The trauma they’d endured in the past few days made everyone in the town house sick at heart. Ans didn’t know how to comfort any of them. Miriam and Avi mourned for her father, enduring yet another loss after suffering so many others. “Why wouldn’t he come with us?” Miriam asked again and again. “He should have come with us.” Professor Huizenga mourned the loss of his friend and colleague, saying he didn’t understand it either. Eloise continued to insist that she didn’t want to live in a world with so much evil and hatred, and Ans could hardly blame her. Eloise had to be coaxed to leave her room, and when she did, she stared through vacant eyes as if afraid to look at anyone, fearing she would lose all the people she loved. Ans hadn’t seen or spoken to Erik in more than a week, and she thought she knew why. In spite of the many protests, the Gestapo and local police were systematically rounding up Leiden’s Jews and transporting them to Amsterdam. Everyone wondered if Professor Jacobs was among them.

“I’m going over to your old apartment to see what’s happening,” Ans told Miriam and Avi when she could no longer stand waiting. She didn’t know if facing the truth would change anything, but at least she would be doing something.

“Please be careful,” Professor Huizenga said.

“I will.” She thought about concocting an excuse for why she was in the Jewish neighborhood in case anyone stopped her but decided it didn’t matter. She had her identity card. She didn’t need a reason to walk Leiden’s streets in daylight.

The area around the synagogue and Jewish shops seemed silent and deserted. Ans pressed the apartment’s doorbell and heard it ring inside. No one answered. She remembered finding this apartment for Miriam and her father nearly three years ago. They’d lived happily here, working hard, putting down roots, building a family and a new life together. How could they and an entire community of innocent people be targeted this way? What was the root of such hatred? And what could she do to fix it and make it right? There were no answers. She stood in the street, looking up at the vacant building through her tears, and understood Eloise’s sadness and despair.

Ans was about to leave when something rustled in the bushes beside the door. She backed up a step, then saw that it was a cat —Mrs. Spielman’s cat. It mewed when Ans crouched to pet it. “You poor thing. You were left here all alone.”

She heard heavy footsteps on the cobblestones behind her and turned to see a man striding toward her. The cat disappeared into the bushes again. The figure drew closer.

Erik.