Lena and Pieter rose before dawn to do their chores and found Wolf sitting in their kitchen. He startled Lena, but only for a moment. She hadn’t thought it possible for the young man to get any thinner, but it looked as though he had. “I’m about to cook some porridge,” she told him. “Can you stay?”

“I would be grateful.” Wolf shivered, and Lena hurried to stoke the fire and warm up the house.

“Take off your wet coat so it can dry by the fire. I’ll fetch you a blanket in the meantime.” She didn’t wait for his reply but ran upstairs to pull one from her bed.

“Any news?” she heard Pieter asking as she came down again.

“Everyone’s waiting. The Allied invasion is expected any day, and the Nazis are on high alert. We all are.” Wolf hung his coat over the back of his chair. He nodded his thanks to Lena as she gave him the blanket. “I came to ask a favor of you. Both of you.” Lena went still, waiting. “We need a safe hiding place for a Jewish couple. He has been an invaluable help to the Resistance, forging ID cards, especially for downed Allied airmen. But he and his wife need a new hiding place. They’re an older couple and can’t hide outside in the cold. And he will need a place to work.”

“I’ve had an idea for another hiding place that I’ve been chewing on,” Pieter said. “How soon do you need it?”

“Yesterday,” Wolf replied. He gave the closest thing to a smile that Lena had ever seen.

“Well, in that case, I’ll get started right away.”

“I think I know where he can do his work,” Lena said. “We built a secret room in the cellar to hide food, behind a row of shelves. You can’t tell it’s there. It’s nearly empty now, after last winter. With a lantern for light, it might make a good work space.”

Wolf left before the children got up for school. Lena stood in the open barn door with Bep on her hip, praying as she did every day as she watched Wim and Maaike cycle off on Lena’s wreck of a bicycle. The Nazis had confiscated her children’s bikes. Lena’s rubber tires were long gone and it was especially hard for Wim to pedal on the metal rims with Maaike sitting on the handlebars. Bep waved goodbye, and Lena stifled the urge to shout, “Be careful!” The children had been warned to dive into the ditch alongside the road if they heard planes overhead. One of their schoolmates had been killed by falling shrapnel. Lena would be glad when the school closed for the summer. Trusting her loved ones to God’s care had become a daily, sometimes hourly undertaking.