke through the fog, rumbling toward the chapel.
Had the Dornbachs finally returned? Her mind rushed to take an inventory of the house. She’d restacked all of Frau Dornbach’s shoe boxes beside the armoire and cleaned the rooms. But what would Frau Dornbach do when she realized her necklace was missing?
Annika slipped away from the glass as the car parked beside the castle’s front steps. She didn’t recognize the vehicle, but that wasn’t unusual. The Dornbachs purchased a new car at least once a year.
“I must get my father,” she said. The family usually sent a telegram before a visit, but the last two times they’d arrived unexpectedly, almost as if they were trying to catch her father in a lethargic state. Not that it was difficult to do these days. It was well after ten now, and Vati was still in bed.
She raced out into the fog and through the trees, flinging open the cottage door.
“Vati!” she shouted, running down the short corridor into his room. He was still asleep, one arm hanging off the side of the bed, fully dressed, except he’d somehow managed to remove his shoes.
Instead of opening his eyes, he made a growling sound. “Go away.”
“Get up, Vati.” She shook the covers. “Someone is here.”
He swore as he lifted his head, his skin a grayish color. “The Dornbachs?”
“I don’t know.”
“They should warn a man before coming.” His legs wobbled when they hit the rug, two columns trying to balance his massive frame.
