Mother Agnieszka slides the hangers back and forth along the high rod, demonstrating how a soldier might search the closet without discovering Zosia behind the partition. Zosia breathes in the starch of Mother Agnieszka’s wimple and wonders if she, too, has been having trouble sleeping. Her pale, papery face looks tired.

Zosia’s favorite thing about Mother Agnieszka is her singing voice: she starts off lauds each morning with clear, jewel-like notes. Also, she plays checkers with the children some nights, and she puts Ula in her place for bossing. Still, it bothers Zosia that she is called “Mother.” She is not her mother, though she is asking Zosia to hide, just as her mother did.

“I have your word that you will keep still and silent here?”

Zosia nods. She knows how to make herself invisible.

Zosia knows too—though she doesn’t speak of it to Mother Agnieszka—that soldiers searched the convent the previous night. While washing up in the girls’ bathroom, she heard the loud boots—giants’ steps—echoing through the halls. Sister Alicja swooped in and hustled her toward the back door leading to the nuns’ quarters; then, changing direction, she closed her into a toilet stall, where they waited in silence. Even after the soldiers’ footsteps and shouts receded, they stayed put several minutes. Sister Alicja whispered to Zosia that ordinarily when the soldiers came, it was for what they might find in the pantry—coffee or sugar or, in earlier days, chocolate. But this time their search was wider.

The very next night, soldiers storm the convent again.

At the first sound of boots approaching, Zosia gets the nod from Sister Alicja and slips out of bed before the other children are alerted to a roll call. Zosia runs, blanket clenched in hand, down the long corridor, past the portraits of patron saints and the stone sculpture of Mary. She climbs into the chapel hall closet, pulls the door shut behind her, and crawls back behind the partition. Her nightgown snags on a nail, but she wriggles it loose and settles, rubbing her finger over the looping thread. It is cold and cramped here; it smells like sawdust and iron. But worst, it is completely dark.

When Zosia had peered into the closet earlier, light had shone in from the open door. Closed now, it is pitch-black and there doesn’t seem to be enough air. Zosia opens her mouth wide, gulping. Her chest feels tight and the skin on the back of her neck prickles. She thinks of the closet in Gracja, her grandparents’ thick coats at her shoulders, the barn floor dugout, her mother’s hand clasped tightly to hers. Over and over, she runs her finger across the stitches in her blanket.

Zosia hears soldiers nearby. It sounds like they are overturning the chapel benches, ripping hangings from the wall. Is someone pulling open the closet door?