I look out the window, straining to see around the bend to the path they take to and from Auschwitz, but there’s no one in sight.
Gavriel isn’t returning. Neither is Adam, or Kasia.
Heinrich has already left. The girls are scooping up mouthfuls of oatmeal that Ada prepared for them, and she’s now pacing around in circles holding Flora, cooing at her, poking her nose and smiling. Nothing is right.
“You look ill,” Ada says to me, brushing by, her words vacant of any true hint of care.
“The people who had been working in this house—” I say, peering at the sink where Kasia should be. “They’re humanbeings like you and me. They have families and purposes, a future and a past, but it’s as if you don’t see that, do you?” I wouldn’t have spoken to Ada this way yesterday, but now I know her secret.
“I don’t tell my husband who to remove from this house,” she replies simply.
“Mama, that isn’t really true, is it? Remember the last nanny you didn’t like?” Isla infers, tilting her head to the side with perplexity in her eyes.
“Isla, that isn’t what happened. I’ll remind you again to keep your nose out of places it doesn’t belong.”
“Or you’ll lose it!” Marlene shouts with a cackle.
Ada’s lying, and Isla knows it. She reports back to her husband. She chooses to treat them as if they’re something less than human—less than most animals too.
“Who did he—ki—” I stop myself from completing my question with respect to the girls, but surely, she notices the desperation leaking out over my words.
“Do you truly think that’s a question I would ask him?” she replies. “You can’t be serious.” I figure a man like Heinrich would take pride in his kills, brag about them.
I can’t help but look at her as if she’s just grown a second head. “My heart is hemorrhaging with torment because of your husband.” Because I’m not like you who claims to have not one but two beating hearts in their body, I’d like to say.
“I’m not told where or when people come and go,” she says with a careless shrug.
“Is the builder coming back?” Marlene asks.
“What did I tell you about the people who work in this house, young lady?” Ada scolds her daughter.
“To act as if they’re ghosts,” Marlene utters.
I step in front of Ada as she’s ambling toward me again. “I need to know if he’s alive,” I whisper.
“There’s no way I can promise to find that out,” she says, her voice pitched an octave higher than usual. I glare at her for a long minute until my stomach knots from disgust and nausea. It’s likely the only honest thing she’s said to me all morning.
Chasing the cat won’t fix anything.
THIRTY-EIGHT
HALINA
August 20, 1943
The heaviness in my chest has yet to subside. Each morning, I wake up with a dwindling amount of hope that Gavriel will return to continue working on the unfinished attic expansion—if he’s alive. Am I foolish to believe it wasn’t him who was shot?
“Worry is a symptom of love,” Julia would say to us.
She’s right.
There hasn’t been a word mentioned about any of the prisoners between Heinrich and Ada. I’ve listened as well as possible. Not only do I know nothing about Gavriel’s state, Adam and Kasia’s too, as none of them have returned in the last two weeks, but I imagine Heinrich will have my birth records in his hands any day now, if he doesn’t already.
The walls might as well be closing in on me.
While making my way down the rickety steps to the second floor, I tie a second knot around the ribbons of my apron, finding that the fabric is beginning to overlap along my back. I can’t complain about the lack of food, knowing how much worse it is a short walk from here, but Ada leaves me with scraps for mealsthat don’t come close to filling up my shrunken stomach. When I touch my cheeks, I feel the harsh line of bones. Even my eyes look larger because of the sunken spots above my cheeks. I’m a frightening sight in the mirror so I avoid my reflection at all costs now.
“Kasia, this isn’t warm enough,” a scold bellows from the kitchen.
