Mrs. de Vries stares at her. She knows about danger; she is hiding three Jewish people in her house.
“Can you go right now?” I ask her. “Can you go this afternoon? Ollie said the next transport is in just two days. I need to know if the girl I’m looking for is in the theater, as soon as possible. Can you please go now?” I don’t know if it’s because Mrs. de Vries knows that I know her secret, and she thinks she has to obey me, or if it’s because she wants this over with quickly so I’ll leave her apartment. Whatever the reason, she now walks briskly out of the room, heels clacking on parquet floors, and by the time I catch up to her, she’s already pinning on a navy hat.
“I’ll be back soon,” she says. And then, because she’s still Mrs. de Vries, she says, “Please refrain from touching too many things while I’m gone.”
She slips on her coat, and then it’s just Mina and me, and nothing left to do but wait.
TWENTY
Mina and I stay in the playroom, perched uncomfortably on child-size furniture, while Mr. Cohen entertains the children, kneeling on the floor and letting them drive their cars up his legs and arms. Mrs. Cohen helpfully washes dishes in the kitchen and makes us cup after cup of ersatz tea.
“You need to be another mountain,” one of the twins informs me, rolling his car on my shoe. “So we can each have our own.”
I jerk my foot away. “You could each be your own mountains.”
Mr. Cohen smiles. “How about I tell a story instead? There will be lots of fast cars and fast horses and mountains in it.” He’s so patient with them; I wonder if he has grandchildren of his own.
“Hanneke, I’m worried about something,” Mina says, moving her chair closer to mine.
“What is it?”
She glances over to Mr. Cohen and the twins and lowers her voice. “The thing that I showed you when we went for a walk. It’s still there.” She reads my bewildered expression and raises both hands to her face, mimicking a gesture I immediately recognize. Her other camera. It’s in the carriage, and she didn’t have time to retrieve it. “Do you think it’s okay?” she asks.
Even if I didn’t, I don’t see what could be done about it, or what use there would be in me making her worry any more than she’s already worrying. “I’m sure that if one of your coworkers finds it, she’ll keep it for you,” I reassure her. The guards seem to leave the crèche alone anyhow.
After a while, the children start to complain that they’re hungry. Mina finds potatoes and parsnips in the pantry, and boils them along with leaves of kale. We all eat silently. The children start yawning, and Mr. Cohen goes to put them to bed.
“Hanneke, you’re going to miss curfew,” Mrs. Cohen warns me. “You should go.”
It’s too late to leave now. I want to be here the second there is any news. Have I done the right thing, pressuring Mrs. de Vries to go out the way that I did? Mrs. Cohen takes up a pile of socks from Mrs. de Vries’s mending pile and quietly begins to darn them. Mr. Cohen reads a book. The evening drags on. The sky outside turns from bruise-colored to pitch-black.
My parents will have started to worry an hour ago, with Mama turning white around the edges and Papa making loud jokes to cover up his own concern. After worry will come anger: Mama at me for being so selfish and not keeping track of the time, and Papa because I’ve worried Mama and because he’s mad at himself for not being able to go out and find me. I don’t know what comes after the anger stage. I’ve never tested their patience enough to find out. Tonight I’ll have to.
In the distance, a church clock strikes another hour. The four of us exchange worried glances, and guilt begins to gnaw the pit of my stomach. Why didn’t we ask for the address of Mrs. de Vries’s photographer friend, or at least a name? Why did I insist she had to go now, when tomorrow morning wouldn’t have made much of a difference? I don’t like Mrs. de Vries, but I don’t want anything to happen to her.
“She wasn’t doing anything illegal,” Mina says. “It’s not illegal to visit a friend.”
“I just hope that if she was stopped, it was on the way to the photographer’s and not on the way back home,” Mrs. Cohen says. Her perfectly applied lipstick has begun to fade. “They might not question a roll of undeveloped film, but if—”
“Hush, Rebekkah,” Mr. Cohen stops her. “Can’t you see—”
He doesn’t finish. The lock in the door begins to turn. The four of us freeze in our seats. Mrs. de Vries comes in, her cheeks flushed, but otherwise unharmed. Ollie follows her inside.