Page 36

At the wooden dining room table, she handed Evi a plate containing a slab of bread, a small chunk of Gouda cheese, and a dollop of canned tomatoes.

Evi looked around the table. A single lantern burned on the sideboard, casting odd shadows on their faces…

Meneer Beekhof, with whom she had rarely exchanged a word, dark-haired, bearded, imposing…

Willem, who seemed to be growing inches by the day, awkward, fidgeting in his seat…

Mevrouw , patient and waiting…and Ja cob, dear Jacob, his brows knit together, leaning forward, searching her face.

Taking a breath, halting now and then to force back tears, Evi told her story – the baby Mam had rescued from a cave, her insistence on taking him to safety…

the Germans boarding the barge, Mam falling into the sea…

and finally Alette, at the marketplace in Vlaardingen, who had taken her in and helped her to contact her friends.

“Perhaps I should not have come here,” she finished, looking down at her lap. But in the next moment, to her surprise, she felt Meneer Beekhof’s big hand close over hers, saw Mevrouw rise and come around the table.

Willem sat, his blue eyes wide, as his mother reached to embrace her, and Jacob, a white-knuckled fist to his mouth, glared silently, fire in his eyes.

“You did right, Evi…”

“Bastard Nazis…”

“Eat, Evi, eat….”

She could not make out all of their jumbled words. But there was no mistaking the warmth behind them. She breathed deeply, for the first time, she realized, since Mam had screamed at her to jump.

“I have hot soup as well,” Mevrouw said, bustling in the from the kitchen with a huge kettle, which she set in the middle of the table. “Willem! The bowls!”

The boy jumped up to set spoons, linen napkins, and blue Delft bowls at each place. He had barely settled back in his seat when Mevrouw clasped her hands in front of her and glanced meaningfully around the table.

One by one, they followed suit.

“Willem,” she said. “You may say grace.”

The boy fidgeted, looked around as if for help, seemed to realize that none was forthcoming. He glanced at the folded newspaper on the sideboard as though for inspiration, and bowed his head .

“Lord, we thank you on this sixteenth day of February,” he began, “for food and family, for keeping Evi safe, and for keeping the Germans from our door.”

Evi looked up, eyes wide. A sound escaped before she could stop it.

Mevrouw looked up. “What is it, Evi?”

She looked around the table in the flickering light.

“It is my birthday,” she whispered, shaken to the core. “Today is my seventeenth birthday…”

ZOE

Zoe stopped short as she neared the hospital. A green German Kubelwagen jeep was parked at the entrance, the driver sitting tall and straight.

She hopped off Daan’s bicycle, locked it to a stand to one side of the building, and considered.

It was not likely the driver’s German passenger was there for medical attention. It could only mean her cousin was being hassled once again by the SS officer demanding lists of staff and patients.

She shuddered, wondering how long it might be before the he demanded a tour of the place. Could the troops he brought in see through the facade on the hospital’s fifth floor?

The trappings of renovation remained in place – the jumble of furniture, ladders and paint, even the few live ‘workmen’ who could be called from the sanctuary on a moment’s notice.

But why, a cunning German might ask, was the hospital spending precious guilders on renovation when bread and heating oil were scarce?

Zoe shuddered and pulled her scarf close, glancing again at the Kubelwagen.

She was debating whether to push through the hospital doors when a tall figure in an immaculate German uniform stepped out and hopped into the back seat.

He leaned forward to speak to the driver and the vehicle roared to life and sped off.

Zoe nodded once to the expressionless guard, and made her way into the lobby.

.. .

Gerritt was, as she expected, pacing in his second-floor office.

“It’s no good, Zoe,” he said. “We cannot keep up this charade for much longer. The Germans are intent on finding people who have eluded them, and they will not rest until they have exhausted every avenue to find them.”

She nodded, touching her cousin’s shoulder. “Sit, Gerritt. I know. We need to talk.”

It was as though he never heard her. “They are looking now specifically for Aaron Bernheim, a Jewish physician from Berlin who has been with us for months,” he said. “And for the escaped German called Kurt Schneider, who is high on their list of Reich deserters.”

MILA

The headline in Amsterdam’s De Telegraaf sent a shiver through her spine. ‘ Haarlem caregivers shot .’

