Page 60 of The Nanny Outside the Gates

GAVRIEL

The Polish Countryside

The meadows outside the window sway with the gentle breeze, dancing to a silent orchestra as they wave at the sky.

The tall grass is a different shade of green from what I remember as a child, but when the sun blankets the earth, the golden hue returns, chasing away the cold.

Ma would love it here—fresh air, birdsong, and insects trilling.

Pa would be looking for scrap wood to build something—an addition to our house, a barn, and a swing for Flora.

A swing big enough for him and Flora to share.

I built our house from the ground up. A place to call home, somewhere to raise a family, to share love and memories, an heirloom to pass on to the next generations.

A way to keep me alive long after I’m gone.

Pa said that’s what we were doing for people when we were building houses, but I have nothing left from him, nothing to hold onto.

Nothing but his words and our memories. So I built this place.

Made it perfect just like he would. Even added a barn and a tree swing.

Pa would be proud. I’m proud. And our family business is back up and running.

Sometimes, I imagine Pa, Jozek, and Natan working alongside me, cracking jokes or wise comments, and I feel like we’ve gone back in time for just a moment.

I’m carrying this business forward—keeping it alive just as I once promised to do.

Halina’s sitting at the kitchen table, her arms wound around Flora, who’s coloring another masterpiece of the grass, sun, and sky—half on paper, half on the table.

Her legs dangle over Halina’s lap, her braids down her sides as two golden ropes with tight little curls framing her face.

With a daily dose of endless, worldly questions mixed in with contagious giggles, I believe this little girl owns a sense of peace and safety.

I gave them their first homes. Watching what it looks like from the inside paints a different picture of what I had always thought I was giving others when building their houses.

I only ever saw it from the outside and imagined the inside.

The inside…it’s warm, rich with scents of fresh bread and biscuits.

The sunlight brightens up each room. It’s us. Our home together. Our new life.

Flora takes her drawing and twists around on Halina’s lap and pats her belly before flipping the paper upside down and backward.

Then she whispers, “Do you like my picture, baby? I’ll teach you how to color lots of pictures soon too,” she croons.

With a hand cupped around the side of her mouth to make her conversation a little more private, Flora continues.

“I’m your big sister. So, I can teach you everything. ”

Halina and I exchange a glance, a smile meeting a smile.

Flora’s cries, delays, pains—the ones that once felt unending, were all connected symptoms to an infant’s unsettled stomach. No doctor was able to give us an official name for what was wrong but told us we should wait and be patient. That she’d grow out of it as her digestion matured. And she did.

I turn for the sink to prepare the potatoes for our dinner, my hands still moving in a careful regiment of stiff, quick movements, no noise, no pausing—a remaining scar of prison life.

Someone was always watching. Waiting for us to trip. Sometimes I question if the walls have eyes. If the Nazis can still see us—still want to steal our happiness.

Daily, I must remind myself that the war is over. We’re safe. But the memories…they’ll never go away.

The reminders will never stop.

A letter arrived yesterday without a return address. A name isn’t needed. The words say it all. Halina read it first then left it face down on the counter without a word.

Heinrich Sch?fer—tried and convicted. Hanged.

Thank you for saving us too, Halina.

– Ada

Halina watched as I read the short letter after she did. I read the one line several times, waiting to feel something…

I didn’t feel anger, or triumph, or closure. Just nothing.

No one knows how they will survive when leaving loved ones behind. Will they fall to pieces with broken hearts, grief stronger than the will to breathe, tears that could drown us in our sorrow?

Halina and I have forged our own way through grief together. We’ve learned how to let sorrow move through us like ocean waves—lifting us, dropping us, then lifting us up again. We know we won’t drown if we just let it pass.

Heinrich Sch?fer was buried in our minds long before he faced a trial.

We hoped the confession Halina wrote—the one she slipped beneath the commandant’s napkin during the dinner party, would be enough.

The proof of taking another woman’s child, truths of his abuse to his wife, the way he tormented his children, and stole treasured goods from Jews at Auschwitz, is what was punishable, even from the view of a high-ranking Nazi.

The murders—Adam, included—we had to wait for justice on those.

Ada likely got away with the crimes she committed.

That was Halina’s hope—that Isla and Marlene might have a chance at a life untouched by the blood on their father’s hands.

Knowing what I do about Auschwitz, I also believe Ada unknowingly saved Flora’s life.

Most children did not survive that place.

There was no letter from my family. No notice to say my parents were shot and killed while stepping out of a cattle car, or that both of my brothers were worked to death then burned to ash.

No ceremonies of remembrance, and no stone to kneel beside.

Just a list of names among thousands, tucked in an archive.

But I found them. And they will be with me forever, wherever I go.

Flora jumps off Halina’s lap and runs to my side with her drawing. “Look, Pa! You have to see my picture too!”

I dry my hands on a dishrag then take the paper in my hands and admire her drawing. It’s different from the series of sunshine and flowers she’s been focused on this week. Today, there’s three lopsided figures lined up with smiles and their hands joined…

“A dog,” I say, pointing at the first animal, “a cat, and…” There’s a little gray blob with a long arm and I’m not sure?—

“A mouse, Pa. It’s a mouse. It has a little pink nose,” she says with a squeak. “Can’t you see?” A dog, cat, and mouse. Of course. “They’re friends.”

