Yom Kippur was meant to be a day of forgiveness and atonement, but Daniel wasn’t in a forgiving mood. He and Rebeka scavenged their pre-fasting meal in near silence: a sad bounty of canned broth, stale bread, and pickled vegetables from Helene’s root cellar. Even as they shrank from their other traditions under the Gestapo’s watchful eye, their Yom Kippur meals back in Berlin had been extravagant, multicourse affairs with egg soufflés and rich, fluffy bread loaves. At their uncle’s farm in Luxembourg, they’d spend the day prepping the bread, speaking euphorically of how they would break their fast when Yom Kippur ended.

But even thinking of such a meal right now made his stomach churn. His stomach was shrunken, unsettled ever since their escape from Łódź another lifetime ago. Tonight was just another night with too little food in his belly and too much anger in his blood.

They took their scraps to the bell tower and spread out a pilled woolen blanket that smelled like a stable. He pulled the battered wooden mezuzah from his coat pocket and set it between them: an offering.

“We praise You, Adonai our God, Sovereign of the universe, who brings forth bread from the earth.” The words in stilted Hebrew hung awkwardly between them, familiar and yet out of place. Rebeka unwrapped the stale bread slices with trembling hands. Daniel looked at the shafts of milky sunlight sliding between the rafters, the worn stone walls, the painted iron carillon dangling over them: anywhere but at her.

She chewed for a few minutes, then forced herself to swallow and faced him to continue the tradition. “Daniel?” she whispered. “May I ask your forgiveness? For . . . for anything I’ve done to hurt you this past year.”

Daniel managed a dry laugh at that. “I’m not sure you’re who needs to be forgiven.”

She picked at her nails, breath drawn as if there was something she wanted to say, but no way to say it. Finally, she relaxed and shook her head. “I’m truly sorry I’ve tried to stand in your way. I know you want . . .”

Rebeka trailed off, and at last he found the strength to look at her. She was only a sliver of the girl she’d once been: no longer the tall, strong young woman he admired, but whittled down and folded up, like perhaps she could fold herself away into nothingness.

“I know you want revenge. And I don’t blame you for that. I want it too.” Tears rimmed her lower lashes. “But I’ve lost everyone else. I can’t lose you as well.”