Silence fell, comfortable and familiar. Birds chirped in the distance and wind whistled past my ears. The tranquil farm had become our refuge, far different from the hustle of Warsaw or the wickedness of Auschwitz. The war was drawing to an end, but it wasn’t over yet, so the farm was a welcome shelter from the horrors beyond it. Still, agitation consumed me.

I’d given my letter to Mateusz a day after asking him for writing supplies, and I was still waiting for answers. The wait was almost more maddening than my wait for liberation had been.

“Franz doesn’t know about Helena,” Irena said after we’d been quiet for a while. “I’ve shared very little of my personal life with him.” She poked her finger into a small hole in the blanket. When she spoke again, her voice was quiet. “Mama doesn’t know, either.”

“I hope she does, considering Helena is her granddaughter and she’s caring for her,” I replied with a small smile, but, when Irena lifted her head, the look in her eyes chased away my lingering humor. “You didn’t tell her how the pregnancy happened?”

She winced, then attempted to hide it behind a wry half smile. “Lovesick idiot, remember? I never thought I’d use that damn story, but it worked. When I couldn’t hide the pregnancy any longer, I told Mama I’d been seeing a young man who worked for the resistance, but he’d been caught and executed, leaving me with his child. Since Tata’s death, my dear mother has tried to make me stop swearing, because girls who swear are whores, right?”

“Don’t, Irena, that’s not fair. Not to your mother, and certainly not to you.”

Despite the sharpness in my tone, Irena raised her shoulders in a dismissive shrug. “She was upset, of course, but I assured her I’d learned from my mistakes, and she never held my actions against the baby. Since Helena’s birth, everything has been fine between us. Mama loves her.”

“And she loves you. Why do you want her to believe a lie?”

“Good Lord, it’s not important.” The forced indifference in Irena’s voice wasn’t convincing. “The Nazis killed her husband, and she doesn’t need to know what they did to her daughter, too. Let me worry about my mother, Maria, and you worry about yours.” It took her only a moment to realize her mistake. “Shit, I didn’t—”

I held up a hand to stop her, a hand that no longer displayed every bone. I was still thin, though. My body seemed to have forgotten how to retain weight. Irena fell into pensive silence while she toyed with her necklace, though I caught her eyes drifting to my forearm.