“He always holds a loaf aside until end of day in case I come by.”
I’d learned she paid him every week to do so.
The radio beside me was on and turned down low. We kept it like this all day. The volume down so we didn’t have to hear the lies the German people were told by the news outlets, but the noise coming from it constant. It had been my idea. The house was so quiet, it helped fill the absence of sound.
At least a dozen times a day we leaned in close to the speaker and one of us turned the knob, watching the dial in anticipation as it neared the notch that sometimes brought in broadcasts from the BBC. It was traitorous to do so, and getting caught listening to it was cause for imprisonment...and even death. Oftentimes we only got static on that station, but every so often we got lucky. We just had to be very careful we didn’t forget and leave it tuned there, should Lieutenant Schmeiden make one of his unscheduled house calls.
I had the radio tuned there now and as I took a tentative bite of my soup, a potato and leek concoction that so far my body hadn’t rejected, I heard something about Belgium and reached over to turn up the volume a tick.
“Is something happening?” Paulina asked, entering the room.
I waved a hand to shush her and she quietly took the seat across from me, the two of us listening intently to the announcer report that Germany was heading into a new attack on Belgium.
“There won’t be any of us left by the end of this,” Paulina said with a sigh as she got up and went to the pantry to grab the cloth bag she used for getting groceries. “What a selfish, ignorant little man.”
I turned the volume down, moved the dial back, and got to my feet, holding out my hand for the bag.
“Let me go,” I said.
I’d rarely left the house since meeting Max to tell him I wasn’t going with him, and had so far been able to keep Paulina at bay when she’d questioned my plans to reach out to his contact.
“It’s not a good idea,” she said, tightening her grip on the bag.
“Why not?”
“You could slip and fall on the ice and debris.”
“Paulina—”
“I worry someone will recognize you,” she said, slapping her hand on the counter and making me jump.
“But... I haven’t been here in years. I barely look like the sixteen-year-old version of me that last lived in this house.”
“You look like her,” she said, pointing in the direction of my mother’s room.
She wasn’t wrong about that.
“I’ll keep my head down and wear a scarf over my hair. And a hat over that!”
She exhaled, peering at me.
“Please, Paulina. I need to get out of this house. I need fresh air and sunlight on my face.”
It was a beautiful, clear day. Cold, but the blue sky was calling to me. And the smell of my mother’s room was starting to invade the other spaces.
“I promise I’ll be careful.”
“What if someone stops and questions you? Asks to see your ID?”
“Then I’ll show it to them.”
I stared at her and she stared back.
Her shoulders slumped and I knew I’d won.
“Don’t talk to anyone,” she said. “Only the baker. Hand him the list. It has my signature on it and the address here. If he questions you. Asks why you’ve come instead of me, tell him Mrs. Holländer isn’t doing well and I couldn’t leave her side.”
I reached out to squeeze her hand. “I’ll be fine. I’ll be smart. I promise.”
