Twelve Chimes for a New Year
“These are not your conclusions,” Benedikt said.
“No. They are the places where your lawyer should start pushing.”
Gregor looked up. “That is damned useful.”
“It is only useful if you hire someone independent.”
“We will,” Benedikt said.
Petra arrived late with a bowl of sugared walnuts and an expression designed for trouble. “Does the repaired clasp earn us a Christmas repeat beneath the mistletoe?”
“No,” Anneliese said.
Benedikt waited until she had finished, then added, “No audience gets a vote.”
Ilonka lifted her coffee cup. “A civilised policy.”
Tomas took a walnut. “This family has become alarmingly reasonable.”
Anneliese expected teasing, perhaps disappointment, perhaps another reason to build a wall inside her own holiday. Instead the conversation moved on to pastries and snow chains. The simple fact of it loosened something she had been carrying for years.
By late evening, the suite had gone quiet except for snow shifting across the roof and Benedikt turning the annotated pages beneath the bedside lamp. The moon had returned to the dormer, white and intrusive.
“Who gets the hard question first?” he asked.
“You. Lawyers believe in order.”
“You believe in lists. Same illness.”
He set the packet aside. “What are you trading for that next title at your firm?”
Anneliese sat against her headboard, card stack in her lap. Rule Four required one honest answer each day. “Availability. Sleep. The right to have a bad day without someone calling it a lack of commitment.”
“Do you want the title?”
“I want to stop treating exhaustion as proof that I deserve it.”
He considered that, then said, “Two winters ago, a large resort offered me a management job. Better pay. No accounts. No Gregor calling after midnight. But every lesson had a corporate script: which runs to recommend, which equipment to sell, what cheerful answer to give every guest. I said no.”
“And now?”
“Now I hate needing help to protect the place I chose.”
“Needing counsel is not selling yourself.”
“It feels close.”
“That is fear doing your accounting.”
His laugh was brief, surprised. “You are very good at that.”
“At accounting?”
“At saying the thing I was avoiding.”
The moon watched from its square of glass, nosy as a neighbor behind a curtain.
“What do holidays ask of you?” he said.
“To arrive with proof that my life is impressive and cheerful. I decided a fictional boyfriend would be easier than admitting I was lonely.”
“And now?”
“Now I think that was a stupid bargain.”
“My holiday job is to make the lodge look effortless,” he said. “Everyone gets a better story if I never admit I am worried.”
“Do you want a better story?”
“No.” He looked toward the card in her lap. “I want one conversation at a time.”
She held that answer for a moment. “So do I.”
Benedikt picked up the ring of brass chimes. “Does Rule Seven get one?”
“Yes.”
“May I?”
She handed him the card. He secured the seventh chime beside the repaired clasp, and its small note answered the click of metal.
“Now what?” he asked.
“Now we sleep separately,” she said. “Because that is still what we agreed.”
He gave no joke, no argument. He held up the spare blanket from the trunk. “Would you like it?”
“Yes.”
He laid it at the foot of her bed and returned to his own. Later, when the lights were out, Anneliese listened to the slow turn of his pages until that stopped too. Two beds remained two beds. Yet the card rested beneath her hand, its clasp repaired, its new chime secure, and the distance felt chosen rather than imposed.
“Say one hard thing plainly.”
Anneliese wrote the rule before dawn, though she did not yet know what she needed to say.
The attic suite remained blue with early winter light. Benedikt was in the bathroom. Snow slid from the roof in soft bursts. On the table, the lease packet waited beside her cards, neat and dangerous.
She opened the cover to find the page she had marked the day before.
Before she turned it, her eye caught the sender’s name in the footer.
Bergwelt Operations GmbH.
Below it, in smaller type, sat the parent company: AlpenVita Holdings AG.
Her firm represented AlpenVita.
Not this division. Not this lease, as far as she knew. But she had spent six months in meetings about AlpenVita’s expansion plans, its appetite for mountain properties, its habit of calling aggressive purchases “regional partnerships.” She knew the corporate address. She knew the board chair’s signature style. She knew enough to understand exactly why the lease had been written to strip a small school down to its bones.
She closed the packet.
When Benedikt came out, dressed in dark trousers and a wool shirt, she was standing by the table with both hands flat against the cards.
He stopped. “What happened?”
“I need to tell you something before I read another page.”
His face changed. “All right.”
“Bergwelt Operations is part of AlpenVita Holdings.” She kept her sentences clean. “AlpenVita is a client of my firm. I have worked on other matters for them.”
For a moment, he said nothing.
Then he crossed to the table and read the footer himself.
“You knew them.”
“I knew the parent company. I did not recognise this division name when I first saw the lease.” She met his eyes. “I recognised it now. I came to you immediately.”
“You were reading our documents yesterday.”
“Yes.”
“You told us where they could take the booking data.”
“Yes.”
The simple answers hurt more than an argument would have. Anneliese forced herself not to rush in with qualifications that would make her feel cleaner and him feel worse.
“I should have caught it earlier,” she said. “I did not. That is my failure.”
Benedikt picked up the packet, then put it down again. The fifth brass chime knocked lightly against the zipper of the coat he had left over a chair.
“Does AlpenVita know you are here?”
“No.”
“Do they know anything about Gregor? About the school?”
“Not from me.” Her throat tightened. “I will not ask them. I will not access anything connected to them. I will not read another page of this lease.”
He looked toward the snow-whitened dormer. The moon had vanished behind the ridge, apparently unwilling to witness the morning’s work.
“I do not think you came here to spy on us,” he said at last.
“That does not make this acceptable.”
“No.” His hand rested on the back of the chair. “It does not.”
Yesterday, he had let her into the office and showed her the ugly parts of his life: the bookings, the threats hidden in polished clauses, the fear Gregor tried to turn into practical questions. Now he stood in the same room with the knowledge that she worked for people who might profit from every weakness they had shown her.
He felt exposed. She could see it in the way he held himself still.
“I cannot represent you,” she said. “I cannot represent AlpenVita. I will tell my firm I have a conflict and remove myself from anything involving them.”
“And then?”
“Then I stay out of it.”
His mouth pressed into a hard line. “I need distance, Anneliese.”
The words landed exactly where they should.
“From the papers,” he continued. “From the ski school office. From me, for a while.”
She nodded once. “All right.”
His attention returned to her. “That is all?”
“You asked for distance. I am not going to turn it into a negotiation.”
“I know you did not mean to hurt us.”
“But I did create a situation where you have to wonder whether you can trust me.” She picked up the closed lease packet. “You do not owe me comfort about that.”
He let out a short breath through his nose. “This is not a punishment.”
“I know.”
“It is not because of last night.”
Her face grew hot despite the cold room. “I know that too.”
The coat hung over the chair between them, dark wool, brass zipper, the fifth chime still clipped where she had placed it after the lesson.
“For letting me choose,” she had said.
Now the little bell seemed absurdly bright.
“May I remove the chime?” she asked.
Benedikt followed her attention to his coat. For a second, his hand hovered near the zipper.
“Yes.”
She stepped closer only far enough to reach it. The brass was cold beneath her fingers. She unclipped it carefully, and it made one small note before settling in her palm.
“I put this on you because I trusted what you gave me,” she said. “It should not stay there while you need distance from me.”
He did not argue.
That restraint cut deeper than anger.
Anneliese carried the chime back to the card stack and set it beside Rule Eight rather than fastening it in place. The number five faced upward. The new card lay beneath it, plain and waiting.