With my arm curling around my stomach, I lunge forward, insistent on following to see where they’re taking him.
But I already know. He’s at the foot of the lion’s den, the entrance of Auschwitz. Because of me.
Breathless, throat burning, heart stammering, I watch as the guards drag Stefan toward the tall black iron gates—the ones that scream of torture and murder.
My pulse throbs between my ears while I pinch the winding-key into the flesh of my palm.
He’s gone. And I didn’t move.
Not again.
Is anyone watching from above? It feels like no one. Again.
When the darkness swallows me within its cold abyss, the crumbs of bread and barley soup I’ve been surviving on purge into a pile of brush between trees. The tears follow, leaving me helpless, curled into a ball next to my own bile. I hold my arms around my knees until I lose feeling, until my fingers unclasp.
I drag my limp body back to the Weymans’ residence, climb up the pergola, and shove open the window enough to slither into the cold, dark room I sleep in.
I wrestle my way onto the straw filled mattress as the tears continue to spill from my eyes, leaving me with blurry images of Stefan, face down on the ground with a rifle pressed into the back of his head.
He’s all I have…
All I had…left.
“Goddamn Pole,” his voice spits from the hallway outside the room. Heavy footsteps thud through the first floor until the stairwell creaks and moans before silence refills the house.
Weyman. Outside my door at this hour.
“You think I didn’t see you sneak in? I know where you were…” his quiet, grating words seep through the seam of the door.
What does he truly know?
THIRTY-FIVE
ROSALIE
SS RESIDENTIAL ZONE, AUSCHWITZ PERIMETER
Present Day: December 14, 1944
The squeal of brakes, a slamming car door, and a sharp whack against Weyman’s driver’s side window is what saves me. For the moment. Not even Hilde’s little voice shouting from the doorway, a sound of delight to see her Papa home from work early, was enough to make Weyman lower the barrel of his pistol from my head.
“Scheiße!” Weyman hollers before holstering his weapon then shoving open his door. “What?” He’s enraged from being interrupted from just another murder in his day.
A sharp slap and a shuffle of papers forces Weyman to recoil. “Evacuation orders,” a man snaps at Weyman.
My body thaws for a moment, long enough to withstand an internal battle of deciding whether to run or not run. Breathe, or don’t breathe. The numbness in my body fades into pins and needles, a chance to live, refueling me.
I grab the door handle and push my way out of the vehicle. I should make a run for it. But I can’t outrun a bullet with my name on it. Even now, I feel his eyes burning through my backas I reach for the front door—for his daughter. I’d like to think Weyman wouldn’t fire a weapon in his own house, though. I also know not to assume anything when it comes to him or his kind.
I make it to Hilde and lift her up, settling her on my hip. I might have to hold on to her for the rest of the night if I want any chance of surviving her father’s wrath. I bring her into the kitchen, finding Frau Weyman at the round table, a journal spread open, her hand moving quickly across the page. A shopping list and meals for the week scripted perfectly beside a pressed flower, browned on the edges. Life continues as usual for her while the world is burning a few streets from here.
“They’re evacuating,” I tell her. It’s none of my business. I’m no one. I mean nothing to anyone here. But I’m inserting an explosive distraction for when Weyman steps inside.
She stops writing, holding her pen tip down on the paper as she glares up at me. “Evacuating what?” Her hand shakes and she drops the pen. “Where is he?”
“Out,” Hilde answers, pointing toward the front door. Better her than me. I have nothing more to say.
The front door slams, picture frames rattle, hanging pots and pans clash, and his mud-caked boots squeak and clomp against the floor. An icy reminder of fear runs through my veins as I hold Hilde a little snugger.
