The Gestapo returned to the town house two nights later, pounding on the door and ringing the doorbell at two o’clock in the morning. Ans leaped from her bed and ran up to the third floor, ducking through the little door to the attic. Avi and Miriam now slept there at night and were already climbing out the dormer window. Ans teetered across the joists to close it behind them and move the crate. She heard the baby whimpering from being awakened and Miriam soothing her. Ans glanced around to make sure the attic looked untouched, then raced downstairs again, praying they wouldn’t see her emerging from the tiny attic door. The men were older than the first two and had no regard for the mess they left in their wake. They took longer, searching more thoroughly. They didn’t find the Leopolds.

Ans huddled in the parlor with Eloise and Herman after the Gestapo left, sipping tea as they tried to calm down again. No one would be able to get back to sleep. Eloise stared at nothing the way she had on the night the Nazis invaded the Netherlands, only this was much worse. The Nazis had invaded her home, her bedroom.

The Gestapo returned a third night, in the pouring rain this time. Miriam and Avi were drenched and shivering by the time the men left, the baby wailing in distress.

The intrusion roused Eloise from her lethargy. “The Leopolds need a better hiding place,” she said. “I’m not afraid for my own safety, but if the Gestapo keeps coming back, sooner or later we might make a mistake. Besides, that poor baby can’t hide on the window ledge in the wintertime.” If the Leopolds were discovered, Eloise would never recover from their loss.

“How do we go about finding a safer place to hide them?” Ans asked.

“Someone from the underground newspaper will know. We should start there. Every issue has called for greater action, more resistance. Surely they’ll have contacts with a network of people. That’s how the Resistance operated during the first war.”

“It’s worth a try,” Ans said. “We already know we can trust them. But who can we ask?” Ans had been delivering Eloise’s news reports and editorials to an unknown contact in a variety of meeting places, making a simple exchange. This month, it had been on the observatory grounds. Neither Ans nor Eloise knew who else was involved with the newspaper or where the underground press was located.

“Start with your regular contact person when you meet with them tomorrow.”

Ans was waiting at the observatory the next day at the appointed time. “Listen,” she said, after the exchange had been made. “I need help. My friends need to go into hiding.”

“Are they Jewish?” she whispered.