Then Dworkin looked at Rachel and said, “You can stay or go. We can’t stop you. We can’t do nothing, it’s finished for us now, thank God. The war is over.” He paused, then said:

“But you should know something, Rachel. You should know that the day they rounded us up with our little bags of clothes and made us wait in the square before they marched us to the trains to go to the camp, only one woman from the whole village came to see what was happening to us. One woman. The others could have come, if not to save us, at least to say good-­bye. After all, we’d lived in our section of that town for centuries. But this woman was the only one. She stood at the end of the square and cried and wrung her hands until the Germans shooed her away.” He looked down at his cap. “So you should ask yourself, Rachel, no matter what we are, if you leave us and you have to stand in a square somewhere, who will come with you? Who will even say good-­bye?” They looked at each other for a moment. Then Rachel put Hawkins’s arm around her shoulder and, with him leaning on her, they went to the door where Garfield waited. When the light hit Hawkins’s face, she saw blood running out of his hair, down his face and neck. She’d wipe it away later, and she helped him slowly up the stairs while Garfield followed them, holding the bannister with his good hand.

Walinsky was in the vestibule. “Was that shots?” he cried when he saw them. “Where’s Jacob?” Rachel couldn’t answer. “What happened to Jacob?” he shouted after them. They kept going out the front door and down the stairs to the sidewalk.

Tepel was passed out on the front seat of the car, the bottle empty next to him. “Some chickie,” she whispered. She woke him up and they helped Garfield into the car. Then, still leading Hawkins, who was walking more steadily, she kept going. She had to get her car, settle Hawkins in it, then pick up Leah. She tried to think if there was anything she would take with her, then decided she’d leave it all. She had to call Bianco to tell him that it was all right. But she’d do that from the road. She’d say to him what Dworkin just said; it was dramatic and she thought it was what he’d want to hear most. “The war is over,” she’d tell him.

††††† Reincarnation.

About the Author

ABOUT THE AUTHOR