At first, Ana Lucia claimed that she was fraternizing with the Germans to get information about my father. That was in the early days, when we still hoped he might be imprisoned or missing in action. But then we received word he had been killed and she continued to socialize with the Germans more than ever before. It was as if, freed from the pretense of marriage, she could be exactly as awful as she wanted to be.

Of course, I did not dare to confront my stepmother about her shameful actions. Since my father was declared dead and had not prepared a will, the house and all of his money would legally go into her name. She would happily cast me out if I made trouble, replace the furniture she had never wanted in the first place. I would have nothing. So I treaded lightly. Ana Lucia liked to remind me often that it was thanks to her good graces with the Germans that we remained in our fine house with enough food to eat and the proper stamps on our Kennkarten to enable us to move freely about the city.

I stepped away from the front door. From the pavement, I looked sadly through the front window of our house at the familiar crystal glasses and china. But I did not see the horrid strangers who now enjoyed our things. Instead, the visions in my mind were of my family: me wanting to play dolls with my much older sisters, my mother scolding Maciej that he would break things as he chased me around the table. When you are young, you expect the family you were born into to be yours forever. Time and war had made that not the case.

Dreading Ana Lucia’s company more than the curfew, I turned away from the house and started walking again. I was not sure where I was headed. It was almost dark and the parks were off-limits to ordinary Poles, as were most of the better cafés, the restaurants and movie theaters, too. My indecision in the moment seemed to reflect my larger life, caught in a kind of no-man’s-land. I had nowhere to go, and no one to go with. Living in occupied Kraków, I felt like a pet bird, able to fly just the tiniest bit, but always mindful of being trapped in a cage.

It might not have been like this if Krys was still here, I reflected as I started back in the direction of the Rynek. I imagined a different world where the war had not forced him to leave. We would be planning a wedding, maybe even married by now.

Krys and I had met by happenstance nearly two years before the war broke out when my friends and I had stopped off for a coffee at a courtyard café where he was making a delivery. Tall and broad-shouldered, he cut a dashing figure as he strode through the passageway carrying a large crate. He had rugged features, which appeared to be cut from stone, and a leonine gaze that seemed to hold the entire room. When he passed our table, an onion fell from the crate he was carrying and rolled close to me. He knelt to retrieve it, and looked up at me and smiled. “I’m at your feet.” I sometimes wondered if he had dropped the vegetable deliberately or if it was fate that sent it spinning in my direction.