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She nodded dumbly. In the light of day, he seemed perhaps no more than in his early twenties, with hair the color of wheat falling over his forehead, earnest hazel eyes, and a strong jaw line evident above his neatly trimmed beard.

“Well, my name, as you know, is Jacob Reese. Jake to my friends…”

“I wanted you to know that am not a collaborator, Jacob Reese,” Evi blurted. “Nor am I accustomed to being with drunken Nazis in a beer bar… ”

A hint of a smile. “I think I may have figured that out. I don’t know what you were up to, but it’s none of my beeswax, I guess.”

She looked at him, ‘ Beeswacks? ”

“Business,” he laughed. “I mean it was none of my business .”

“Ah,” she murmured, still staring.

After an awkward moment, he motioned her to a seat on the well-worn chintz-covered sofa. He sat cross-legged in a chair across from her. “How old are you, Evi Strobel? Fifteen? Sixteen?”

She looked down at her short plaid skirt. “Seventeen,” she lied. “Eighteen next February. And I do what I do for the Resistance.”

“Yep, I kind of figured that out, too, or you wouldn’t have had those big guys watching out for you.”

She stuck out her chin. “It is a dangerous job, but I will do it again, if they ask me to. It is my way to help rid the world of even one Nazi at a time.”

She paused. “But next time I will carry my own pistol.”

“Ah.” The American seemed to take her measure. “And are you trained to handle a pistol?”

She shrugged. “Not yet. But I can learn. And I will.”

“How?”

“I am not yet sure. Target practice. I plan to arrange it through the Resistance Council.”

The boy who had answered the door – the farmer’s son, Evi assumed, poked his head into the room. “My Mam asks if you want some tea.”

Evi rose, Jacob Reese following. “Oh, no, please. Tell your mother thank you, but I do not wish to overstay my welcome.” She grabbed her scarf from the arm of the sofa.

Jacob Reese followed her to the door. “So, how did you find me?”

She shrugged. “It is not far to look from the tavern where you found me.”

“You live nearby?”

“Not too far.”

He held the door open, peered out. “You bicycled here. ”

“I did.”

“Well, Evi Strobel,” he said, smiling, “I wish you good luck with your target practice. To tell you the truth, it felt damned good to me to take out that Nazi at the tavern.”

She hesitated at the door, reluctant to leave, and not just because of the cold. “I um…I just want to thank you once again for coming to my rescue, Jacob Reese.”

He loomed over her in the open doorway. “It’s Jake. Jake will do.”

She hopped on her bike and pedaled down the drive. “I like Jacob better,” she murmured to herself, facing into the wind.

ZOE

The Dans Hal was abuzz with rumor and speculation. Zoe moved through the crowd, hearing bits and pieces. Fa rmer missing…Resistance offensives…A crisis for the Allies…what next?

“Zoe, over here” Leela Bakker called to her over the din.

Zoe moved quickly, avoiding an ambush, followed her to the hidden office. “Leela, I can hear the chatter. Has someone gone missing?” she asked.

Leela bit her lip. “Jozef Haan,” she whispered. “His wife is frantic. He did not return home last night.”

Zoe closed her eyes. “The roadblocks. I do not know how the Germans reacted so quickly.”

Leela shrugged. “My husband and I saw Jozef pedal off, carrying crates of food from the train. He was just ahead of us when we left. It was dark, Zoe. We were all on edge. Sad to say, we have not seen him since.”

“I was detained at a check point myself last night – for more than an hour. I was terrified. Godjizdan k, I was not transporting food.”

She paced the small office, worried again about the contents of the bag she had been forced to leave behind with the German guards.

“Is someone with Jozef’s wife? ”

“Yes,” Leela nodded. “Several of the other wives. But that is little comfort, I am afraid. She is already fearing the worst.”

Zoe threw her head back, frustrated. “I do not know what to say, Leela. I feel it is my fault for asking…”

Leela spoke through tears. “There is nothing to say, Zoe. You are not to blame. We knew the risk when we agreed to empty that train.”

She laid a hand on Zoe’s arm. “We understand the risk we face just trying to live through this horror, every minute of every day.”

Zoe felt her own tears spring.

A moment of silence, then Leela’s ragged sigh. “But there is reason to be proud, Zoe. Our mission was accomplished. There will be food on Dutch tables this Christmas.”

