The boys giggled even harder as they watched me take one measured, careful step after another as I entered. I ducked under the low beam and stepped fully into the room, the boys' eyes bright with mischief as if I'd just walked into a sacred place where grown men didn't belong. Maybe I didn't.
Inga moved across the patched floorboards with a strange combination of grace and weariness, the flowers cradled in her hands as if they were made of spun sugar and breath. She reached the little makeshift table—once a cabinet, now missing a door—and picked up an old tin can. Someone had scrubbed it clean ages ago. The label was long gone. She dipped it into the metal bucket beside the wall.
I frowned. The water inside was clear. Cold. Fresh. That meant she'd fetched it… from the pump halfway down the street, because there wasn't any running water here. She had carried it through the rubble. Up a slope of broken masonry and shattered stairwells. Every day. Probably twice a day. For months—no, years.
No wonder she was skittish. No wonder she mistrusted kindness. No wonder she'd assumed I wanted something in exchange. This city had taken a girl who deserved a soft, safe home and turned her into a warrior.
She filled the tin halfway, testing the weight, then lowered the flowers into it. They sagged a little, but their color brightened against the dull metal.
She turned and caught me watching. Her chin lifted—pride reasserting itself like a shield—but her eyes… her eyes softened, just a fraction.
"You can stop staring," she murmured. "It's just water."
Just water. Just a tin. Just a girl surviving in a place thatshould have killed her.
But to me, it felt like watching her light a candle in the ruins. I didn't move closer, not yet. The boys were still watching, whispering to each other in rapid-fire German, and Inga's cheeks warmed as she shot them a warning glare. They straightened instantly, the way kids do when they don't want to ruin a grown-up's fragile mood.
She brushed her palms against her skirt and finally approached me again. I couldn't look away. Couldn't breathe right. Couldn't pretend a single thing about this woman left me unaffected.
"I really am sorry," I said quietly. "For last night… for everything."
"Me too." Her voice was barely above a whisper. "And thank you. For the flowers."
The words sounded like they cost her something, not money, but vulnerability. I tucked that away into the place inside me I didn't let anyone near. The place she'd started to carve space into. She glanced toward the boys. "Klaus, Axel. Behave. I'll be back soon."
Axel nodded like this was the most serious mission of his life. Klaus beamed as if he were sending his sister off to a dance.
Then she stepped toward me. Right up to me. Close enough that I could smell the faint scent of the soap I'd brought her a few days ago. Close enough I could see the freckles across her nose I hadn't noticed before. Close enough that if I leaned forward aninch?—
No.
Not yet.
Not now.
"Ready?" I asked.
She didn't take my hand this time. But she didn't pull away either when I took hers.
"I suppose," she tried—and failed—not to sound flustered. I pushed the door's makeshift panel aside and held it for her as she stepped out into the daylight. Right then, right in that moment, watching her square her shoulders against the world outside, I made myself a quiet promise: I would find out when someone had last done something kind for her. I would learn everything she didn't want to say. Every scar she hid behind sharp words. Every fear she carried alone. Every dream she'd buried under rubble.
I hadn't been lying. I really did want to get to know her. And God help me,
I wanted her to know me, too.
She turned back, catching me staring again, and her lips twitched. "Gideon," she said softly, a hint of warning, a hint of something else.
"Don't make me regret this."
I swallowed. "I won't," I said, and meant it more than anything I'd meant in a long, long time.
"Lunch?" she asked.
"Lunch," I said.
And together—awkward, hopeful, terrified—we walked out into the fragile daylight.
Berlin — July 17, 1948, Saturday
