Page 104 of Winter’s End

In her dreams, she had replayed Evi’s brazenness in Enschede, saw again her father’s figure fleeing into the night. She tossed about, praying for her parents, for their uneventful trek to safety.

But something else had peppered her sleep, and she was anxious to discuss it with Gerritt. Reluctantly, she threw aside the patchwork quilt and stood up to face the day.

Later, she would bicycle to the Beekhof farm to check on Evi’s condition. But first, she thought, drinking a cup of weak tea, she needed to go to Heemstede.

...

Gerritt looked up from his paperwork at the sound of her tap on his open door. “Zoe. I was worried…”

Briefly, she told him of her father’s capture by the Gestapo, of the trip she and Evi had made to Enschede and the price her brave young friend had paid to gain her father’s freedom.

“I told my parents to go to Tante Inge’s in Haaksbergen. I pray they will get there safely.”

Gerritt listened wide-eyed. “And I as well.” He leaned back and raked a hand through his greying hair. “Indeed, what will become of any of us if this war is not over soon.”

He stood up and pulled out a chair. “Sit.”

Zoe did.

“This morning, on the BBC,” he told her, “I heard the Allies have crossed the Meuse into Roermond. It is a good sign, Zoe. They are getting close. But who knows when liberation will come?”

Zoe sighed. “We cannot afford to wait, Gerrit. We need to begin moving the strongest people to safety.”

She took a breath. “I have an idea. The morgue, cousin. The ambulance bay. Where do the bodies go?

Gerritt sat back. “To the mortuary, of course – one of several mortuaries, whichever will prepare them for burial…”

She inclined her head.

His eyebrows rose. “Ah, yes, I see…But even if we could transport these ‘bodies,’ would the mortuaries agree to keep them in hiding?”

Zoe lifted her shoulders. “I do not know. But it is worth asking the question. As many as they can hide, Gerritt, especially those we know are being hunted by the Germans.”

Gerritt sighed. “Doctor Aaron, perhaps…and Kurt Shneider…”

Zoe waited.

“Brilliant, Zoe. Let me contact one or two morticians…at least the ones I know to be patriots.”

...

It was quiet when she stepped off the elevator in the basement – almost unnaturally quiet. The autopsy room was closed, as was the door to the morgue. Zoe bypassed them, opened a narrow door and, in the light of a single overhead bulb, took the short flight of stairs to the sub-basement.

She knocked as expected, the designated signal. The door was opened a crack. Zoe recognized one of the hiding mothers, the wife of a Haarlem bricklayer.

“Zoe,” she said. “Come in.”

The light inside came from an overhead bulb and a pair of a pair of two hastily commissioned lanterns. Her eyes scanned the room.

People sat on mattresses, napped in the quiet. Even the children seemed sapped of energy. Her heart broke at their suffering.

She nodded at those she had come to know, then made her way to the far end of the space, where Kurt, in the light of one of the lanterns, was reading to a handful of listeners.

He looked up as she neared, and she warmed at the smile in his eyes and the slightly crooked line of his jaw.

“I missed you,” he told her, kissing her on both cheeks when he sent the little ones for a bathroom break.

She dared to rest a hand on his face. “We had a slight – emergency, I’m afraid.”