I’m suddenly reminded that resisters, same as formal operatives, claim various code names. But there’s no time for relief as he demands, “Did you tell him where to find me? ’Cause if he’s thinks I’m a collaborator, I could wind up floating in a canal.”

Even without Arie’s prior warning, I understood as much. “No. Absolutely not.”

“Well, what did you tell him?”

“Scarcely anything,” I contend, despite my intuitive sense Willem can be trusted. “Just what he needed for the forgeries.”

Arie blinks hard. “What are you talking about?”

Presented in jumbled order, my news meant to fuel optimism is having the opposite effect.

“It’s what I came to tell you.” I lean forward, and he rears back a step. It’s an emotional reflex I choose to ignore. “He’s working on getting IDs and travel papers for you and Evelien. Then hopefully we can all go back together, as far as Switzerland at first, and on to London with some finagling.”

The neutral Swiss government, technically, was to hold for the duration all able-bodied Allied servicemen who reached its soil. I’ve heard, however, that our boys regularly repatriate by sidestepping those rules, whether diplomatically or by escaping from there. And anyhow, we can tackle that obstacle later.

“This way, for the rest of the war,” I tell him, “you wouldn’t have to worry about either of you being discovered at a farmhouse or anywhere else.”

Arie stays quiet, digesting the reasoning that should deflate the pressure. And it does, but not entirely. “You should’ve asked me first.”

His permission. This is his prime concern?

“I wasn’t aware we had unlimited time.”

“We won’t need the papers,” he says. “Evelien and I aren’t going.”

If not so stunned, I’d laugh, particularly given the risks Willem and I took to even meet up, and that’s to say nothing of the forger’s bravery.

“Why? Because staying behind is so much safer? After everything that’s happened to you and your family, I would think—”

“Because I can’t go back,” he says gruffly. “If I do, I’ll be tried and convicted as a traitor. And who knows where that’ll leave the child.”

“Arie, that’s not going to happen. You already said the raid wasn’t your fault.”

There’s a pause. Then a tensing of his jaw. “I never said that.”

Daunted as much by the inference as his demeanor, I sink back into my chair. Now I’m the one instinctively wanting distance. “What haven’t you told me?”