Her mother reads to her from their one borrowed book, over and over, as Shira wants. By now Shira can sight-read small, common words—“the” and “it” and “who”—and the names of the characters “Stas” and “Nell.” And her mother has permitted Shira to use five whole sheets of paper for music lines rather than for letters and numbers. She makes plans for when they will leave the barn, hums bits of Brahms’s Scherzo and the nightly lullaby, whispers even when her body hurts, which Shira knows from the way her mother’s mouth pouches, as if stuffed with an imaginary sponge, her teeth barely touching down. The words pile up so as to chase away pain, to topple fear, to prove that they, alone, are family enough.

Yet Shira still longs for her tata, her grandparents, her friends, her home. She stares at the photographs, lingering longest on the picture of herself, fancy in her ankle-length dress—a night they were all together. She nestles her bird and awaits Krystyna’s visits. She stays glued to the crack in the wall, listening for the boys’ conversations, watching as Łukasz toddles forward and reaches for Jurek’s and Piotr’s open hands.

Chapter 16

Rumors swirl of denunciations and shootings and a burned-down barn the next village over. Henryk digs a hole in the barn floor that he conceals with a hay bale, so Róża and Shira can move to a different hiding space without leaving the barn. He spreads the surplus dirt on the barn floor and carries the rest in buckets out to the fields.

Later, up in the loft, Henryk caresses Róża’s cheek before he undresses her. He’s been gentler since the miscarriage, since that one time she’d asked not to be touched.

Still, Róża’s voice shakes as she asks, “You’ll pull out quickly?” She can’t get pregnant again.

“Yes.”

Róża continues to lie mostly still while Henryk is with her. Yet, the way her body responds to him changes. She tells herself that it is involuntary when her nipples knot, when she goes slick. Their bodies know each other now.

She wants to remember her time with Natan, their courtship, their first tender kisses. But if she’s honest, he’s gone blurry in her mind. It is the hunger, she’s sure of it, and the unrelenting stress. Even with her eyes closed to reality, it is Henryk’s form that closes in. He does things to her that he mustn’t do to Krystyna—things Natan would never have dreamed of—and her body responds.

Róża tells herself: She and Shira are alive because of this. She tells herself: Even if Shira has to lie just a few strides away, her ears buzzing with the press of sex, Róża is doing what she needs to do. She tells herself: She is keeping them safe.