Chapter 17: The Village Turns Its Back

The bakery shutters were down at ten in the morning.

I stood on the cobbles of the village square with Tobias on my left and Stefan on my right.

Every window facing the square had a face in it, and the faces turned away one by one.

"They know," Stefan said.

"I can see that."

A woman crossing with a shopping bag saw me, stopped, and went back the way she had come.

A man swept his doorstep so hard the broom bent.

Tobias's hand settled on the small of my back.

Through my coat I felt how warm it was.

"We can go home," he said.

"No."

"Verena."

"I said I'd let them look," I said. "So let's let them."

I walked across the square to the Gasthaus and pushed open the door.

The lunch crowd was already in.

Forty people sat at the long tables, and the noise dropped to nothing.

I walked down the middle of the room with my chin up.

The old guides sat at the table by the stove, where they had sat for thirty years, and not one of them lifted his eyes from his plate.

My brother used to buy their first round every winter.

I took the empty chair at the end of their table and sat down.

Tobias and Stefan stood behind me.

"Coffee," I said to the girl at the counter, loudly. "Black."

Nobody moved.

Then a chair scraped at the back.

A big man in a quilted vest stood up with his beer in his hand.

He was one of the contractors who plowed the lodge's lane, and he had a flat red face I knew from my brother's funeral.

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