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Tina and Josie push their way inside. The foyer has been transformed. Tables are set up with food. There are medical stations. Red Cross workers move through the crowd with clipboards. And on the walls, there are lists. Dozens of them covered with names.

The lists are divided into the arrivals and the deceased.

“You check the arrivals,” Tina says quietly. “I’ll check . . . the other one.”

Josie nods. She doesn’t argue.

She starts at the top of the arrivals list, running her finger down name after name. ABADIE, Marie. BERNARD, Jean. CARTIER, Sophie. So many names. So many people returning. But not Andrée. Not Ruth. Not Léon.

When she has made sure, across the foyer she watches Tina scan the other list. The dead. Tina’s finger moving slowly, methodically. Checking every name.

Around them, reunions happen. A woman screams in joy, not in pain, and runs to embrace a man so thin he barely looks human. A child finds his father and can’t stop crying. An elderly couple clutch one another, weeping, whispering thanks to God.

And there are the others. The families who find their loved ones on the wrong list, who collapse and must be supported by Red Cross workers. They leave the building with a finality that makes Josie’s stomach turn.

Tina returns to Josie’s side. “Nothing on my list.”

“Mine either.”

“They’ll post new names tomorrow. We’ll come back.”

“Every day?”

“Every day. Until we find them.”

They return the next day. And the next. And the next. In the mornings Josie goes to school. Every afternoon she and Tina take the metro to the Hôtel Lutetia, where they scan the lists, find nothing, and walk home in silence.

“Maybe tomorrow,” Josie says each evening.

“Maybe tomorrow,” Tina echoes.

But the days pass and the names they’re searching for never appear.

The Russian soldiers arrive with trucks and medical supplies. They’re shocked by what they find. Starving women. Disease. Bodies. The forest camp that no one knew existed.

Andrée is among those taken to a field hospital the Russians have set up. A doctor examines her feet, his face grave.

“Severe frostbite. Both feet. The surrounding tissue is necrotic.”

“Dead? Will I lose my feet?” Andrée asks. Her voice is calm. She’s prepared for this answer.

“I don’t know. We’ll do what we can. Clean the wounds and treat infection. But the damage is extensive. I’m so sorry.”

“Just do what you can. I need to go home. That’s all that matters.”

A Swedish delegation arrives at the field hospital. They are representatives of the White Buses program, an organization run by the Red Cross that has been evacuating concentration-camp survivors to Sweden for medical treatment.

They’ve already transferred thousands of women from Auschwitz and Ravensbrück to Malmö. Now they’re here, with a brief to prioritize Scandinavians but looking for any survivors who need urgent care.

A woman stops at Andrée’s cot and looks first at her chart and then her feet.

“You’re French?”

“Yes. From Paris.”

“You need proper medical care. We will take you to Sweden. There’s a hospital in Malmö with doctors who specialize in treating camp survivors. We can help you.”

“I need to go home. To Paris. My family . . .”