“It could be worse. You could be living in a sewer.” For a second, I feared that my joke was distasteful. But her face broke into a smile and we laughed.

“I’m sorry,” she said. “It was petty of me to complain with everything you are going through. I’ve got no one to talk to.”

“It’s all right.” The sewer was filthy and horrible. But at least I had my mother to love me, and Saul for company. Ella had no one. She was trapped, I could see, in a kind of prison of her own. “You can always come talk to me,” I offered. “I know it isn’t much, visiting a dirty girl in a sewer.”

“It’s plenty.” Ella reached her hand down through the sewer grate. I stood on my tiptoes, trying to touch her fingers. But the space between was too much, the inches an ocean, and our hands floundered separately in the air.

“I can help you,” she said, and for a second my heart lifted. “Perhaps I can try to find some way to get you out, ask someone...”

“No!” I exclaimed, petrified by the notion that she might reveal that we were here. “You must never speak of me,” I added sternly, trying to sound much older and more authoritative than I was. “Or you will never see me again.” The threat felt like a hollow one. Surely it didn’t matter to her.

Ella nodded. “I swear it,” she said solemnly, and I could see that she wanted to come back to the sewer and see me again, too. “But don’t you want to escape?”

“No... That is, yes.” I tried to think of a way to explain. “It’s awful down here, but the sewer is the safest place for us right now. There really isn’t anywhere else for us to go.” Although I sometimes wondered if that were true, I had to trust in Pawel, who protected us, and my father, who had brought us here in the first place.

“I can only stay a minute more today,” she added. “My stepmother will expect me back.”

“I understand.” I tried to keep the disappointment from my voice. I had known, of course, that at some point she would have to be on her way. But there was something about speaking with Ella that was like being reunited with an old friend, even though we had just met.

“Wait here,” she said, standing and disappearing from view. A minute later, she knelt again and pushed something else through the grate. I leapt to catch it before it fell into the sewer water beneath my feet. It was an obwarzanek, one of the poppy-covered pretzel rings that Poles sold on the street. “A bit more food,” she offered.

“Thank you.” I tucked it into my pocket to share with my mother.

“I have to go,” Ella said a moment later.

I couldn’t help but be disappointed she was leaving. “Will you come again?”

“I will, if I can get away. I’ll try to come next Saturday and bring more food.” I wanted to tell her that she didn’t need to bring me things; all I wanted was her visits. But the words stuck in my throat and then it was too late. She was gone.