She held them to her breast and started crying. “Thank you, Adeline. Thank you from the bottom of my heart. You’ve given me . . . you’ve given me a future, a life.”

“I hate that you even need those papers to have a life,” Adeline said. “And I need to clean this little guy right now.”

When she was finished and Will was falling asleep in the cradle and Walt was already napping, Esther began gathering her things.

“You don’t need to leave just yet,” Adeline said.

“It’s better that I’m gone before your husband returns.”

“Where will you go?”

“To where I have some things stored outside the city. And then I don’t know. I’m going to leave that up to a power greater than me to decide. But I’ve heard about Argentina. Or Palestine. I’d like to end up somewhere like that eventually.”

Adeline did not know either of those places but wished Esther good luck and hugged her at the door.

“May God protect you,” she said.

“And you,” Esther said. “There are no words.”

Adeline put her hand over her heart, opened the apartment door, and Ilse Koch was gone from their lives.

Mid-April 1944

Central Romania

Near the back of the Long Trek, the Martels rolled slowly westward.

Behind them, the German and Romanian armies were successfully fighting off the Soviets in their initial attempt to invade Romania from the north. Nevertheless, at the town of Onesti, the SS turned the caravan southwest toward Targu Secuiesc.

They had left the rolling grass hills of far-eastern Romania behind them by that point and now climbed into leafless hardwood forests below mountain peaks capped with snow. The weather was wildly unsettled. Rain. Sleet. Hail. Snow. Mud was a constant hazard.

And since there were so few mature men on the trek, Emil felt obliged to stop and help any family of women and small children stuck in the mire or having suffered an accident. If they were in the mud over their axles, he would have them unload their wagon and then unharness Thor and Oden and tie them to the empty wagons’ horses to yank them free, all the while supporting the rear end by himself so the wheels and axles would not break under the torque. The sight of people digging graves for the newly dead had become commonplace. Every time Emil saw somebody being buried, he looked away as they passed.

They were negotiating a series of steep switchbacks in the route near the town of Oituz where the mud was thin, more like grease, when they came upon a newly overturned wagon and a weeping woman from Kiev, her three children, and her now-dead father, who’d been thrown in the crash and hit his head on a rock.

“Stop, Emil,” Adeline said. “We need to help that poor woman.”

He sighed but reined the horses to a halt. He tied Oden and Thor to a tree just starting to throw green buds and detached them from the wagon while Adeline, Walt, and Will went to comfort the woman and her children.

When Emil was done, he started down the hill to detach the woman’s horses from the wreck. Before he did, he inspected her wagon and was happy to see that, aside from damage to the wooden siding and material of the bonnet, her transportation was largely sound.

“Emil,” Adeline said, coming up behind him, “she wants you to bury her father.”

He wanted to close his eyes, wanted to say, Anything but that. Instead, Emil remembered that a man can only rely on himself in times of challenge, and he steeled himself.

“Can you get the spade strapped to the side of our wagon for me?” Emil said at last. “I have to tend to her horses first.”

By the time he’d unhitched the horses from the overturned wagon, Adeline was back with the shovel. Emil did not look at the dead grandfather as he walked beyond the overturned wagon and the women and children. He selected a suitable spot and started to dig, telling himself, It’s a hole in the ground. That’s all it is.

The soil was looser than he would have thought, but ten shovelfuls deep, he hit roots and rock. It would have taken him a good two hours to dig the hole had not Walt come over, dragging an old, heavy German mattock tool, with a steel pick on one side and a cutting hoe on the other.

“The lady said it was her father’s,” Walt said.

“That will help,” Emil said, and switched to the mattock, picking at the rocks and chopping at the roots.

An hour later, the hole was deep enough to keep the body from being smelled and unearthed by animals. Adeline and the woman wrapped her father in a blanket. Luckily, the man had been old and did not weigh much. Emil was able to hoist him up on his shoulder and bring him to the grave without assistance.

It’s just weight up there. Nothing more than a sack of grain.

He got two ropes under the body. Adeline had one end of one rope, and the woman had the other. On the other side of the grave, Emil held the other ends of both ropes. Together, they lowered the body into the hole. When the corpse came to rest, he told Adeline and the woman to let go their ends of the ropes, and he reeled them in.

He felt sick and started back toward his wagon.

“Emil,” Adeline said, “we have to say a prayer.”

“You go ahead,” he said. “It’ll be dark soon, and I want to get their wagon up on the road before then. I’ll bury him when you’re done. My condolences for the loss of your father, ma’am.”

He didn’t have to look at Adeline to tell she was not happy with him, but he walked off toward their wagon anyway. As he lashed the two ropes to the side of the crashed wagon, he could hear his wife leading the woman and the children in prayer.

“Our Father, who art in heaven, hallowed be thy name,” Adeline said, and the rest joined in. “Thy kingdom come, thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven . . .”

Emil forced himself to stop listening at that point and ran the other ends of the ropes up the hill to his horses. Once he’d tied them to their harness, he waited until another wagon passed and then eased the team forward. With creaks and groans, the overturned wagon came upright on the other side of the ditch. Scouting ahead on the route, he found a low spot in the ditch walls that would allow a wagon to cross. He attached the woman’s horses to the wagon and then led them up and across the ditch before tying them up on the other side of the road.

He walked back and saw Adeline walking toward him in disapproval. “That was rude and insensitive, walking away like that.”

“No, Adeline, it was practical. I dug the hole. I paid my respects. I got her wagon back on the road, and now I’m going to bury her father. By the time I’m done, we will be near sundown and looking for a camping spot. And thank you for helping her.”

Adeline swallowed, but then nodded. “I don’t give you enough credit, Emil. I’m sorry I said anything.”

Chapter Thirteen

Days passed and became weeks that all melted into another and another as the Martel clan continued to slowly tack its way through Romania, southwest to Brasov to skirt more mountainous terrain and then northwest on a steep and winding route toward and through the town of Sighisoara. The ground war had faded behind them for the moment, though Soviet bombers were a frequent threat as they tried to destroy the Romanian bridges and exit routes available to the Germans.

Spring had fought winter and won by the time they reached central Romania. In the valleys, the leaves were out, lime-colored and shimmering on warm breezes. And the snowpack in the Carpathian Mountains to the south was in full retreat. High and low and on both sides of the route, wildflowers bloomed in disarrayed carpets of scarlet, canary, and violet. They filled the air with sweet, intoxicating scents that could trick the mind into believing there was no such thing as war, no such thing as hatred between men or countries or religions.

They came over a rise south of Targu Mures to find a beautiful new vista breaking before them, a verdant dale with gentle, forested slopes and lush meadows of wildflowers and grass.

“Is this the beautiful green valley, Mama?” Will asked.

“Not yet,” Adeline said, “but it is beautiful.”

“Oh,” Will said, sounding discouraged.

Adeline tousled his hair and said, “This is the beautiful green valley where you get to live today, Will. So be happy and thankful for it.”

Glancing at his younger son and seeing him break into a grin, Emil smiled and felt good inside for a change. For more than two weeks, he had seen neither Major Haussmann nor Nikolas. As the roads westward became choked with retreating traffic, the SS had been diverting different parts of the caravan, sending them on multiple routes west. The two men could be gone from his life forever. And good riddance.