Chapter 6: Marktplatz

The beer tent on the Marktplatz went quiet when I walked in with Cade.

It was the first Saturday in October, Oktoberfest, and four thousand people were eating bratwurst under strings of paper lanterns.

The polka band kept playing.

Everybody else stopped.

I had known most of them my whole life.

I wore my own jeans, my father's hat, and a green blouse Cade had liked, and I held his arm and meant it.

"They're staring," he said into my ear.

"Good," I said.

"Your aunt's been through every table. She was here at nine."

"I know."

"You want to leave?" Cade asked.

"I want a pretzel."

I stood in line at the bread stand with a hundred people not looking at me.

A woman in a dirndl said to her friend, in a voice built to carry, "That's the Wiedenfeld girl and the hired man's boy."

She did not say it kindly.

"Wiedenfeld girl and the hired man's boy," I said to the pretzel girl. "Two, please. With mustard."

We took our plates to a long table near the stage.

Cade sat down across from me with his knees against the table legs.

Two old women at the end of the bench looked up.

They wore black felt hats with feathers, and I had seen them at every church supper since I was a baby.

They had been my mother's friends, and they had sat on either side of my father at her funeral.

"Mathilde," said the taller one.

"Frau," I said.

"Your mother would have walked out of that barbecue too," she said. "She would have done it sooner."

I put down my fork.

The shorter one leaned across the table and patted my hand, hard.

"We don't talk," she said. "We don't gossip. We only watch."

"Watch what?" I asked.