Leiden’s canals and buildings and bridges moved past her window as if she were watching a film. The Molen de Valk towered in the distance. She remembered how pretty and picturesque the city seemed when she’d first arrived here with Papa —before the Nazis defiled it with their swastikas and their hatred.

“Are you all right, Christina?” the doctor asked. He kept glancing at her as he drove as if worried that she would break down.

“I’m fine.” Her eyes remained dry. Every part of her felt numb. Her heart had begun to die the day Ans took Elisheva away. And when she and Avi crouched on the ledge outside the window that night, hiding from the Gestapo, a deadening paralysis had spread slowly through her. It reached her heart the moment she’d kissed Avi goodbye. Miriam had stopped feeling. Now it was pure survival. She must stay alert, stay alive, so they would all be together again.

“I don’t know how long you’ll be able to stay with the Ver Beeks,” Dr. Elzinga said. “They’re eager to help, feeling that it’s their Christian duty, but you’re the first person they’ve hidden and they’re nervous about making a mistake. We have no idea how nosy their neighbors are. Be warned that you may need to be moved several times.”

“It doesn’t matter,” she said. The fewer attachments she made, the less pain she would feel at their loss.

“We hope to get you out of Leiden altogether and away from the larger cities, where the Nazis are more active.” They crossed the bridge over the canal, the tires humming, and left the old city, passing the train station, where Nazi soldiers strolled the platform. Miriam turned away so she wouldn’t have to see them.

Twenty minutes later, the car pulled up to a tidy brick home, nestled close to its neighbors in a row of similar houses lining the narrow street. It seemed cheerful and welcoming with colorful flowers beneath a large bay window and pretty lace curtains. Miriam gazed up at the blue sky as they waited for Mrs. Ver Beek to answer the door, wondering if it would be her last glimpse of it for a while.

The Ver Beeks were a quiet, plainspoken couple in their fifties who lived a simple, hardworking life without frills or frivolity. They welcomed Miriam into their home as if she were a guest, not a fugitive, giving her a bedroom on the second floor across from theirs and inviting her to eat with them at their round kitchen table. They bowed their heads to thank the Lord for their food before eating and read from the Bible each evening when they finished. Miriam would only need to hide when someone came to the door.