“I know you were in contact with the underground,” Erik continued when she didn’t reply. “I saw you delivering their newspapers, remember?” Yes, she remembered, and he had made her promise to stop. “And then, after I told you about the Gestapo raid in Zoeterwoude, you disappeared from Leiden. I figured you were involved in that. Why else would you leave?” He reached for her hand, gripping it tightly. “Please, Ans! Ask your friends to help me!”

She began to shiver. “Even . . . even if I used to know some people . . . ,” she said, her teeth chattering, “I-I’ve been gone for nearly a year. For all I know, they’ve all been arrested.”

“If you love me, please help me. We want a life and a future together, don’t we?”

Ans didn’t know where the panic she felt was coming from, but she struggled to get past it, to gather her thoughts, to decide what to do. The café where she used to leave messages for Havik had closed. She could hide Erik in Eloise’s town house or on her parents’ farm, but did she dare risk endangering them?

“I-I’ll try to think of something. But . . . but I’ll need some time. Can you come back to the town house tomorrow?”

“Please hurry, Ans. I may not have much time!”

She turned and sprinted home without looking back. She was breathless after running the short distance, her legs trembling, her empty stomach rumbling. “Back already?” Eloise asked when Ans found her in the kitchen. “That was quick. We saved you some oatmeal.”

“I need to talk to you. I-I . . .”

Eloise grabbed one of the blankets from the makeshift pallets on the floor and wrapped it around Ans’s shoulders. “You’re shaking like a leaf! Let’s go up to my bedroom. It’s freezing up there, too, but we’ll have privacy.” Ans wanted to weep when she saw what had become of Eloise’s elegant, fairy tale–like bedroom. The wooden bed frame, the bench for her dressing table, and even the picture frames on the walls had all been chopped up for firewood. Eloise made Ans sit on the slipper chair by the window, and then she knelt on the floor in front of her. “What happened?”

“Erik asked for my help. He wants to go into hiding. He doesn’t want to work for the Nazis anymore.”

“Are you sure he isn’t setting a trap?”

Ans’s tears started to fall as she faced the reason for her panic. “No. No, I’m not . . .”

“Ah, no wonder you’re so upset. You love him but you don’t know if you can trust him.”

Ans began to sob. “I-I don’t know what to do!”