Chapter 7: The Lake

"You have to judge," Konrad's daughter said. "Papa cheats."

She stood at the edge of the Schlachtensee in a striped swimsuit and a wool hat, with goosebumps all over her arms.

It was the second Sunday of April.

The water was the color of green glass and about as warm.

"How does he cheat?" I asked.

"He says he's counting, and then he counts slow."

Konrad sat on the dock beside me with his jeans rolled to the knee and his coffee in a thermos lid.

"I count at the correct speed," he said. "The correct speed is slow."

"Thirty seconds," the girl told me. "I go under, and you count. Out loud. Fair."

"Fair," I said.

She pinched her nose and jumped.

The splash hit both of us.

I counted out loud.

Konrad counted with me under his breath, slower.

At twenty-two she came up shrieking, and he hauled her out by one arm and wrapped her in a towel the size of a tablecloth.

"Twenty-two!" I said. "That's a record."

"It was thirty," she said through chattering teeth.

"It was twenty-two."

She looked at her father.

"She cheats too," she said, delighted.

He laughed and rubbed her hair dry through the hat.

She ran off up the bank to the snack kiosk with two euros in her fist and the towel trailing behind her.

Konrad watched her go.

"Her mother used to do that," he said. "Jump in in April. I told her she was insane. Every year."

"How long ago?"

"Three years in June." He turned the thermos lid in his hands. "She was cycling home. A truck turning right."

"I'm sorry."

"Everybody's sorry." He didn't say it bitterly. "It's fine. You learn to carry it. Some days it's heavy. Today it isn't."

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