“It would be in name only. I don’t agree with anything they stand for. But the police chief is being pressured to give preference to party members when deciding who gets hired. And if I lose my job —if any man loses his job —we’ll be sent east to work in German factories. We’ll be slave laborers.”

“Do you think my Jewish friends will be persecuted here the way they were in Germany?”

Erik shrugged. “Who knows? So far, they’re saying the Jews won’t be bothered here. The Nazis have promised that if our people cooperate, things will return to normal.”

“Do you believe them?”

“What choice do we have?”

Ans stood again and walked toward the water. She was weary of hearing that everything would be all right when the mere sight of the two Nazi soldiers strutting down the street across the canal made everything all wrong.

She recalled her family’s conversation at the dinner table and wondered if she should share her grandfather’s assessment with Erik. Surely he would agree that the only two options were to cooperate or resist. Yet it seemed that, at least on the surface, Erik had chosen to adjust to Nazi rule and float with the tide. And if he joined the NSB, wouldn’t that be considered collaboration? But how could she blame him if the alternative was to be sent to a labor camp?

Ans’s stomach turned at the thought of Erik becoming a Nazi puppet. He’d been forced to choose the lesser of two evils, but she didn’t like either choice. “If only we hadn’t lost the war,” she murmured.

Erik had come alongside her, and he wrapped his arm around her waist. “We fought hard, Ans. Remember my roommate Bram, Jansje’s fiancé? He was killed on the first day of the invasion.”

Ans closed her eyes, thanking God that it hadn’t been Erik. Or Papa.

They walked home together, clinging to each other.

In mid-June, Hitler marched triumphantly into Paris. Eloise’s mood spiraled even lower. As the days passed, she slept too much, ate too little, and stared into space as if her body and mind were vacant. Ans tried to get her to talk, wondering if she was reliving the past, which seemed to be merging with the present in a terrifying way.

One warm afternoon, Ans managed to convince Eloise to walk with her to nearby Van der Werff Park. As they strolled down one of the paths, a young woman strode toward them as if in a hurry. Her hand suddenly reached out as she marched past, and she thrust a piece of paper into Eloise’s hand. She halted to read it.