“My last conversation with Bas was after the party, too. It was late. Everyone had left. He came into my room, and I asked why he wasn’t in bed, since he had to get up so early for training.”
“You talked to him after I talked to him?” I don’t know why this never occurred to me. Obviously Bas’s family would have talked to him—he lived with them. In my mind, though, I was the last person. I talked to him and then he died. That’s what I picture, and what keeps me awake at nights.
“Several hours after. The sun was about to come up.”
I don’t dare breathe. “What did you talk about?”
“I asked him how he was feeling. I asked him if he was scared. I said I wouldn’t judge him if he was, that I would be, too, in his position. He admitted he was scared—but he said that if he weren’t, it wouldn’t truly count as bravery, would it? And he called me a delicate flower for not volunteering. And I asked what kind of flower. And he said definitely not a tulip, because no one with two lips was going to want to kiss such a wimp.”
And now Ollie is smiling, at this memory of bold, silly Bas, and, amazingly, I’m smiling, too, even as we’re both so sad.
“And he gave me a letter, also.”
I freeze. Ollie reaches into his trousers pocket. The letter he pulls out is on notebook paper, the kind schoolchildren use for grammar exercises, the kind that Elsbeth and I, and Amalia and Mirjam, and young people everywhere use to share secrets. He holds it out. “Go ahead.”
It’s been folded many times over, carried in so many pockets, that the creases are soft and tattered. In the dark I have to hold it centimeters from my nose, laboring over every letter.
Laurence,
I’m sorry for being such a twit. You were a good big brother. Tell Mama she got to keep the good son, even though she won’t believe it at first (who would blame her?). There’s a little bit of money under my mattress, and you can have it. But I told Pia the same thing, so you’ll have to see which one of you is quicker. Tell Hanneke I love her. And to move on. Not too fast. Maybe after two or three months.
—B.
Now I really am laughing, covering my mouth with my hand, because it’s such an unsatisfactory letter, which in turn makes it so much like Bas: solemn one minute and ridiculous the next. Self-deprecating and sweet. “Why didn’t you ever show me this before?”
“Because I assumed you had your own letter. And because you never came to visit, after the memorial. I thought you didn’t want anything to do with my family.”
“I thought you all hated me.”
“I didn’t.”
“Ollie,” I say. “Do you think he meant what he said to you, about how he was scared but glad he was going?”
“Do you think he meant what he said to you, about not wanting to go at all?”
I don’t know. For two and a half years, I thought I knew. “I’m not sure.”
“Maybe Bas wasn’t sure, either,” Ollie says. “Maybe he wanted to go one minute and wanted to stay another.”
Tell her to move on, Bas said. Another thing I haven’t been able to give him.
Ollie puts his arms around me. His cheek presses against my forehead. His breath is in my hair, and on my neck, and before I can really think about what I’m doing, I tilt my face up so that I’m looking directly into his eyes. He smiles at me, and I move my lips toward his. It’s not even that I want Ollie. It’s more that I finally feel, for the first time in more than two years, liberated from some of the guilt I’ve forced upon myself. My lips brush against his and—
“Hanneke, what are you doing?” Ollie lurches back, holding his palms up to stop me from coming closer.
My hand flies up to my mouth. “I’m sorry, Ollie. I—I misinterpreted the situation.”
He shakes his head quickly; I can almost see him blushing even in the dark. “It’s just, I don’t think of you like that, Hanneke.”
“No. Of course you don’t. You were just being nice. I’m your brother’s girlfriend.”
“It’s not that.” He looks pained. “I love someone else.”
I’m hideously ashamed. Ollie, who has been kind to me a dozen times in the past week—I just betrayed that kindness by trying to kiss him, and he’s in love with someone else. Why didn’t he tell me earlier? “Judith?” I guess. “You love Judith?”
“Judith? No.” Ollie shakes his head. “I don’t love Judith.”
“Then who?”
He sighs. “How can I explain? It’s like this: You helped the resistance because of one person, Hanneke. I joined because of one person, too.… Because Jews aren’t the only ones who suffer because of the Nazis. I don’t love Judith. I love Willem.”
“You love… Willem?” My brain trips over the concept. “You love Willem?”
“No one else knows.”