“Let them sit down and have something warm to drink first,” Lena said, poking Pieter’s side. “I don’t have coffee, but I can make some tea with mint from my garden. Will that be all right?” She pulled out bread and cheese to go with it and cut up some withered apples from her root cellar. The couple were introduced as Max and Ina, and they seemed grateful for their new hiding place beneath the stairs.

“They told us it was all right to tell you . . . ,” Ina said. “We know your daughter Ans from Leiden.”

Lena caught her breath.

“She’s very pretty, just like you, Mrs. De Vries,” Max added.

“Please, call me Lena.”

“And I’m Pieter. How do you know Ans?”

“We’ve been hiding with the couple she works for in Leiden.”

“How is she? I haven’t seen her in so long!” Since the night she’d brought Bep to the farm, nearly two years ago. Ans wrote letters from time to time, assuring them she was all right and saying how much she missed them. Lena wrote back, telling her about the farm and how the other children were doing and saying how much she missed her too. Ans would be twenty-four years old soon. A grown woman.

“Ans is good,” Max said. “She’s a very strong, determined, and confident young woman. But she had to be moved from the town house the same time we did.”

Lena went still with fear. “Why? May I ask what happened?”

“Her boyfriend on the police force warned Ans about a Gestapo raid in another safe house.”

A stab of pain pierced Lena’s heart. Ans hadn’t mentioned a boyfriend.

“It was decided that Ina and I should be moved,” Max continued, “and that Ans should also go into hiding.”

“Do you know where she is?”

“Sorry. We have no idea. And she didn’t know that we were coming here.”