He shifts his narrow glare from his wife toward me. “Understood,” I reply, stepping back from the table.
“Perhaps that’s the problem, Fräulein Kaufman. You don’t understand as much as you should by now.” He shakes his head and leans back in his chair, clenching his napkin within his fist. “You seem to think there are exceptions to rules when there aren’t.”
He stops speaking, but I dare not blink.
“Not for my daughter…” his words sink into a ghostly hiss, “and not for the prisoner you favor. Lingering over a certain man, calling a number twice…”I knew this wasn’t over.Weyman’s stare burns through my head, and soul—every one of my nerve’s frays, still pondering consequence that lies ahead. “You forget I see everything.”I’ve done anything but forget.
The look in his eyes, it’s the one he has before he strikes me for disobedience, but there’s more fury now. More rage.
He won’t punish me with his hands this time.
SIXTEEN
ROSALIE
SANOK, POLAND
August 4, 1941
Hanging “soiled” linens from clotheslines in the side yard was my idea. The linens aren’t truly soiled, just heavily tea stained. I pinch the last clothespin before releasing the damp linen.
“This is just vile,” Miriam sighs.
“At least it doesn’t smell the way it looks,” I remind her.
“You have a good point.”
German soldiers and Aryanized police are poaching Jewish homes. Stefan and Philip overhear far more than anyone could wish while working alongside Nazi administration, theratswho oversee the daily labor output at Silbergs Textiles. Every one of thoseverminwant to live somewhere nice while they’re “stuck” here in Sanok during the occupation.
Nice.
That’s the word that got me thinking. Not one of them would be trying to move into the clock tower to share space with Papa. It’s cold, damp, and tight on space. Their first stop would be the high-end estates, villas, homes of the wealthy. The Silberg home. From passing rumors between factory workers and locals in themarketplace, the Nazis have either been pushing people right out of their homes or forcing them to share the space. We needed to stop them somehow, before they came barging through the door.
“I don’t understand the purpose if they’re going to take our home at some point. Maybe it’s not now, but Papa said it will happen. It’s just a matter of when,” Eloise pipes up, plucking a wildflower from the unruly grass.
“We must hold on for as long as possible, darling. That’s why we pray for the war to end, yes?”
“It’s not ending,” Eloise grumbles, a dark strand of hair spilling over her eye as she furrows her brows and snarls her lips. “All we’ve done is made the house smell like rotten food, soot, and spring rain. We can’t even use the stove or the icebox. It isn’t fair!”
And here we are, adding icing to the trash pile. “It sounds like we’ve done a good job at making our home seem undesirable,” Miriam utters to Eloise. “That was the point.”
“We could just post signs on wooden pickets that say: Go away you stupid Nazis!”
“Shh,” I hush her at the very same time Miriam does.
“Lower your voice,” Miriam scolds her.
Just as I wrap my arm around the wicker basket, now empty of linen, Stefan and Philip rumble up the hill with two wheelbarrows full of firewood. They’ve been preparing for winter for over a month, and it won’t get cold for another two.
Stefan’s cheeks are red, sweat soaked through his white shirt. He must be exhausted. Yet he winks at me—a subtly timed gesture that Miriam likely didn’t see as she’s rushing to Philip’s side. My pulse flutters in my stomach, his gaze making me forget about the world around us, even if just for a moment.
“You’re going to drop dead. You’re too old for this,” she scolds her husband. “Look how red you are.”
“It needs to be done, Miriam. I’m not going to drop dead. I’m forty-three, not eighty.”
The quiet argument disturbs baby Benjamin who’s been cooing in a second wicker basket, full of clean linen, which also ends the argument. I follow Stefan to the cellar doors where they’ve been unloading the firewood and place the basket down next to the wagon.
“I’ll help. Why don’t you take a rest,” I offer.
