“One of my tenants is struggling financially,” she told me. “And that means I am having a little trouble making ends meet.”

“Oh?” I said, startled. “Which tenant? Do you want me to speak to them—”

“No, no.” She shook her head slowly. “I’ve spoken to them about it, and they are going to try to make amends. It’s just that while they catch up, I wondered if you could maybe lend me a little money?”

“Of course,” I said, without hesitation. “Just tell me what you need and when.”

I’d mention it to Jürgen when he next called, but I knew he wouldn’t mind.

Knowing that the house was wired with some kind of audio surveillance, Jürgen and I were performing all the time. Even when we were alone, we said and did all the things good Nazi parents were expected to do.

But Jürgen and I had systems to try to claw back at least a little privacy. We had to connect on a genuine level sometimes or we’d lose our minds.

Sometimes when he was home we drove out of Berlin and took long hikes, the children running up ahead in front of us through the forest or climbing to the tops of trees as Jürgen and I whispered to one another. Other times we’d hide in the bathroom, running all of the taps to cover the sounds of our voices. And I moved the wireless into our bedroom, and I’d turn it on every night whether Jürgen was home or not. We had scripted conversations about how I was becoming an insomniac and needed the background noise to sleep.

In reality, though, this was a cover—a way to protect us from prying ears when we pulled the blankets over our faces to whisper.

“Hi,” he’d whisper, even though we might have been together for hours by then. I always felt I was removing a suffocating mask as we pulled those blankets over our heads, even though there was so little air, and every now and again, we’d have to pull the covers down, gulp in a breath, then dive back in.

We talked about Lydia. She’d transformed herself into the perfect Nazi wife, no longer dyeing her hair or wearing makeup, and pregnant—again. I felt such complicated emotions about her—a mix of nostalgia for our once-genuine friendship and swirling shades of distrust, resentment, and hurt. I had never confronted her about the way she let me down the night Jürgen was taken. There was no way to hold her responsible without drawing attention to our disloyalty to the Reich. I saw Lydia now only when I had to, and even then, I was polite but distant.

Jürgen told me about his work. He had just overseen a test launch of a new prototype, the first-ever test launch at Kummersdorf before an audience.