I brush past her, down the dim, narrow hallway to the back door. It’s just as I remembered from last time: When it’s not latched properly, there’s a large, gaping crack of air, and the door blows open. The latch is heavy and black and looks to be made of iron. What I’m thinking could work—I’m sure of it. Theoretically, at least. Experimentally, I lift the latch up and let go. It falls back down, missing the eye and failing to lock. The same thing happens the next time. This is why she thought it would be impossible to lock the door behind you. The latch wouldn’t naturally fall into place.
Mrs. Janssen is getting impatient behind me. “I don’t understand,” she says finally.
“Shhh.” I lift the lock again.
I’m about to decide I must have been wrong. Then, on the fourth try of letting go, the latch naturally closes with a satisfying click.
I whirl around to see if Mrs. Janssen noticed. “See? Did you see that?”
“But it doesn’t matter if you get it to close on its own,” she protests. “You’re standing right in front of it. Mirjam couldn’t do that from the other side of a locked door.”
“Hand me the garden stake. I’m going outside for a minute.” Mrs. Janssen’s vegetable plot is just a small square of frozen dirt. In the dead of winter, nothing is growing, but stakes with seed packets affixed to them stick out of the ground, labeling herbs and vegetables. There’s a small hole missing where the beet stake should go. “Mrs. Janssen?” I call through the closed door. “Watch out, all right? I’m going to poke this through the door.”
Jabbing upward, I use the vegetable stake to poke around until I feel it—the iron latch inside the door—and I try to use the stake to swing the latch up into place. The first time, it swings back down with a thud. But on the fifth try, I manage to swing the latch up at exactly the right angle, so that when it comes down again, it clicks into place with a heavy noise.
I’ve locked an unlockable door from the outside.
Mrs. Janssen opens the door, staring at me as I stand in her back garden with her dirty garden stake, the one I’ve just used to do what she thought was impossible. “How did you think to do that?”
“Girls in love will do desperate and creative things.”
Today has been a very long day, but I have solved two things. First, I have learned the identity of the T in Mirjam’s letter. Second: I still don’t know where Mirjam is, but at least I know she didn’t walk through walls to get there.
FOURTEEN
Friday
Tobias still hasn’t been in school. That’s what Mina tells me, when I visit her at the crèche the next afternoon.
“Sick?” I ask. “Or gone? Does anyone know?”
She doesn’t know anything, just that he hasn’t been in school, which could mean he has a cough, or it could mean he’s gone into hiding, or it could mean he’s dead. It could mean Mirjam is already dead, too. After yesterday afternoon at Mrs. Janssen’s, I was feeling so optimistic. But now I’ve spent the morning visiting dentist after dentist, looking for Tobias or his father with no luck. How long do I keep looking for Mirjam? She’s been gone for four days. As more time passes, any trail leading to her will only run colder. At what point does it grow so cold that I accept that Mirjam has either been killed or slipped so deep into the cracks of the underground that we will never see her again? Not yet. I’m not to that point yet. But when? Will I be able to tell that I’m there? Will I be able to walk away?
She’s not dead, I tell myself.
After I’ve been at the crèche only a few minutes, Judith calls to discuss business with Mina.
“I’ve saved up two pounds of ersatz coffee,” Mina tells her on the telephone. “I was thinking of having a little party, if you know of any friends who are free this evening.”
“Everyone I know is in the mood for tea these days,” I hear Judith say on the other end of the line. “Nobody wants coffee.”
Mina explained the telephone code to me already. Tea is light-complexioned children, who look more ethnically Dutch, and coffee is those with darker features. Families want blond toddlers, whose presence can easily be explained away.
I should go, I mouth finally. I have time to visit one more dentist.
Mina cups her hand over the phone receiver. “Judith is telling me there’s a gathering at Leo’s tonight. She wants me to invite you.”
“I’ll think about it,” I say. And I will. I have been. I know they need my help, but I need to find Mirjam first.
“I wish I could go. I would if I were older,” Mina says.
“Maybe.”
“She says maybe,” Mina tells Judith. “I know, I know, but that’s all she’ll say.” I can imagine what Judith is thinking on the other end of the line: that she and Mina are Jewish, with Jewish names and Stars of David sewn onto their clothes, and they still risk their lives every day. I am blond-haired and green-eyed with pristine papers, and I still haven’t agreed to help them. She’ll think that, and it’s true, because everyone is running out of time. I’m just not ready yet. Not quite.
Mina hangs up the receiver and looks slightly embarrassed. “Judith implied that if you don’t go tonight, she’s not going to use her contacts in the theater to ask about Mirjam again. She says the group has too much important work to spend time helping people who don’t offer anything in return.”
“I’ll go.”