He went forward into her arms. She felt a sob shudder through his body. Lena’s tears flowed as well. “Oh, God, end this war,” she prayed. “Bring this young man and all of the people we love back home again.”

At last he pulled away and wiped his eyes. “I must go,” he said. “Thank you for your prayer. And for . . . for not hating me.”

“I hope you make it home.”

“I hope your son does too.”

He turned and quickly strode toward town. Lena saw Maaike cringe and pull away as he walked past her. Lena felt drained as she returned to where the girls were waiting. “Come on, let’s go home.”

Maaike didn’t move. “You hugged a Nazi soldier! Why?”

“He was just a boy, like Wim. He misses his mother.”

“He could be the soldier who killed Opa!”

Lena rested her hands on Maaike’s shoulders. “Opa offered his life so that no one else from the village would be killed. He wasn’t afraid to die. He wanted to show us that we don’t have to be afraid to die either.” She tried to wrap her arms around Maaike, but she pulled away.

“Why are the Nazis here in our country? I hate them all!”

Lena winced, knowing Maaike had learned to hate from her. She had shouted those very words just minutes ago. “I know I’ve said the same things and felt the same way you do, Maaike, but it was wrong of me to hate. Very wrong. God used that young soldier just now to remind me that if we want to be like Jesus, we can’t hate others —even our enemies.”

The bicycle clattered to the ground as Maaike went into Lena’s arms. “I want Opa! And Papa and Ans and Wim!” she wailed.

Lena stood in the middle of the road with her daughter, rocking her in her embrace. “I do too, my sweet child . . . I do too . . .”

CHAPTER 59

Ans woke from a restless sleep as the roar of a V-1 rocket blasted off somewhere outside of Den Haag, a dozen miles away. A brilliant flash lit up the room as the rocket streaked across the sky, then the sound faded into the distance. Some of those rockets never made it to their targets in Britain but exploded in the Netherlands. She sat up carefully, trying not to awaken Eloise or the ten other people sleeping in the town house’s kitchen, and made her way to the stove to stoke the fire. Hunger made everyone lethargic, and they slept on, accustomed to the noise of war. Planes flew overhead continuously, with some formations lasting as long as an hour. Windows rattled from the heavy loads and roaring engines. Ans and her companions fell asleep at night to the sound of firefights, the clatter of antiaircraft guns, the fatal sputter of injured planes, and “fireworks” lighting up the sky.