Max Junior and I discovered early on that, though the inn would eventually be our inheritance, we had absolutely no authority. That belonged to two women our grandparents employed. Anna Winkler was a sour-mouthed matron with a husband prone to violence. He’d broken a glass or two and many a tooth or fist in our inn. The second one was Jutta Mair, a feisty, dark-haired lass with a widow’s peak, high cheekbones, and a sharp tongue. She was quick as a whip. The two women were fixtures in that inn, so Max Junior and I had no choice but to obey their orders. It was Jutta we respected more than Old Anna. Once, when she grated my nerves, I asked Jutta who’d made her the boss. She put her hands on her hips, the dish towel she held flicking like a cat’s tail. The defiant stare wilted me right on the spot.
As Max Junior and I grew older, the inn was the focus of quite a few renovations, and we did all we could to help out. We were developing a reputation not for just being hard workers but also as generous entertainers. We were also made to handle a few of the rowdier guests, which was nothing to sneeze at. Most of the time it was our own folk who were the worst when they’d had too much drink. They came repenting the next day and mostly to Jutta.
I recognized that, more often than not, the men from the valley came to the inn to be served by her. They eyed her, teased her, and provoked her to snap a dish towel or flick their hats off their heads when they were too bold. There was always a lot of laughter, and a few times I suspected Jutta of stepping around with one or the other.
Since she was responsible for cleaning all the rooms, Jutta had a key ring attached to the sash around her waist. We could hear her coming except when she was sneaking up on Max Junior or me to catch us at something. But she never reported us to our grandparents.
Later, as we grew older, Max Junior and I stayed up with Jutta long after closing and played Watten, drank wine, and gabbed until the morning. Afterwards, we’d all crawl up the stairs to the attic floor, where Max Junior and I shared a room and where Jutta was located down the hall. Things started to change for me when I began having dreams about her. Next day, I stayed out of her way, mortified by the stains I’d found on my bedclothes in the morning.
When Max Junior and I finished school, my father had a mind to send us to Innsbruck to university, but my mother eyed the both of us and asserted herself, saying it would be wasted time.
“First of all, you can’t send them both to the same city,” she said. “Secondly, you can’t separate the two.” My mother turned to my father and gave him a single determined nod. “They’re good at the inn. They’ve been practically running it all this time.”
And that decision was made to my grandparents’ great relief. They vacated the inn’s apartment on the ground floor and moved into a cottage outside of town.
Though our grandfather continued to oversee the business, Max Junior and I stayed in Graun to run the Post Inn. It was a decent living, and yet I still longed to make my own mark. A dark shadow stretched over me and caused me great unease, for I knew it was the ghost of Matthias—or the residue of that which he’d left behind.