Anni
Written for readers who have finished Book 1.
Anni is Lena's partner, and the person every toddler at the Lydia-Gemeinde makes for the moment she comes through the door. She spends half of each Sunday lunch on the floor with them building improbable towers, which is how the young parents come to love her first. At the long table she notices that old Herr Brandt cannot reach the bread and passes it to him before he has to ask, and he takes it with a small courtly nod, as if she were anyone's granddaughter. Anni laughs easily and without guarding it, and the church folds her and Lena into its ordinary life without any fuss at all.