“Ja.” At thirteen, he’d outgrown their nightly bedtime rituals, but Lena couldn’t resist crossing to his bed and kissing his forehead.

“Good night, then.”

Downstairs, Lena stoked the kitchen fire, adding fuel before putting on her coat and hat. She turned out all the lights and slipped outside into the freezing night. The wind swirled dried leaves across her path as she plodded up the rise to the windmill in the dark. She found the door and stepped inside, waiting for her eyes to grow accustomed to the even-darker interior. A faint light from Pieter’s candle flickered high above her. The old mill creaked and groaned in the wind as she climbed the narrow steps and then the steep wooden ladder to the very top, where Pieter crouched beneath the massive wooden beams. It was cold in the unheated mill. It smelled of old wood and dust and the oil Pieter used to grease the pump.

“It’s nearly finished,” he said. “Just a couple more nights.” It would be one of several hiding places she and Pieter were building around their farm to prevent the Nazis from stealing everything they labored for all summer.

More than a year and a half had passed since the Nazi invasion, a year and a half since their freedom was stolen. After the first summer, when the enemy had inventoried their farm and then carried off their harvest, Pieter had begun building these caches to keep more of their crops out of Nazi hands. Working at night, after the children were asleep, he and Lena also had created a false floor beneath the hayloft in the barn. They’d dug another chamber beneath the abandoned chicken coop. A false wall in the root cellar hid a secret room behind a row of shelves. They would be arrested or shot if the Nazis discovered what they were doing. Lena lived with the fear of what might happen to her and Pieter and to their children every moment of every day. Yet giving in to the Nazis was unthinkable.

A breeze blew through the open rafters, nearly snuffing out their only candle. They were forced to work in this dim light, afraid that a lantern would shine for miles in the clear December sky. Airplanes droned above them from time to time, a constant reminder of the war, a constant source of fuel for Lena’s hatred. The Nazis had stolen her life and her children’s secure future.

Lena yawned as the hours passed, struggling to keep her eyes open as she held the boards in place for Pieter to hammer. It must be well past midnight by now. They would have only a few hours of sleep before they’d have to get up and begin their chores again.