“I’ll go to Slovakia. We’re only a couple hours from the border. They haven’t been occupied. Do you have a contact there I can—” She speaks as if she’s already planned the route, the method of apprehending the medicine, and the lies she’ll tell to get to and from.
The thought of her alone on that route blazes through me sharper and harsher than any tremor. I’d rather be killed than live knowing something happened to her because of me.
“Rosalie,” I snap. “You’re not going to Slovakia.”
“You need your medicine. I can get over the border?—”
“And risk your life for a bottle of pills?” I cut her off. “No. I need you.” I won’t give up on Mister Banach. “Everything will be fine.”
Mister Banach’s eyes tell us otherwise, a sign that won’t be unnoticed by Rosalie. Still, there’s no way I can let her leave this country, not for me. Not for anything. Nowhere is safe.
“Perhaps I can seek out connections in Slovakia. You’re a smart woman to think the way you do,” Mister Banach says. “But I must agree with Stefan. It’s no place you should be traveling to alone right now, and you likely won’t make it over the border.”
If it was brighter down here, I would see the red hue blossoming along Rosalie’s heated cheeks, but it’s best I don’t see that. I can hear her grinding her teeth, and that’s enough.
“When should we come back to check in with you?” Rosalie says, an urgent demand filling her question.
“Next week at this time, but I have enough to last him a few months now. We have time.”
The one statement Rosalie won’t listen to.
“Thank you,” I say. “I appreciate everything you do, truly,” I say.
“Anything for your family, son. Your father has always done so much for me—such a giving man. A mensch.” He smiles and steps away. “I’ll be right back with your pills.” He makes his way around a dark corner of his cellar.
Rosalie is quiet and I can feel every bit of her worry and anger. Also, her reckless ideas that get in the way of self-preservation.
By the time we make our way back to the village square, Rosalie seems to have settled down or found something else to focus on.
“Do you see that?” she whispers, but doesn’t point in any direction.
I scan the square, spotting a group of German soldiers. Horses’ hooves clomp against stone and German voices echo between the walls as the rotten smell of hide and manure presses in along the village borders, suffocating us.
“The Nazis?” I whisper.
“No, the time is wrong,” she says, staring at her Papa’s watch around her wrist. “No one is keeping the time…”
I glance at the clock then down at my watch too. For me, either my watch is fast, or the clock is slow.
Rosalie yanks me toward the center of the village square and reaches into her dress pocket for her father’s sundial, a small brass disk. The needle warbles until it lands on north. She tilts the triangular brass plate until the shadow hits the hour line.
Muttering a mess of numbers under her breath, she closes her eyes for a quick second then exhales. “It’s thirty-two minutes past eleven. The clock says it’s fifteen minutes past the hour.”
I know better than to ask her if anyone would notice. Even if no one else would notice, she would. She always does. “What can we do?”
“It’ll only take me a few minutes to fix,” she says.
“Maybe the wrong time is best suited for that group of soldiers over there…” I suggest.
We’ve been in the clock tower several times since her father passed away, tweaking gears, cranking levers, and altering the pendulum rods. I’m not even sure when I learned what all these mechanisms do, but I have, just from watching her.
“Yes, of course. I didn’t see them…” she says. “And they’ve more than multiplied from the one or two we’ve spotted from time to time.”
We both know what that means. It’s another step closer to Sanok following in the footsteps of every other city, town, and village in our country.
The walk back to the house was quieter than usual. Sometimes, we find ourselves talking over each other with how much we both have to say, but not today.
“I worry about you,” she says as we trudge up the final hill toward the house. “So much, it hurts.”