“This—this is wonderful—absolutely beautiful, sweetheart,” I say, my heart swelling with joy and pride. “I think you know what we need to do now.”

“Tape it up!” she shrieks, jumping up and down as blonde curls pop out of her braids. I press a kiss to her forehead and hang the paper with the others on the wall—our makeshift gallery of Flora’s hope.

From the time we made it to Slovakia to moving back to Poland last year, Halina was relentless in her search for Flora’s mother.

Countless aid stations and archive offices, waiting with bated breaths as clerks flipped through records.

Halina left our contact information and the name of Flora’s mother on a note for every person who helped us, until we were handed a transport list to Auschwitz with Flora’s mother’s name among others, and an x marked in the box to label her as deceased.

The understanding of what Flora’s future would look like morphed from the initial shock of let down to a quick rebound and an endeavor to raise her right, especially for Halina after living her life not raised by her own parents.

“We can give her love. All the love in the world to make sure she always holds on to a connection with her mother. We won’t ever let her down,” Halina had said, holding Flora tightly to her chest as we left that last archive office.

Halina is still sitting at the table, scribbling something now as a smile pokes against her dimples. “Mischief. That’s all I see on your face,” I tell her. That’s not all I see, though. I see the woman who saved me when I couldn’t save myself.

I walk up behind Halina, finding her drawing stick-figure people, four of them, one man, one woman, a little girl with braids, and a baby, all holding hands.

“It’s almost like our very own folktale.”

“It’s real,” Halina says. “We’re real.” She reaches for my hand and places it over her swollen belly, placing hers beside mine, our matching gold bands. “But it sure seems like a miracle.”

It’s been almost a year since we exchanged our vows in a quiet ceremony outside, under the blue sky and heaven where our loved ones were witnesses.

Flora wore a wreath of daisies and stood between us.

I told my girls the one important thing I hope they never forget.

“You can trust me. To be yours. Forever.”

“Did you feel that?” she asks, her eyes glowing with excitement.

My pulse flickers as I realize what I just felt. “Did our baby just kick?” My words catch in my throat.

“It must be your touch,” she says.

Our baby. I’ll have a part of my past within my future. A gift. A blessing. For all of us.

I help her out of her chair and pull her into her arms just as Flora’s arms loop around our legs. As the sunlight spills in through the window, illuminating us within its golden stripes, it’s clear, that light has taken over the darkness.

A gentle knock on the front door startles us from our quiet moment. “Who’s that?” Flora asks, releasing her grip and racing toward the door.

Halina stiffens. Her hand lifts to her belly. I see the concern in her eyes before she says a word.

Neither of us were expecting anyone and the unexpected stirs inside of me as we follow Flora. “Wait over there please,” I tell our curious little girl, pointing to the space behind the door.

“But who is it?” she presses.

I scoot Flora to my right and open the door.

A woman stands before us, middle-aged, light brown hair pulled back at the nape of her neck. Her eyes…tired, but also full of hope.

“Can we help you?” Halina asks before I have the chance. She steps closer to the woman, studying her as if she can’t make out what or who she’s looking at.

The woman holds out a piece of paper, her hand unsteady. Halina takes it, unfolding it hastily. I can only make out the header: Registry of Names.

“Is there someone you’re looking for?” I ask her, wondering why she’s struggling to speak.

She swallows hard then stares directly at Halina. “I’m looking for you,” the woman utters.

“Me?” Halina whispers.

“Halina Wojic,” the woman says.

“Yes, I’m—I’m…she.”

“I’ve been looking for you for a very long time.

I’ve traveled through many paths, between what seemed like every tree in this country in search of you.

Your father locked down your records and documents—it was impossible.

Until I was liberated from Auschwitz. That’s when I found your name in a registry of survivors. I wasn’t sure—I didn’t…”

Halina’s eyes fill with tears as she lifts her hands to her heart. “Are you—are you my mother?” Her last word is spoken in a breath.

The woman nods, a slow, timid gesture. A tear skates down her cheek as she searches between Halina’s eyes and her stomach. “You were a dream I prayed would come true. Even when they told me you’d been taken by your father. Even when I thought I couldn’t believe in miracles ever again.”

Halina touches her fingers to her mouth, a sob murmuring in her throat. “Mama,” Halina utters.

Flora presses between myself and Halina, then tugs on her sleeve and pinches my hand. “This is my mama and pa,” she says with pride. Then she tickles Halina’s belly. “And that’s my baby. But you can come inside too. Do you want to?”

I open the door wider, heart in my throat.

“I’d like that,” the woman whispers. “I’ve been waiting a lifetime.”

Halina steps aside and reaches for her mother’s hand, a gesture that speaks of an unbroken bond, unlinked and lost for far too long. But now, together again, a generation later. At the beginning of a fresh start.

There was once a girl who didn’t know she had a story…

Because she was the story.

The beginning. The middle. And the end.

I was just lucky enough to be written into the pages.

* * *

If Halina’s story had you reaching for the tissues, you will absolutely love The Doctor’s Daughter .

Get it here or keep reading for an exclusive extract!