That evening, I sat among the Rosenbergs for dinner, feeling the void where Mama should have been. “She’s coming back,” I told the others as we finished eating.

“Of course she is,” Bubbe replied, not sounding at all like she meant it. I calculated in my head how long it would take Mama, slowed by the weight of the baby and her own weakness from giving birth, to get to the hospital and return. Several hours maybe; a day at most.

Night came and still Mama didn’t appear. “Do you want to read?” Saul asked. I shook my head. Although I would have liked to be alone with him, I was too tired and sad to manage the walk. “I’ll be close by if you need me,” he said, his voice heavy with concern as I climbed into bed. Of course, he could not comfort me here.

After he walked away, I lay alone in bed on my side of the chamber, the space beside me now cold. Mama’s words rattled around over and over again in my head: I’ll come back to you, I swear. Her intentions seemed clear—deliver the baby safely to the hospital, then return swiftly to me. I wanted to believe her. But so much could have gone wrong.

I replayed in my mind the moment my mother left. I thought, too, back to that day in the ghetto when the German police had come and I’d hidden in the trunk. Mama, thinking I’d been taken, had been ready to jump and end her own life. Then, she would have sooner died than lived without me. Now she’d willingly left me behind. What had changed?

The baby, of course, was what had changed. Still, I could not resent my sister. In fact, I longed for her, too. I missed the tiny baby who had lain between us in bed for months in Mama’s belly and then for just a few nights outside. For a moment I had a sister and then she was gone. Once I had not wanted her at all. But she had come and I loved her and the loss was cavernous and vast. I had not imagined that the absence of something so tiny could feel so immense.

I slept with my arms flung over the emptiness where Mama usually lay. I half expected her to slip in beside me during the night and warm me with her tiny frame as she always did. I tossed restlessly, dreaming that she had come back, still holding my sister. “I just couldn’t leave her,” she said, passing the baby to me once more.

When I awoke, it was morning and Mama had not returned. But the dream was so real, I could almost see her beside me and feel the baby warm in my arms. Then the cold dampness jarred my bones. I lay still, overwhelmed by the wholeness of my loss. First Papa, then my mother and sister. My family had been taken from me piece by piece until there was simply nothing more left. My heart screamed.