“I think you’re right. If we get as far as the bridge, we won’t have a chance.”
Focus on escape routes, I tell myself. Focus on how close you are to saving Mirjam. Focus on that one life. I have to focus on Mirjam because I don’t want to think about my third-grade teacher, who I won’t be saving, or Mr. Bierman, who I won’t be saving, or any of Mirjam’s classmates or the entire group of people walking so close to us right now. I won’t be helping any of these people.
“What about here?” Willem stops walking, pointing up to a building like he’s merely interested in showing off the architecture.
We’ve come to an intersection where three streets cross each other, veining off at odd angles so that the sightline cuts off after less than twenty-five meters. If Mirjam and I ran from here, we’d be out of sight in five seconds, and two soldiers—assuming there were only two soldiers, assuming a lot of things—wouldn’t have enough bodies to explore which direction we ran to.
Scanning the buildings lining the street, my eyes land on a butcher shop. A large awning hangs over the entrance, orange, the color of our exiled monarchy. Somehow this seems like a good omen.
“That butcher shop.” I nod toward it. “Under the awning.” The shop itself is tucked back farther from the street than the shops next to it, so it already has more natural cover. Under the awning is a large plaster cow, life-size, more than big enough for one or two people to hide behind.
Willem gives a loud sigh, squatting to the ground in mock annoyance with his bicycle chain, while really taking the time to observe the butcher shop. “Good,” he says. “Between the cow and the way the doorway is built, you would have to know someone was standing there to see them.”
Does he really think it’s good? Do I? Or do I just want it to work? I can’t tell. This intersection Willem and I have chosen—this overhanging awning and this plaster cow—it’s more than one kilometer from the Muiderpoort station. That seems like a long distance. Is it enough space to save one life?
The transport has moved ahead of us now. Solemn, silent rows of people being taken to God knows what, and we stare after them, helpless. Then it’s just me and Willem.
“Are you going to be okay?” he asks. “With your part? With the uniform?”
“I’ll be fine.”
“If you need me to try to put you in contact with anyone… I don’t know that I know any of the right people, but I could—”
“It’s all right, Willem.”
He nods and hesitates before speaking again. “Hanneke, I hope you don’t take this the wrong way,” he begins. “It’s just that getting a uniform is usually the kind of thing we would plan weeks for. I like you. I think you’re a strong person. But Ollie… he is my best friend, and I can’t let anything happen to him. To any of them. You weren’t that eager to help us. I want you to tell me it’s okay for us to put our trust in you.”
I’ve spent two years wanting nobody to trust me, wanting not to be depended on. But now I have seen a transport, and I have seen a deportation center, and I have seen the hopeful handwriting of a frightened girl, and I have seen brave people forced to hide, and mean people become secretly brave, so when I open my mouth, I say to Willem: “You can. I’ll do my best, Willem.”
My throat starts to swell, and I look away, and when I finally look back, Willem is still holding my eyes, appropriately polite and achingly concerned. “I hope everything is okay with you, Hanneke,” he says. “If there’s something you want to talk about, I don’t need to tell the others.”
I bite down hard on my cheek because Willem’s question is so genuine and because, after everything that’s happened in the past twenty-four hours, I already feel so raw.
“It’s nothing. I’m fine. I just—I don’t sleep well,” I say finally. “I don’t sleep well, and I don’t cry, since Bas died.”
A half explanation. Still more than I’ve said out loud to anyone.
Willem places his hand on my arm again. “This won’t bring Bas back, Hanneke. I know you know that already. But just in case your mind is trying to get you to believe otherwise. You could rescue Mirjam and still not be able to sleep at night.”
TWENTY-FOUR
The doorbell has changed. It used to be a grinding, buzzing noise, and now it’s a clear-toned bell. At first I think I must have misremembered it, but how could I misremember a sound I’d heard one hundred, two hundred, five hundred times in my life?
Elsbeth must have had a new one installed when her parents moved in with her grandmother, and she and Rolf took over her childhood home. It’s strange to think of her this way, as a wife making domestic decisions about the way her household is run. I wonder if she tore down the wallpaper in the sitting room, too. She’d probably have the money to do that, and she always thought it was ugly.