Still carrying her close, I strain through my daze to watch the vehicle park. The driver climbs out and scurries toward the door. His lean profile, topped with a brimmed hat, streaks past the glass. Willem readies a knife from his coat, and a command tumbles from my mouth.

“Wait.”

He ceases and stares. His eyes demand whether I’m sure.

Despite not feeling sure of anything—barely feeling at all—I issue a nod.

Willem retains the weapon though low at his side. He opens the door only partially.

The suited man with a handlebar mustache is indeed Mr. Brouwer, who, noting my unforeseen company, appears flustered. Without preamble, he whispers in Dutch, “I am afraid I do not have room for four.”

Logic. Practicality. I too seize on these, somehow managing a level response. “It will be just me and the child.”

Brouwer looks puzzled. Then surmising, or perhaps from a glimpse behind me, he extends a voice of compassion. “My dear…”

I refuse to hear the rest; the meager strands keeping me intact will otherwise snap clean apart. “We are now going to Tilburg.”

“But,” he says, “I thought—”

“Will you take us?”

Thrown off, he stammers. “I-I would gladly…yet I have no present clients in that area. Checkpoints will already be a gamble, but that close to the border will raise extraordinary suspicion.”

Evelien raises her head. Lured by his voice, she rotates sleepily, inducing Brouwer to sigh. “Well, hello, little one.” Smiling tenderly, he gives her arm a soft squeeze. Her choice not to recoil reminds me of the friendship and protection he long provided her family. Then a sadness mists his eyes, a tragedy mulled.

His gaze returns to me. “Den Bosch,” he says. “It is less than an hour south. While driving, I can alter the paperwork just enough, and you could take a short train ride from there.”

I regard Willem, who answers me without needing asked. “Before word spreads that far, it should be sufficient. You have funds for the train?”

He is right to wonder; those too were left behind in my satchel. Yet I happen to recall the hem of my coat, where I’d sewn in guilders before my night drop. A lesson owed again to Papa.

I’m about to supply a yes when Brouwer’s face whips toward the street. The rumbling of a vehicle, several rather, grows somewhere in the distance. “We must hurry,” he says. “Come.” He waves me forward and heads for the truck.

I intend to follow, but defying their cue, my feet stick in place, cemented. They seem to acknowledge before my consciousness the colossal, irreversible effect of crossing the threshold. How do I bring myself to leave? Deserting Arie, let alone like this, is a scenario beyond conception.

“Don’t,” Willem warns. “If you wish to honor his sacrifice, you will go, and you will only look forward.”