The lady crosses herself. Róża squeezes her eyes shut.

“Are you certain?”

“Yes.”

“Do you think it’s possible that any of them survived?”

The woman describes what she saw. A little boy’s body lying among the rubble. A nun’s veil billowing in the dust. Róża can’t accept it. Carriages were circling, and there were girls out near ul. Felicjanek. Perhaps Shira was injured, not dead. Róża sets out for the local hospital ward—corridors lined with limp, lopsided people, blinking up at the wavering lights—but does not find her there.

A Registry of Jewish Survivors opens in Celestyn. Róża pores over lists and sublists. Lidia accompanies her despite mounting pressure from neighbors—many of whom had appropriated apartments, furniture, and valuables left behind when people were taken—to stop helping “the Jew.”

There is no single compilation of names, so they have to search each list separately. There are stacks of them. They sit at a small table, piled high with papers. Names that bear any resemblance—the given names Shipra, Shir, Shiraz, Shirel, Shirli; the surnames Choda, Chodorkow, Chodorowski—drive Róża to despair. They are never paired up right, and the ages are way off, and she wonders: Did the sisters of the convent ever learn Shira’s real name?

“It’s no use. We’ll never find her this way.”

“You’re certain you don’t know the name they gave her?” Lidia asks.

“No.” She takes the bent, mud-stained card out of her pocket. “This was supposed to be enough.”

Róża can feel her face grow hot. She grips the table to steady herself. How could she have been so thoughtless, so stupid, as to not ask Shira’s assigned Christian name before letting her go? Róża buries her face in her hands.

Upon returning to the locksmith shop, they find shattered windows, the floor stippled with glass.

Róża hastens to pick up the shards. “I need to leave you. You’re not safe with me here.”

Head bowed, Lidia reaches for a broom.

When Russian soldiers sweep through the convent, Mother Agnieszka closes the children into the kitchen. Adela boldly pokes a finger into a bin of flour and tastes it, puckering her lips. Mother Agnieszka does not chide her. She doesn’t seem to notice the children at all. Her head is cocked toward the high window, her face alive with tremors as she listens for the sisters, scuttling through the halls, shutting themselves into their rooms.

Zosia hears the pounding of boots along the back corridor as soldiers move through the nuns’ quarters; the yank of a bedroom door; a sister’s high-pitched cry. Zosia steps nearer to Mother Agnieszka, but she’s in her own shivery trance, fingers circling rosary beads, lips muttering silent prayers.