Frits Woltheim was in his late twenties, and like the other two young men, Aart and Jan, he was what physicians called a Mongoloid. Frits yelled whenever he was frustrated or unhappy and was the source of most of the shouting Miriam had heard. Miriam shared a small bedroom with an elderly woman named Miep, who suffered from dementia and sat in a chair, quietly mumbling nonsense all day. Two more women shared another bedroom: Rietje, who was Miriam’s age but had the mental abilities of a small child, and Cornelia, who talked to people only she could see and sometimes suffered from paranoid delusions that made her moan and cry out.

Mealtimes were messy and chaotic but eaten together as a family, even though wartime shortages all across the country meant that the soup was watery and the oatmeal was thin. The sisters didn’t have a radio and rarely talked of the war or current events, so Miriam had no idea what was happening in the outside world. She might have been living on a secluded island in the middle of the ocean or in an imaginary world like Cornelia’s. She felt safe at Meijers House, for the most part, and did her best to avoid interacting with the daytime help. Whenever the other residents’ families visited on Sunday afternoons, Miriam would sit alone on the sun porch, imitating Miep, who was lost in the world of dementia.

The sisters had an old-fashioned windup gramophone and often played music in the evenings. Sometimes Miss Willy played the piano. The house was isolated enough from their neighbors that Miriam asked if she could play her violin without the mute after the daily household staff went home.

“That would be lovely,” Miss Hannie said. “We adore music.”

Everyone enjoyed hearing Miriam play, especially Rietje, who would sit on the floor by Miriam’s feet clapping her hands after each piece and saying, “More! Play more, Christina!”

By the time a few months had passed, Rietje had become so attached to Miriam that Miss Willy allowed her to swap bedrooms with Miep so Rietje could be close to her new friend. Miriam had tried to remain aloof from the women at the Mulders’ farm, closing herself off from close friendships, but there was something about Rietje, a high-spirited child trapped in a young woman’s body, that seeped into a tiny corner of Miriam’s heart. They took walks together around the spacious grounds, away from Frits and his friends who liked to tease. Golden-haired Rietje skipped and danced and exclaimed in childlike delight at every ant and worm and bee they encountered. Her antics often brought a rare smile to Miriam’s face.