Sadie had moved the chair close to the window and was looking at the sky once more. “You have a lovely room,” she remarked. “It’s the view I admire the most. You paint?” she asked, noticing my art supplies in the corner. A canvas sat propped up against the wall, a picture of the city skyline I had started working on some time ago but had not finished.

I shrugged. “A bit.” Embarrassed, I tried to block the canvas from view, but she moved closer to see it. “That’s wonderful, Ella. You’ve got real talent.”

“It’s so hard to think about art with the war now. I’ve sort of given up.”

“Oh, you shouldn’t! You should paint now more than ever. You mustn’t let the war steal your dreams.” A sad look crossed her face. “But who am I to talk?”

“What do you want to be?”

“A doctor.”

“Not an astronomer?” I teased, remembering how captivated she was by the stars.

“I like astronomy, all of the sciences, really,” she answered earnestly. “But it’s healing people that interests me the most, which is why I wanted to be a doctor. I still do.” She looked at me unblinkingly. “If I can find somewhere to study after the war.” I was awed by the scope of her dreams, unmuted by all that had happened.

“You will,” I said, wanting to encourage her ambitions as much as she had mine. I set the plate of food on the low table beside the chair. “For you.”

She did not take any, but stared at the plate. “That’s very nice china.”

I considered the flower-edged dish for the first time. It was one of our everyday plates and I had never given it a second thought. Seeing it through Sadie’s eyes now, I remembered that the plate was part of a set my mother had gotten as a wedding gift from her parents—a connection to a lost world. “You should eat,” I said.

Still, Sadie did not. “The others... I should take this back to the sewer and share it,” she said guiltily.

“There will be more for them. You are going to need your strength to carry food back. Eat,” I urged.

Reluctantly, she took a piece of cheese and put it in her mouth. “Thank you,” she said as I handed her more food. She turned toward the portrait on my desk, my parents, siblings and me by the seashore. “Your family?”

I nodded and pointed to the baby in my mother’s arms. “That’s me. And that,” I added, pointing to Maciej, “is my brother, who lives in Paris. I’m hoping to go live with him.”

“You’re leaving?” Her voice was tinged with a note of sadness and surprise.

“Not now,” I said quickly. “Maybe after the war.”

Sadie reached out and pulled another photo from behind my family portrait. “That’s Krys, yes?” I nodded. I had meant to put away the photo of Krys in his army uniform, taken just before he left for the war.