Adeline helped Rese scrubbing the pots. “You seem better.”

“I feel better,” Rese said. “Not wanting to throw up. But I have other things to feel bad about. Like Mama says, it’s not hard to find something bad in our lives.”

“What’s bad in yours?”

“Besides Mama?” she said before laughing nervously. “I have no idea if my boyfriend is alive or not.”

“A boyfriend?” Adeline said, smiling. “Since when?”

“Since four months ago,” Rese said. “When I had to go up to Balta for the week.”

Adeline vaguely remembered. “Who is he?”

“A boy from Odessa who got taken off to fight for the Germans,” Rese said. “His name is Stephan. He’s twenty and the handsomest boy I’ve ever seen.”

Adeline could hear the sadness in her voice. “Does he know where you are? Where you’re going?”

Emil’s sister shook her head and wiped at tears that flowed down her cheeks. “I wrote to his mother in Odessa, but I never heard back.”

“Give it time, Rese,” Adeline said. “The war’s not over yet.”

They spent six days camped in the cemetery, and Emil never once saw limping Nikolas look his way. They were nearing the end of their supper on the sixth day when they were notified that a train would take them north to the Warthegau region of Poland, departing Keleti Station at nine thirty the following morning.

Emil did not want to go north to Poland. He wanted to go west, now more than ever. In the short time he’d been in Budapest, he’d talked to enough German soldiers to know that the western Allies were fighting in Sicily and preparing to invade Italy. As far as Emil was concerned, it was only a matter of time before there were other invasions, and soon the western Allies would be sweeping through all of Europe. He wanted to make sure he and his family were in Allied territory when the war ended.

He’d come to realize during the long days in the wagon that much of his life had been subject to a conquering army and a dictator. The Bolsheviks deposed the Czar, and Stalin laid waste to Ukraine. Then Hitler did. And now Stalin had it back. Emil decided he wanted to go where there were no conquering armies, and in his mind that meant west across the ocean, as far from where they started as he could possibly imagine.

“Why are you so cloudy?” Adeline asked as they packed the little wagon.

“I don’t want to go to Poland,” he said. “I want to go west.”

“We’ll go west from Poland,” she said. “The Germans will give us food and a place to live there. I heard many say that.”

“What good are food and a flat if Stalin gets to Poland before the other Allies?”

“I don’t know,” she said, showing rare irritation. “What is your plan, Emil? Are we going to leave the trek? Go off on our own on foot with no protection?”

He thought about that and frowned. “No, I guess not.”

“Then we go north on the train in the morning and go west from the Warthegau as soon as we can.”

It was unseasonably hot in Budapest that May morning, close to unbearable, especially in the heavy clothes they wore. Adeline put the boys in shorts and stripped them to their undershirts before the Martels pushed and pulled the two small wagons through the cemetery and out onto the main road.

They were not far from the rail station, but there was a slight rise to the street, and the sun was blazing hot. No more than a hundred meters from the station, Rese let go the handle of her parents’ cart, put her hand to her forehead, rushed over to one side of the street, and vomited hard and violently enough to take her to her knees. Adeline got to her first.

“I’m all right,” Rese gasped. “It’s the heat. I just couldn’t stop it from coming.”

Adeline helped her up. Karoline gave her a rag to wipe her mouth, and Emil gave her water from the bag, which seemed to perk her up before they reached the crowd of refugees trying to get into the station.

“It’s an hour and fifteen minutes until we leave, and so many are already here,” Karoline said. “Will there be enough room for us all?”

Karoline’s fears were well-founded. By the time they got inside and down the platform, many of the boxcars were already packed with people and their belongings.

“This train looks shorter than the one we came in on,” said Walt, who was riding on top of the little wagon with Will.

“He’s right,” Emil said. “Adella, take my place. I’ll run forward to guard us a spot.”

She came around and took the handle of the wagon while her mother and sister continued to push. Emil disappeared into the crowd and down the platform.

Adeline took glances at the already-full cars as they passed, seeing the faces of people cut loose from everything they’d ever known, some frightened, some resigned, and a few eager with anticipation, which was how she felt. She was wondering what else she might see in the coming days that she’d never seen before, like this train station, the most magnificent building she’d ever been in. She lowered her gaze to see Emil hanging out the side of the boxcar behind the covered coal car and the locomotive.

“I’ve got space for the wagons, but some of us will have to sit up top,” Emil said.

“I’m going up top,” Rese said.

“Sick as you are?” her mother said.

“The wind will do me good, Mama, settle my stomach,” Rese said. “If I go inside, I know I’ll be sick again. Besides, it will be fun to ride on top of a train.”

Karoline looked like she wanted to argue, but said, “Suit yourself, then.”

With all of them helping, they lifted both wagons into the boxcar and lashed them together and to the wall by the open door. Sweating people were soon jammed behind them, sitting on their own wagons or bags of belongings. Johann, Karoline, and Lydia decided to stay inside with the wagons despite the sweltering heat. After Emil fashioned two ropes with loops that went around the boys’ waists to save them from a fall, Adeline let herself be talked into climbing up with them and Malia onto the roof of the boxcar.

A low railing ran around the perimeter of the roof. Rese was already up there, sitting with her thighs wedged under the rail and dangling her bare feet off the side.

“It’s not as hot up here,” Rese said, excited. “Thank God Mama can’t stand heights. This is going to be fun!”

“This is going to be fun,” Malia said, sitting beside Rese and sliding her legs under the rail. She kicked her feet a few times in the air with a smile. “And your mother means well.”

“Does she?” Rese said. “I get tired of her telling me what to do and how to do it.”

“It’s just the way she was taught,” Adeline said. “You watch, you’ll catch yourself doing the same to your daughter someday.”

Rese looked a little queasy, rubbed her stomach, and belched softly.

“Oh, I hope not.”

The train whistle blew. SS soldiers hurried the last refugees aboard the train. The roofs of their boxcar and the boxcars behind them were now crowded with people trying to get safely seated before the train began to move.

A minute later, it did, belching smoke from its ancient stack, groaning, whining, and then slowly picking up speed. They left the protection of the station’s canopy. The sun beat down mercilessly on them as they rolled past German soldiers and artillery pieces chained to flatbed cars in the rail yard.

Leaving the yard, the train looped southwest through the city and then north, roughly paralleling the Danube River while slowly gathering speed. The wind blew the locomotive smoke away from them, allowing Adeline to catch thrilling glimpses of the bridges that spanned the Danube and, high on a hill, the ancient and grand fortress of the Hungarian kings.

Rese began to sing an old drinking song about a soulful wanderer in search of love, and Adeline and Malia and many other people atop the boxcar joined in with her. For a few moments, Adeline felt her spirits lifted, elated almost and yet easy, and she wondered whether this was what freedom felt like.

By the time they’d cleared the Budapest city limits, Adeline had decided that the locomotive was either very old or very damaged, because it tended to belch thick whips of dark smoke and seemed incapable of traveling very fast. But at top speed and as long as you weren’t straight downwind of the smokestack, the wind made the powerful sun more than bearable. It was . . . well, nice, pleasant. Almost freedom, she decided.

“I like riding up here, Mama,” Will said, grinning.

“I do, too,” Adeline said, smiling and pushing her hair out of her eyes.

Walt leaned his chest against the railing to peer forward up the track. “Here comes a tunnel!”

They swung into the darkness, which made the speed seem faster. Will screamed for joy at the top of his lungs, which made them all laugh. In the next tunnel, Rese joined Will, and soon they were all doing it, screaming for joy every time they hurtled from light to darkness to light once more.