She keeps to the shadows, moving quickly, scanning for street names. In her head she recites the convent address story—thirty-three-year-old Józef crosses the long bridge, looking toward the heavens—over and over. There are church spires everywhere, and Róża fears she is turning circles as she skitters first in one direction, then in another, toward them. But then she catches sight of a sign indicating the way to Siostry Felicjanki.

She stops. She has made it!

A melody, bright and exultant, comes to her, reminding her of Shira. She takes the melody up, lets it repeat in her mind.

Before rounding the street corner, Róża allows herself to imagine, in a way she hasn’t dared until this moment, Shira and her together again. Safe. In a tucked-away cabin somewhere, eating soup with kreplach and sweet lokshen kugel. Shira chattering away, little hands cupped around her imaginary, still alive bird, who chirps aloud his melodious eighteen-note song. Bathed clean, hair washed and braided, maybe tied off with daisies, a pretty frosted cake for dessert.

Smoke billows scarf-like behind the street sign, luminous in the moonlight. Róża’s hands rise to her dirt-stained cheeks, her protruding cheekbones. She wonders if Shira will recognize her. After staring at the sign a minute longer, Róża takes a deep breath and turns onto ul. Poniatowskiego.

Where every minute of every day she has envisioned a tall gate, an arched doorway, a sturdy stone church sheltering her child, Róża finds mounds of brick and rubble. The only thing she recognizes here is a twisted lamppost. Her hands wrap around it as her stomach heaves and her knees buckle beneath her.

How could this be?

Róża has the overwhelming urge to lie down, her body a deserted crossroads. She’d survived—she’d even found friendship and love—while Shira was here in this bomb zone. Why hadn’t she thought to come for her right away, as soon as she saw that children could live in the family camp? Why had she ever waited?

Her rapturous melody morphs into a monstrous atonal accusation, punctuating her shame. A dizzying series of crescendos—the scream of shells, the collapse of buildings all around—ends with a falling chord that searches, desperate, for the music that will complete it. It finds none.

Róża feels around in her pocket for the cyanide pill.