“Halina?” Ada says.
My breaths stagger and catch in my throat as I stop short in the hallway and will myself to turn back around in front of her bedroom door. “Yes, Frau Schäfer. I’m sorry to disturb you. Flora’s learned to crawl, and well?—”
“How long were you standing at my door?”
She opens the door more, and stands in front of me, her eyes wide, face pale.
I shouldn’t confess to standing there long enough to see what I did, though maybe she ought to know.
“Not long. I had just scooped Flora up to bring her back to her room.”
“You’re lying. I can read it all over your face.”
Yes. I am lying. What choice do I have?
“What would you like me to say?” I ask, keeping my tone meek to spare myself any additional grief. Not like I’m facing any positive situation coming up here, but I wasn’t looking for trouble tonight, not while wondering who was killed just outside the walls of this house a half hour ago.
“Nothing,” she says, her voice wavering.
“Ma!” Flora shouts again, reaching her arms out to Ada.
My eyes narrow and not for the reason of trying to intimidate her, but because alarms are sounding in my head the longer I look at her, then down at Flora, and back at her. The papers I read today…the secondary infertility…it’s real. Flora must not be hers either, just as Gavriel and I were thinking. She has made a baby a prisoner of this house.Where is her mother?
Ada doesn’t move a muscle. It’s as if her feet are glued to the ground. My feet are becoming numb the longer I stand here waiting to see how she’s going to handle me—my awareness of her secretive life. She can get rid of me before Heinrich does. I might have just run out of my last thread of hope.
“Heinrich doesn’t know,” she says, her words quiet, but pointed.
What doesn’t Heinrich know? Which part of what lie? Does he know Flora must not belong to them? How can someone get away with this? More importantly, how is it that I’ve managed to mistakenly witness her adjusting a fake stuffed belly strapped to her midsection, but her husband who shares a room with her doesn’t know?
“What do you mean?” I press, afraid of what her reaction will be.
“He thinks I’m pregnant.” Her lips purse as if she’s bitten into a lemon. “If he finds out I’m not…” Her stare widens and loses focus. “You don’t know what he’s capable of.”Unfortunately, I do. It’s all I can think about at the moment. What he might have just done to Gavriel.“I have no one left. Nofamily to run to. No friends who are truly friends. Just him, and our daughters that he would try and take away from me.”
“Flora isn’t even a year old,” I say, my brows knitting together with accusation rather than question. “Why would he expect you to be pregnant again already?”
“He wants a son now, and has…proven to me that he will do whatever it takes to make that happen.” Her eyes well and her cheeks pucker. “I wanted him to stop. He was hurting me. I became his property, an object, no longer his wife.”
She was looking for a quick solution to protect herself, but all she’s done is corner herself where she’ll never get away.
“He wants another baby, so you’re pretending to be pregnant. How has he not noticed?”
“What is there to notice? There’s nothing real between us. He thinks I’m pregnant, and that’s all he wanted. We share a bed, but he hasn’t looked at me or touched me since I told him I conceived.”
“He will be expecting the birth of this baby in a few months. Then what?”
“You’re right,” she says in a breath. “I just don’t have the ability to fix this overnight.”
She must mean she can’t find an innocent baby to call her own in one night. That must be her solution. Nausea reels in, and a cold sweat layers across my skin as I curl Flora tighter into my chest. How could anyone do something like this? To Flora?
“Are you going to tell him what you saw?” she asks, sniffling through her words.
It wouldn’t matter if I tell him because as soon as he finds out I’m Jewish, nothing else will matter. “I’m expected to continue living here as a slave to you, taking care of your children for free, eating slop while you feast on warmly prepared meals every night in front of me, and protect your secret from your husband?” Your husband who just murdered another innocentperson outside of his house. Possibly…Gavriel. The thought pierces through my chest like a sharp blade.
“I don’t expect anything from you. I simply want to know what you plan to do.”
I think back on the words in my mother’s letter about the way my father treated her. I wouldn’t wish that on anyone. I also wouldn’t wish my lonely childhood on anyone.
Flora.
