“What are you doing up here?” I saw this man tending to the garden yesterday.
“I—uh.”
Gavriel steps out from an enclave to my far right. “Halina?”
“I don’t have much time, but I have something for you…” I whisper, my breath unsteady as I reach into the pocket of my apron. My fingers close around the small bundle and pull it out carefully before unwrapping the cloth covering.
Gavriel’s eyes lock on the sandwiches, and his chest falls forward. His expression shifts from curiosity to desperation—a hunger, or maybe comfort. His hands rise beneath mine, trembling a bit. I ease them into his grasp, my knuckles brush against his skin, coarse, dry, labor-worn. The brief touch lingers longer than it should, and he doesn’t pull away.
Neither do I.
Our gazes collide, his studying hard, like he’s just found what he’s been searching for, and mine, realizing this might be more than a helpful gesture for a stranger.
There’s something about Gavriel that draws me in, and my heart swells with compassion for his brutal situation. He holds the sandwiches to his chest as if they’re his next breath, and I wonder how long it’s been since someone’s given him anything that hasn’t come with a consequence in return.
“Don’t get yourself in trouble,” his words quiet, his gaze still locked with mine. “We aren’t worth the risk.”
He says it like a fact, like he believes it. And the way he’s looking at me, as if I shouldn’t be doing something to help…rattles me. He can’t possibly mean what he’s saying. I don’t believe it, not with the pain I see within his golden-brown eyes. Pain wrapped in warmth and tenderness—I can almost feel it. So unexpected and unfamiliar, but also, real.
“Yes, we are,” Adam cuts in before I can reply. “What he means to say is, thank you. Thank you very much.” He retreats to the other side of the room and crouches, unwrapping one of the sandwiches as if it’s a rare piece of treasure.
“Of course,” I say to the other man before returning my attention to Gavriel as confusion spirals through me. “Why would you say that?” I ask, the question sharper than intended. “That you’re not worth the risk?”
Gavriel studies me inquisitively as if I just asked him an impossible question. His head falls slightly to the side. “Because…we’re Jews, Halina.”
My breath catches. It’s because of what he said, it’s the pain in which he speaks. I reach for his hand without thinking, pressing my palm into his. His skin is rough, overworked, and warm. “I don’t see you as less,” I whisper. “You matter. You deserve more than this.”
His eyes lift, deliberately seeking mine. “You aren’t just like me,” he whispers. “You’re far more beautiful.”
My cheeks burn and I take my hand away from his, holding it against my chest as if I’ve I touched something without asking first.
Flustered, I make a show of glancing around at the progress of the construction, and all that’s been accomplished in the short time I’ve been here, then brush my fingertips that are still tingling from his touch, along the nearest beam. “You’re pretty good at this.”
“At—” he questions, gazing at me with a thought I wish I could read.
“The construction—the—the craftsmanship.”
“Oh, the attic,” he says with a chuckle. “Well, I better be.” He brushes the back of his sleeve across his dewy forehead. “I was supposed to take over my family’s company—construction, in Krakow. There’s an entire neighborhood of houses on the outside of the city with my initials carved into a beam.”
A smile presses onto my lips, imagining a colorful row of family homes with children playing on the street as their parents watch with loving smiles from their front stoops. “You were building perfect lives for happy families,” I say. “You must miss it.”
Gavriel drops his gaze, and he screws his lips to the side. “Every nail I hammer, I remember what I should be doing with my time, and who I should be doing it for…”
His words fall heavily on my chest. We all come from different paths, yet the pain…it’s so relatable. “I must go.”
Flustered and a bit dizzy from the emptiness in my stomach, I travel back down the steps, finding the door to the toilet room still closed. My pulse flickers like sparks as I wait for Marlene. I wipe my hands on my apron, repeatedly, feeling the evidence on each finger.
A whimper whines from the floor vent next to me, reminding me of the sounds I heard when I first arrived—the ones I convinced myself to belong to a cat—a cat they clearly don’t have.
Marlene finally steps out of the toilet room with her arms crossing her stomach.
“Do you feel better?” I ask.
“A bit.”
We walk side by side back down the main stairwell, both of us quiet, though my mind is anything but. “Did you hear something just now?”
She shakes her head. “No, but Papa says our pipes whine like old women.”