‘Four elderly Dutch care givers,’ Mila read, ‘volunteers who routinely transport Haarlem patients for their doctor visits, were lined up and shot in an alley off the Rembrandtsplein on Tuesday by a squad of SS enforcers.

‘The incident was the second in a string of random shootings carried out under direct orders from Hitler, sources say, in retaliation for Dutch Resistance sabotage efforts that took the lives of more than a hundred German soldiers…’

Sitting at the breakfast table, Mila crushed the paper to her lap. There was no mention on the front page of the attempted assassination of Dutch Police Captain Reimar de Boer.

Straightening the paper, she scanned the inside pages, looking for an update on de Boer’s condition or on any progress by Amsterdam authorities to identify the attempted assassin…but there was nothing. Not a single word. Why not?

Het Parool , the underground paper, was rather more forthcoming, reporting that the assassination of eight Dutch nationals was almost certainly in retaliation for the blatant assault on de Boer – and that Amsterdam Police were attempting to tie local Resistance cell leaders to the failed assassination.

Mila crushed both papers beneath her elbows, worry churning in her gut.

She had not been able to contact Pieter since her return from Vlaardingen with Evi and Zoe – not on the wireless concealed in her bedroom closet, nor by telephone to his desk in the plumber’s office.

She was shaken to realize she had no idea where he lived.

She heard the hall telephone ring, but ignored it, until Reit brought the instrument to her.

“For you , Missen .”

Mila took it. “This is Mila Brouwer,” she said formally.

“Ah, Vermissen Brouwer – Mila, may I? This is Obersturmfuhre r Franz Becker! I am so sorry to have missed your call!”

At her father’s insistence, she had dialed the German headquarters to thank the man for the Deitrich recording. She had been happy to find him out and leave a message. But she was not surprised that the portly Becker wanted more.

“You talked about the German stage, if I recall correctly,” he said in his curious mix of German and Dutch. “While I cannot promise a rendition of Lily Marleen , it pleases me to say there is an entertainment by German performers planned on Saturday next at our headquarters here in Haarlem.”

“I see,” she said, already searching for a reasonable way out.

The German did not wait for an answer. “If you are willing, Mila – may I call you Mila? I will bring a car for you that evening at seven. There will, of course, be a dinner served afterward…”

It was days away, Mila thought with relief, glad for the time to look for an excuse. “That sounds wunderbar , Obersturmfuher,” she simpered at last. “I shall await the date with pleasure. Danke schon .”

“ Goed - as will I,” said Becker. She could almost see his heels click together. “ Unt if I may…for you, it is Franz. ”

Mila ended the call and rose to dispose of the morning’s Het Parool before it caught her father’s eye. She called out to Hondje, who came running.

The dog’s tail wagged furiously at the sight of the leash, and the poor thing waited less than patiently as Mila donned a coat in the hallway and tied a scarf around her head.

A walk might be the best thing for both of them, Mila thought, fastening the leash and following Hondje out the front door.

It would give her time to think – first about how she might gracefully bow out of the unwanted rendezvous with Becker – and second, by far the more important, how she might determine if Pieter was safe.

EVI

Evi lay sleepless on the sofa in the darkness of the Beekhof’s sitting room.

Otto snored softly on the rug below, freckled snout resting on his front paws.

She listened to the pop and crackle in the hearth and peered out the window into the starless night, feeling so much more than she could ever put words to.

She was mortified and wretched to have blurted out that the sixteenth of February was her birthday. Truly, given everything she had been through in the last few days, she had not given the date a thought until Willem mentioned it – and moments after the Beekhofs had saved her from homelessness.

She was embarrassed about dissolving into tears over it, but it was the first time in her life that she had had a birthday without Mam at the center of it – and the realization filled her with sorrow that birthdays would never be the same again.

Still, as they ate, there had been birthday songs and heartfelt wishes for Evi’s health and happiness. She was still not sure, even after Mevreouw handed her a nightgown and robe and prepared a bed for her on the sofa, that she would ever be worthy of their graciousness .

She had turned seventeen, she understood now, with a heavier heart than she could ever have imagined.

Jacob, watching Mervouw bring the blankets, had rushed to volunteer his bedroom. “Evi should have it,” he insisted. “She needs it far more than I do.”

But Evi had asserted just as strongly that she could fit much more easily on the sofa than he, and when she held her ground, he retreated.

“If you change your mind,” he had said, backing down the hallway. “One word and the bedroom is yours…”