Page 72 of The Lost Husband

The soldier leading us away stops and pivots back to face us. His stare is cold and ruthless, needling me with scrutiny.

“Ona sumasshedshaya,” he slurs to the other soldier, knowing we wouldn’t understand their Russian. The other soldier only shrugs in response, unaffected by whatever he said.

“You didn’t see anything,” the soldier in front says. This time he’s speaking to us in Yiddish so we understand.

“I did.” The words pour out of me, my desperation clear in any language. I yank my sleeve and shove it up to my elbow, my arm shaking from both cold and nerves. “They mark people. They mark us. No German soldier would have a number on their arm unless he was like me.”

Elias is stepping from side to side, pulling at his short hair, breathing quickly.

“Stop,” Christoph hisses in my ear, squeezing at my arm again. “You’re going to get us killed.”

I barely hear or understand what he’s telling me to do as I’m already drowning in my own fear.

“There was a tattoo,” I press again. “A number. I saw it clearly on the man’s arm. Not an ink stain. German soldiers don’t do that to their own.”

The soldiers don’t acknowledge my erratic explanation but rather share an annoyed look with one another.

“Enough,” the one in front snaps before stepping in toward me, leaving no room for my shoes to budge forward. He lowershis head and speaks directly against my face. “You will be quiet now.” His breath smells like cabbage and coffee grounds.

The soldier from behind shoves Elias and Christoph forward, knocking into me just enough to force my feet out of step.

Again, they mutter something to each other in Russian, a grunt shadowing the words. They force us along, out of the school yard and up to the front of the schoolhouse, next to the other building where they’re keeping the prisoners.

“If one of them is a Jewish traitor,” the louder of the two soldiers says, “he won’t last long among those German soldiers anyway.”

His thick accent puts emphasis on all the words that hollow me out.

Christoph grabs the back of my coat and pulls me back a step, maneuvering himself to stand in front of me. “I apologize for the trouble.” His voice is too calm—too unmotivated to match my pleas. “She’s not well. Lost family in the camps. She isn’t thinking properly right now.”

The soldier lazily moves his glare from Christoph to the schoolhouse. “Your friend in there, she’s weak.” He points toward the front door and exhales heavily with aggravation. “Any more disturbances from you, and we move her someplace else.”

“Please, no. She needs help. She needs—” Elias argues.

“Quiet,” he barks. He steps around us and opens the front door, motioning for us to follow. He takes us down the corridor and opens a door. “Go.”

A large, damp closet with a dangling light bulb. No windows. Just the sound of a key switching a lock in the door from the outside.

The urge to bang on the door rivets through me. I can’t just wait in here. Avi was right. They don’t really care aboutliberating us. And now I’ve left her alone in their care—the people she feared more than the German soldiers themselves.

“You can’t speak to them that way,” Christoph lectures me. “They don’t care about what you’re telling them. They’re following orders and we aren’t a part of them.”

I need to get out of here. I need to get to Noah. I don’t care what the Soviets are concerned with or not. Noah needs me.

“God knows how long they’ll leave us in here,” Elias follows, clearly angry with me too, despite him being the first to ask about Avi.

TWENTY-NINE

CURRENT DAY

Gliwice, Poland

The smell of mildew and chalk dust sour my stomach. I don’t remember sitting down on the cold cement ground or leaning against the unforgiving raw brick within this dank closet in this Soviet occupied schoolhouse. I’m not sure when I even closed my eyes. I was pounding against the door before that.

My eyes flicker, the weight of my lids almost unbearable through the relentless exhaustion I have no control over. Christoph is asleep, sitting against the wall beside me, and Elias is across from me, leaning against the wall separating us from the main corridor.

I stand up, trying to twist the doorknob. I heard the lock when they closed us in here. It’s no surprise that the knob doesn’t twist. I press my ear against the door, listening for any indication of life on the other side.

Regret is immediate.