Now, as Miriam lay tossing in bed, she knew tonight was going to be another sleepless night. She glanced at her little alarm clock —twenty minutes past midnight —and sighed. The crack of light beneath her bedroom door told her that Abba was also awake. She punched her pillow and closed her eyes, then sat up again when she heard a sound outside. Was someone knocking on the downstairs door? It was right below her bedroom window. She rose, and when she opened her bedroom door, she saw that Abba had heard it too. Miriam followed him downstairs, thinking it might be one of Mrs. Spielman’s sons from Amsterdam, and the elderly woman might not have heard the knock. It was after curfew, so whoever it was needed to get inside quickly.

Abba unlocked the door and opened it a crack. A moment later, he flung it wide. “Avraham!”

Miriam gave a cry of joy and rushed into Avi’s arms. He crushed her to himself, and she rocked in his arms, both of them weeping. His body was so cold. And wet. Yet Avraham Leopold was wonderfully alive —and here! Miriam prayed she wasn’t dreaming.

“I thought I would never see you again!” she said.

“I had to find you, Miriam. I had to be with you.”

“Shh, shh!” Abba said. “Come inside, quickly!” He pulled them into the tiny vestibule and led the way upstairs. Miriam and Avi stumbled up the steps behind him, clinging to each other, unwilling to let go.

“How did you get here?” Abba asked when they were safely inside. “There are Nazi soldiers everywhere.”

“I walked a good part of the way,” he said with a little laugh.

“All the way across the country?”

Avi nodded. He looked exhausted, his clothes and shoes in tatters. Miriam led him to the sofa and he sank down with her still clinging to him. She wouldn’t let go of him, couldn’t stop looking at his beloved face, afraid he would disappear.

“When we learned that the Nazis had invaded,” Avi said, “everyone in Westerbork was terrified. We knew we would be trapped there and probably shipped east if the Nazis won.”

“There is a great deal of despair among our people,” Abba said. “My rabbi said hundreds of Jews in Amsterdam have committed suicide rather than fall into Nazi hands.”

The news made Miriam shiver. Abba had kept it from her until now. But it made Avi’s safe arrival all the more miraculous. He was here! In their apartment!