“There are soldiers still about, I tell you. If someone sees you—”

Róża’s eyes roam the rubble in the burnt orange of dawn. Why is this woman trying to help her? She doesn’t want to get up. She wants to close her eyes.

“Pani Byczek will be the first to summon them. She’s always patrolling for transgressors. You must come with me!”

Róża is too depleted to fight this Good Samaritan, whatever her motive. She clambers to standing and lets herself be pulled, tripping over broken brick and stone, as the lady shepherds her down the block and around the corner.

“In here.” The lady presses her into what looks like a locksmith’s shop, cool and dim and smelling of shaved metal. Past a long counter covered in key molds and gauges and pins, a single bulb casts a circle of light upon a table. The lady motions to a chair and Róża drops into it, her raw, ripped feet aching.

The lady disappears, and when she returns with a bowl of watery soup, Róża nearly spills it down her chin in her eagerness to eat it. It tastes like a garden, the rooted earth.

“When was the city bombed?” Róża’s voice is as shaky as the spoon in her hand.

“About two weeks ago.”

“Is it possible that anyone from the orphanage survived?” The cyanide pill waits in her pocket.

“I don’t know.”

A sudden, darting rage: Maryla should never have brought Shira here. The nuns should never have taken her in. It wasn’t safe! How could they have agreed to hide her here, when it wasn’t safe?

Shame rears up inside her again. It is her own fault. She should never have let Shira go in the first place. She labors to breathe.

“Where are you from?”

Róża doesn’t answer.

“Do you realize there are people here who would shoot a Jew on sight?”

She knows. So why didn’t she let me die on the broken stone? Róża doesn’t say anything.

The lady sighs and takes hold of Róża’s trembling arm.

“You can’t be out in daylight, that much is for certain. Why don’t you lie down for a bit?” She leads Róża to a mattress tucked in the corner, draped by blankets.

As soon as Róża lies down, she falls precipitously to sleep. But minutes later, she wakes, panting for air, blinking away images of ruffled feathers, cupped hands.

The lady is sitting in a tattered chair nearby. “I’ll make you some hot water while you rest.”

But Róża won’t rest now. She stares down at her own hands. They are dusted white from the convent rubble.

Part 3