When the bleeding subsides, Róża lets herself sit, bare bottomed, drained out, blinking up at the stars. One minute. Two. Fleeting moments in which to wonder, would they have been better off back in Gracja? The remaining Jews lived in a ghetto now, Henryk told her. If her uncle Jakob was still there, he’d have clout, and her aunt Syl, so long as she could get hold of the ingredients, would make bread for them to eat. One thing’s for certain: Róża wouldn’t be miscarrying, alone outside in the dead of winter. But then she thinks of what the soldiers did to Natan in the work fields, how they came for her parents; their thumps and shrieks sounding through the closet door—

Róża shivers as flecks of snow drift off the barn roof. In the moonlight, the frosted fields are a rolling silvery sheet. Róża hoists herself up and fastens her pants after tucking another not-so-clean cloth between her legs.

She has to hide the blood before it can be discovered. Best would be to bury it away from the sight of humans and the smell of animals, but the ground is frozen and anyway she hasn’t the time to dig a hole. If only she had bled into a bucket, she could have figured out a way to hide it inside the barn.

She staggers to the barn now and notices one of the small rabbits in the corner. In a quick singular motion, she swipes it up and holds it tight under her arm, feeling the rapid beat of its frantic, trapped heart. She reaches with her free arm for the trowel, pegged up on the wall. She fears Shira will start up with questions, but mercifully Shira is silent, still beneath the hay. Róża steps back outside and brings the trowel blade down upon the rabbit in a single terrible whack. The rabbit slumps, lifeless. Róża uses the blade to tear it apart the way a wolf might. At any other time, she would have regretted the waste of meat. Now the rangy smell, raw and rusty, makes her gag. Shaking, she places the torn-up rabbit on the heap of her own blood. In a vain last measure, she hacks at the ground, once, twice, hoping to loosen a bit of earth for cover, but there is no give. She mouths a prayer as she wipes her hands in the snow to clean off the blood—the rabbit’s, her own—and weaves her way back into the barn, up to the loft, to Shira.