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TWENTY-ONE

LUKA

October 1941

Warsaw, Poland

This isn’t survival.

It’s something different.

With little hope and an overwhelming amount of guilt over what happened to Apollo just eight weeks ago, I still travel into the tunnels each night.

I’ve found another entrance within the cellar of an uninhabited building that was destroyed in a bombing last year.

My desperation to find Ella is wreaking havoc on my sanity.

Every night, at the same time, I go to the spot we had met every night before she stopped coming—each night since I waited too long down here and paid the consequence with Apollo’s life.

It was his rage toward the ghetto police that ultimately got him killed, but it was my fault he was there.

I’ve had to cut down on the time I wait for Ella each night, which pains me, losing more hope in her returning, but I have business to conduct with a black-market tradesman.

“Where are you?” I whisper in our corner.

“I need to know you’re safe somewhere.” It hurts too much to consider the alternative.

My mind goes to dark places every night while I try to sleep, and the thoughts torment me.

If something happened to Ella, I would be to blame, and that’s not something I can live with.

“What do you have for me?” It’s the same man I visit most nights.

His shoulders are pinned up by his ears, hiding his neck.

His face is long with a hanging jaw.

Bags of skin droop beneath his eyes and he can hardly keep a steady hand as he reaches out for what I’m retrieving from my pocket.

“A gold watch…” he says.

“There must be piles of them somewhere I bet.” He’s aware of the labor work I tend to all day.

Jewelry and watches constantly fall to the ground while pushing a wagon full of deceased bodies.

I tell myself to leave it behind but also realize someone else will take it and do exactly what I’m doing right now.

I’m bartering for food, enough to help Mother, Grandmother, Apollo’s family, and whatever I can spare for the people I live with.

It’s wrong, but it’s the only means of preventing starvation.

The ghetto has been restricted to less than two-hundred calories worth of food a day, and all I can imagine is the soldiers watching us from windows of nearby tall buildings, betting on how long people can survive severe starvation.

“Not piles,” I say.

In return, the man takes my satchel, fills it with goods from beneath a black blanket and hands it back.

I check inside, ensuring I’m getting a fair exchange, then return to the opening of the sewer to get back to Mother and Grandmother.

The autumn chill sends aches through my body as I trudge back to the tenement.

Painful chills weaken my muscles even more and I grapple the railing to yank myself up the stairs and into the unit.

The lamps are still flickering at this late hour, and several people are circled around the corner where I sleep.

“What’s happening?” I ask, keeping my voice down for the few who are asleep.

Heads turn, pairs of eyes catch mine before falling, as if their stares are too heavy to hold.

The small crowd is hard to push through before finding Mother hovering over Grandmother, holding her hand and crying.

I fall to my knees beside them, Grandmother’s eyes open as she finds my gaze.

She slips her hand out of Mother’s and struggles to hold it up toward me, grasping the air until I give her my hand in return.

“I—I’m scared,” she utters through a breath.

“I’m not ready, Luka. I don’t want to go anywhere without your grandfather. I need someone to tell me he’s all right. I can’t die without him. I’m afraid to go alone.”

“Shh, shh,” I hush her.

“You’re not going anywhere.”

“Promise me I’m going live, my Luka,” she says, pleading in a way I’ve never heard her speak.

She has always been tougher than any woman I’ve known—ready to take the world by storm, even if just with a snippy comment under her breath.

Her plea chokes me, and I tell her what she needs to hear, or rather, wants to hear.

“I promise, Grandmother. You’re going to live. We’ll find Grandfather.”

Her smile trembles as she slips her hand from mine to pat my cheek.

“That’s my good boy.” She hasn’t said that to me since I was young.

Whenever I would get her a cup of tea or a blanket, I was her good boy.

“You’re the strongest person I’ve ever met,” I tell her.

She gives a gentle nod and folds her hand over her chest just before gasping through a sputtering breath.

“Mama,” Mother cries out, placing her hands on her cheeks.

“Mama, open your eyes. You can’t leave. I need you still. We need you. Please, Mama.”

Tears roll down my cheeks, watching Mother regress into a young girl, pleading with her own mother not to leave her behind.

Everything within me shatters into a million pieces I’ll never be able to piece back together.

Mother rests her head on Grandmother’s chest as another sob bucks from her chest.

“She’s gone. My mama’s gone. I couldn’t save her.”

I pull my mother into my arms, holding her tightly as she cries with everything she has left inside her.

I can hardly breathe through the grief, watching Mother writhe in agony next to my grandmother’s soulless body.

I clasp my hands, still holding on to her, and dig my fingernails into the soft flesh of my wrists, seeking an external pain to mask my internal agony.