“You know I don’t mind helping Henry—however and whenever we can. But if having the Germans in town is too much for him, we should try to find him somewhere else to stay, because these people are not going anywhere.”

We stared at one another—the space between us thick with tension—and then Calvin sighed miserably and left the kitchen, as if he couldn’t bear to keep arguing with me. I understood. I hated arguing with Calvin too.

I already felt enough guilt at the unusual nature of our marriage. I hated to add to it by finding myself on the other side of a disagreement with no easy solution.

But this was too important. The injustice of the situation was just too great for me to ignore, not even to please my husband.

When I went to check on Henry in his room an hour later, he was lying on the bed, staring at the wall.

“Are you all right?” I asked him tentatively.

“Yeah,” he said. His voice was still hoarse. “Sorry for all that.”

“You’ve seemed so much better lately,” I said quietly. Henry had been flat and irritable at Christmas, but since returning a few weeks ago, even Cal remarked how much calmer he seemed. Henry sighed, shrugging noncommittally. “Is your hand okay?”

He rolled toward me and lifted his fist. The skin on his knuckles was busted and there was a purple bruise forming. I was confused at first. I’d been asking about the burn from the stove, but this was something else.

“How did you do that?”

“Sorry,” he whispered, pointing to the wall beside the door. I turned and saw the four jagged holes he’d punched in the drywall. I swallowed a gasp. “I’ll fix it up when I get my next paycheck.”

“Don’t you even worry about it,” I said, but my voice was strained. For all of Henry’s troubles over the years, that kind of destructive violence was new, and I wasn’t quite sure what to make of it.

I patted him gently on the shoulder and rose to leave the room, but as I took my first steps, he said, “Lizzie?”

“Yeah?”

“It’s not right,” he said. “Those people coming here after what they did. I sometimes walk past Sauerkraut Hill and there are some real nice houses there. It really worries me that the families in those blocks around them might not realize who their new neighbors really are. And besides, why have those men been given such cushy jobs working with the very Army that lost so many good men defeating them?”

“I know, Henry,” I sighed.

“Why did they come here, anyway?”

“The men didn’t have a choice in the beginning,” I reminded him. “They were brought to America as prisoners. But they do have it pretty good here now. Why would they leave?”