Zosia rushes back through the corridor and climbs into bed, her breath unsteady. Tears come now, not only because Sister Olga may have discovered what her mother took pains to hide but because no matter how she tries, she can’t fully recall her mother’s face. The features come to her disjointed and shifting, as if viewed through an ever-turning kaleidoscope—her soft, worried eyes the color of midnight; the hollow dip just below her collarbone; the small mole marking the rim of her cheek—yet Zosia can’t put the pieces together in her mind, can’t remember her mother.

What she can vividly remember is hiding—burying herself beneath hay. Pursing her mouth tight and inhaling soundlessly through her nose. Suppressing a swallow, stifling a sneeze. Ignoring an itch, a cramp. Constricting her bowels. Not seeing into the far or even the middle distance, but staring at the hay and boards inches from her eyes. What she can vividly remember is how her mother pleaded with her, needed her, to disappear.

Zosia positions herself in the bed so as to hold completely still through the night. The start position makes all the difference: shoulders and head lined up straight, never tilted to one side, never crook’d in an arm.

She wakes with a start as dawn’s light filters through the high window. Her blanket is back on her pillow. She thinks of stowing it beneath her mattress or under the blouses in her bureau. But then she thinks of Olga searching the children’s room.

She remembers how, when soldiers first came to Gracja, her grandmother buried silver candlesticks and precious photographs in coffee tins in their garden. Zosia slips out of bed and, as quietly as she can, patters to the storage shed. She takes a small spade and at the edge of the courtyard, beneath a privet, she digs a hole. Before lowering her blanket into it, she inhales the must that lingers beneath its soapy scent and runs a finger over its edge, over and across and over again, tracing the distinctive bulges that spell out her history: her mother’s stitches, the braille of her childhood. The air is damp and chilly. Zosia covers her blanket over with soil. She sets down a flat rock, a single daisy on top of it. For the rest of the day, her fingers hold the scent of wet earth.

Chapter 40

“Get up, quickly! You passed out.” A woman’s voice, a hiss.

Róża squints against the morning sky, the acrid stench of her own vomit.

She feels rough hands upon her, someone attempting to drag her from the rubble. Her body aches. Slowly she turns her neck. A white-haired woman with eyes like the sea grips Róża’s shoulders and tugs; then she scurries around to clasp her ankles. Róża is leaden.

“You’ll be killed!” The woman yanking at her is old and blocky and strong.

“Just leave me be.”