“I love you too.” He kissed her. The door closed behind him. Miriam couldn’t bear to go to the kitchen window to watch him ride away. They’d wrenched her heart away when they’d taken Elisheva. Now her soul was gone as well.

She walked upstairs to the attic as if in a dream. She was alone. Alone. All of the people she loved most in the world were gone. She took her muted violin from the case and began to play, weeping tears of grief through the music, tears she could no longer shed.

A long time later, Miriam heard footsteps on the wooden stairs. Eloise and Ans both joined her, carrying a tray of food. “You missed supper,” Eloise said. “We brought you something to eat.”

“Thank you. That was nice of you.” Miriam didn’t tell them she was too heartsick to eat. She hoped they would leave again. But Eloise sat down on the dilapidated trunk with a sigh. She was an elegant, delicate woman and looked out of place in the dreary attic, like a priceless jewel in an ugly wooden box.

“Miriam,” she said softly. “I know how you feel. I know. And I won’t lie and tell you that it will get better, and that you’ll find a way to go on, because right now you probably don’t want to go on.”

Miriam looked away, staring at the dormer window that had been her family’s only door of escape these past few weeks. She knew Eloise’s story. She knew how much her friend had lost in the first war and the toll it had taken on her mind and her health. If anyone understood Miriam’s losses, it was Eloise.

“I hate them!” Miriam said. “They’ve taken everything from me. My home in Cologne, the life I had there, my mother and aunts and uncles and cousins. Then they took my home and my family away for a second time when they took Abba. Now they’ve separated me from my daughter and my husband. They’re even taking my name. I have nothing left. Nothing.”

“I understand,” Eloise said. Miriam looked into her eyes as if into her soul and knew that she truly did. “Don’t escape into the darkness like I did, Miriam. Don’t let them do that to you. The darkness isn’t an escape; it’s the pit of hell. Don’t believe the voice that whispers that ending your life is the only way out.”

Alone in the attic that night, Miriam longed to fall asleep and never wake up. But her mind refused to shut down, replaying every wonderful moment she’d spent with Avi and Elisheva. She stayed awake, afraid to allow those memories to fade. Tomorrow she would begin a new life all over again. She would stay alive as Avi had begged her to do. She would live one day at a time.