She drew a shaky breath. “Even if I still knew people in the underground, they would never agree to help you because you didn’t help them when they needed it. You worked for our enemy. You chose the Nazis’ side when you decided to stay on the police force. You joined the Dutch Nazi Party and attended their rallies. You made your choice. You can’t expect the underground to help you now.”

“Please! Let me hide here with you!”

“This isn’t my home. There are a dozen of us living here, families whose husbands and fathers are in a Nazi prison for helping Jews. We’re chopping up the furniture and woodwork to stay warm. We’re eating horse food and tulip bulbs to stay alive. I can’t ask these poor souls to take pity on you.” She paused. “I can’t help you, Erik. I’m sorry.”

“I thought you loved me!”

“I thought so too.”

CHAPTER 60

It was still night when the tremor of vehicles and voices roused Miriam from sleep. Everyone in the barracks heard it too, and questions whispered through the darkness. “What’s going on? What are the Nazis doing?” Miriam and most of the others were too afraid to open the door and venture outside. The darkness, inside and out, magnified her fear.

As the uproar continued, the barracks supervisor peered cautiously through the window, then said, “There’s no guard outside. He’s not at his post.” The supervisor and two others decided to take a chance. They opened the door and disappeared into the night. They returned minutes later, barely able to keep from shouting the news. “The Nazis are packing up! It looks like they’re leaving! There are no guards anywhere, even in the towers!”

“Will we have to go with them?” someone asked.

“I don’t see how they could take all of us unless there’s a train coming.”

“If there is a train, we’re all done for. They pack a thousand people at a time on those trains, and there are fewer than nine hundred of us left.”

The thought made Miriam’s lungs squeeze. “Have mercy on me, my God, have mercy on me, for in you I take refuge. I will take refuge in the shadow of your wings until the disaster has passed. . . .” She recited the verses silently while she and the others waited. She’d lost track of the number of times she’d been forced to wait through endless minutes and hours of dread this way, her life, her hope, dangling by a thread. She struggled to breathe, listening for the rumble of the train. Gradually it became apparent that the Nazis and their vehicles were in fact leaving, yet no one had ordered the prisoners to collect their things or stand for roll call in the center of the camp. The train didn’t come.