Since the Russian soldiers came and left two days ago, the nuns hide, or they cluster together whispering, barely aware of the children.

Mother Agnieszka quakes terribly. Sister Alicja spends most of her time in her chamber. Sister Nadzieja huddles with the other nuns and forgets to come to Zosia’s practice sessions. Not even Sister Olga checks to see that the girls are completing their chores.

When the sisters fail to prepare the day’s lunch as they customarily do, Ula takes the lead and all the girls work together to make a platter of simple sandwiches. Adela plucks one off the top and eats it. Zosia carries a sandwich to Sister Alicja and feels pleased when she takes a bite. Watching her chew, slow and glassy-eyed, Zosia thinks how, in the barn, when Henryk brought her mother potatoes, she set most of them aside, sucking on hay despite the growling of her stomach, the jutting of her bones.

Zosia leaves Sister Alicja’s chamber to help the girls with the laundry. She finds that a novitiate, Sister Irena, has emerged, ready to lead the chore. Together they work with quiet diligence, scrubbing red spots from the nuns’ stiff underclothing.

This is not what she thought the end of the war would mean.

Through the fog of an early morning, Róża thinks she sees Aron standing at the convent site. Even if he is a phantom, she can’t help herself from rushing toward him.

“Aron?”

“Różyczka!” His very real arms encircle her.

“How did you find me here?”

“Chana remembered the story you told about the convent address.”

Róża buries her face in Aron’s chest, inhaling him, hiding from him. What must he think of her, never uttering a word about Shira, then leaving to search for her without as much as a goodbye? She floods with guilty feelings. “Where is Chana?”

“She is with Hershel and some of the others, in Białystok. They planned to stay in Sonia’s childhood home, but they are sleeping on the lawn because the inhabitants refuse to leave. It’s all right—they’re safe. And now I’ve found you.” He takes her face in his hands. “Róża—”

Róża sees Aron surveying the rubble, but she clings to other visions: someone saw carriages by the convent, a line of girls along the cobbles.

“I have to keep looking.”

Chapter 43

Autumn 1945

Zosia stares through the convent gates at the women walking past. One figure has her mother’s narrow frame and dark hair, even her familiar gait. And one farther down the street looks to be wearing a dress like those her mother used to wear. Zosia detects a smile—could it be recognition?—on yet another’s face. Until each comes closer and Zosia sees: they are strangers, merely.