MILA

In a fit of restlessness at four in the morning, leaning against the skirts in her bedroom closet as the shrill of air raid sirens blared in the background, she learned from Pieter that more than sixty highly placed officers of the German Reich had been killed in the Cinema explosion.

She searched her conscience for a shred of remorse, but she was unable to find one – only pride in what she had accomplished, and thankfulness that the German officer had been out for a smoke, and that he knew her, as a Brouwer, to be a friend of the Reich.

She was begrudgingly thankful for the endless dinners she had sat through.

She still did not remember much of the aftermath of the blast, but she knew without doubt she would do it again if she had the chance.

Still, it was time, she knew, as she lay there hours later, curled around Hondje’s warm body, for her to get out of her bedroom and face her father.

Sighing, she threw off the covers and sat on the edge of the bed.

She had skirted the truth more than once of late.

But she could not recall outright lying to her father since the summer day when she was nine, when she denied demolishing the raspberry kuchen Reit had left cooling on the kitchen sill.

She remembered praying, her blue eyes wide, that there was no jam on her chin as she told the outrageous fib – and her father had decided to accept her denial. Perhaps, he had said, some hungry itinerant had found it.

To this day, Mila could not fathom which had been the worst of her punishment; the stomach ache she had endured for more than a day, or the guilt she felt over the shameless lie she had told.

In any case, she had not lied to him again…obscured the truth, she admitted, moving to open the heavy satin draperies to the sunny day outside. Worse, she would continue to do so if that was it took to thwart his alliance with the Reich.

She blinked in brilliance and turned toward her dressing room. It was time to face her father’s questions. She shuddered to think of the outcome.

EVI

The yuletide holidays had been difficult at best since the war took over their lives, but this Christmas Eve was the saddest Evi could remember. There was no tree, no gaily be-ribboned garlands, only a single, scrawny wreath Mam had fashioned from greenery at the edge of the woods.

They had both been glued to Radio Oranje of late , fearful of new tortures the Germans would rain down upon the Dutch in punishment for their dual humiliation – two successful Resistance offensives that not only took the lives of Reich officers but that embarrassed Herr Hitler who, it was said, was even now planning retaliation.

Worse, there was little encouraging news on the Allied front. This morning there had been reports that improved weather conditions helped the Allies launch air attacks on German supply lines. But what that meant for those who waited and prayed for liberation was still impossible to know .

To boot, Evi had heard from Sophie yesterday that the father of little Annemarie Haan, the freckled little redhead who had followed her to school one day, was missing – presumably detained, perhaps even murdered by the Nazis after his part in looting food from the demolished train.

Evi had never met the little girl’s father, but she knew the heartbreak of losing her own papa, and she said a little prayer, useless as it likely was, for the poor man’s safe deliverance.

She sat up, aware of a curious aroma wafting from the kitchen – a tantalizing smell not unlike the aroma of fresh-baked bread, as Mam used the last of Mila’s flour and jam to prepare some version of Christmas kuchen.

“There,” Mam said into the evening gloom, setting the still-warm pastry on the table.

Evi breathed in the yeasty aroma and rounded the table, inspecting it from every angle. There was no hint of cinnamon, no dusting of sugar, and surely no raisins or pecans. But the cake rested on Mam’s favorite Christmas platter, a reasonable cousin of the original.

She smiled. “Mam, that is the best of all possible Christmas gifts. I will forever remember it. Danke je .”

Mam blinked away tears. “That is not all, Evi.” She hurried off into her sleeping berth, returning moments later with a small package wrapped in re-salvaged tissue.

Evi opened it carefully to preserve the tissue, and shrieked as she unfolded the woolen cap inside. It had been handknit from the bright blue yarn Mam had rescued from the old crocheted afghan and it was embroidered on one side with what looked like a bright yellow butterfly.

Evi pulled it over her fine blonde hair. “Oh, I love it, Mam, danke je. I will wear it every day!”

She smiled. “Now, sit. I have something for you.”

She slipped into her quarters and brought out the homemade candle fashioned from the scraps of candles past, and watched Mam carefully unwrap it and pretend, at least, to love and admire it .

“I wish it could have been more,” Evi murmured, pushing back at tears. “How I wish it were a real Christmas…”

“It is a real Christmas,” Mam jumped up to hug her. “We have each other, Evi. We have our good health – and there is Christmas kuchen!”

ZOE

Zoe tried to get through to her parents, to share some semblance of a happy yuletide, but the phone lines, even more unreliable since the dual explosions, were jammed.