I frowned and added, “Plus you said people were talking about changing the deadline, letting them stay longer—”

“It’s not happening,” Luca snapped. “And we’ve been getting reports at the station of the haven kids acting out—skipping class and taking off during the day to who knows where.”

“Why would they do that?” Sam asked quietly.

Luca scraped his chair back and took his empty bowl to the sink.

“Luca. . . .” Anika’s voice was soft and a little croaky, and I realized that she hadn’t spoken to us in such a long time. “What do the kids say when you speak to them? What do their parents think?”

He kept his back to us, and it was only when Anika said his name again that he turned around, drying his hands on a tea towel.

“I’ve stopped volunteering there.”

“What? Since when?” And then she took a deep breath, and her eyes went a little glassy as she asked, “Not because of Drumlin . . . ?”

It was the first time I’d heard her say his name, since.

Luca winced. “No, no,” he said. “I stopped when they started the announcements.”

He took a deep breath as we all stared at him.

“They have these speakers all around the haven to make announcements. They’ve been broadcasting this message. . . .” He threw the tea towel behind him, crossed his arms, and continued. “Every hour during the day, they play this recorded message in Albanian—a voice telling them it’s safe to go home. Saying peace has been restored, Australia can’t help them anymore, and encouraging them to come forward and sign consent forms allowing our government to send them back.”

“Geez,” Pop whispered.

“Some of the elderly didn’t really know what was happening, they just blindly followed the instructions. Went to the front office and signed a bunch of papers and were shipped home within days. They didn’t know. Didn’t have a clue what it really meant, what they were signing away.”

My heart was lodged in my throat, and I could taste it like metal. I wondered if Nora had signed those papers—if she’d already been sent home to a house of rubble and a country torn apart. And what that meant for her baby.

“Why . . . why would our government do that to them?” I asked.

“They want them gone,” Luca said.

“They play that message every day?” Anika asked, and Luca nodded.

“Like clockwork. In the rec rooms and dining area, the computer lab we set up and their dorm rooms. Every hour, on the hour. And the kids hear it”—at the word kids, Luca’s voice seemed to crack—“telling them to go home, that we can’t help them anymore. Meanwhile, their parents are scared out of their minds—hearing stories from home that soldiers are still all around, and entire cities have been bombed out. . . .”