According to her birth certificate, Bep was two years old on this wintry March day. Lena had been raising rabbits this winter, hiding them from the Nazis, and had sold three of them in town to pay for the doll. Seeing the joy it brought this child she now thought of as her daughter made Lena glad for the sacrifice, even if it meant less meat in their soup this month. Maaike had sewn a tiny coat for the doll from an old blanket, and Wim had carved a pair of little wooden shoes for her. Papa had saved up enough sugar from his rations for Lena to bake a small cake.

Bep was still hugging her doll as Lena tucked her into bed that night beside her big sister, their tummies full of cinnamon cake. Bep had outgrown her crib and had moved into Maaike’s bed, where Ans used to sleep. Friends from church had loaned Lena clothes as Bep had grown from a baby into a toddler, and Lena had cut down and resewn some of Maaike’s clothes as well, including a warm winter coat.

“Everyone in bed?” Pieter asked when Lena returned to the kitchen.

“All tucked in. What time will your friends get here?”

“Not for another hour.”

“Did you take the rest of the soup out to the barn? Will it be enough for everyone?”

“I think so. We have fewer onderduikers this month than in February.”

“So I won’t need to make such a large pot next time?”

“Likely not.”

Lena fetched dried kidney beans from the root cellar, rinsed them, then put them in a bowl to soak overnight. For the past few months, her barn and windmill had housed dozens of furloughed officers from the Dutch army who had gone into hiding after the Nazis redrafted them in January. Only a tiny percentage of them had shown up to register, while the rest had become onderduikers along with the thousands of students who had gone under after so many of the universities in the Netherlands had closed.

“Where can all of these men possibly hide?” Lena had asked when the registration had been announced. “Our country is so small and so flat. And it’s not like they can escape across any of our borders.”

“Heaven knows,” Pieter had replied. Now he added more wood to the kitchen stove while they waited for the rest of his small Resistance cell to arrive. With the beans soaking, Lena sat down beside the kerosene lamp to do the mending. The Nazis had imposed rationing on gas and electricity, making it difficult to do chores after dark without using their precious supplies of kerosene.

“One of our onderduikers is a former army officer,” Pieter said. “He wants to help with the robbery tonight.”