At one point, Rese grinned and laughed as she looked over at Adeline and the boys all anticipating the next tunnel. “This is the best I’ve felt since we left home. I can’t remember being this happy ever, Adeline.”

“We’re on an adventure,” Walt said.

“We are, aren’t we?” Rese said, looking in love with that idea.

“Yes,” Will said, “because you never know how things are going to turn out.”

Five hours into their journey, nearing the Hungarian town of Tata, the train came to another stop above a grassy opening that sloped down to a small lake that was settled at the other end. One of the engineers came out of the locomotive along with Major Haussmann, who walked past them, shouting that there would be a half-hour delay here while military trains passed ahead. While they were all free to get off to relieve themselves or have a cigarette, Haussmann also told them to stay close to the train.

The sun was intense again now that they were no longer moving.

“Pretty lake,” Malia said. “Looks good enough to swim in.”

“I’m game,” Rese said, grinning and putting on her shoes.

“You’re not,” Adeline said.

“Watch me,” Rese said, standing up.

Malia clapped and laughed. “What if Karoline catches you?”

“Oh, what if she does?” Rese said, winking at the boys as she started to climb down the ladder. “I know how to swim, and she doesn’t.”

“I want to go in the water, Mama,” Will said. “It’s hot.”

“Me, too, Papa,” Walt said to Emil, who had climbed up at the last stop.

“None of us knows how to swim,” Emil said. “And I don’t want you to drown.”

Rese, meanwhile, jumped off the bottom rung of the ladder, and with a wave at them all, she started to trot down through the lush spring grass toward the lake a hundred meters off. Other people were exiting their boxcars, some smoking, some going off to piss. But no one headed toward the water except Rese. She reached shore, turned back toward the train, and waved wildly at them, before pivoting and stepping out into the water. She took another awkward step and a third before losing her balance, crashing forward, and submerging.

Rese did not come up.

And she did not come up.

Adeline felt a ball in her throat start to build before Rese’s head suddenly popped out of the lake. She blew out a stream of water, threw back her head, and shrieked with delight before diving under again.

“How did she learn to swim like that?” Malia asked.

“At school in Pervomaisk,” Emil said. “When she was a little girl, she took to it like a fish and—”

The train whistle blew. Major Haussmann came hurrying back up the side of the train, shouting, “Back aboard! The track has cleared ahead. Back aboard or you’ll be left behind!”

Down in the lake, Rese surfaced again. Emil cupped his mouth with both palms and shouted at her, “We’re leaving, Rese!”

She didn’t hear him at first. They all started screaming and waving to her. “Come back to the train! We’re leaving!”

Adeline could tell Rese didn’t believe them at first. They were supposed to be there thirty minutes, after all. But then the train whistle blew a second time and Rese started swimming as fast as she could toward shore. She came up out of the water, held her soaking skirts high, and started running up the hill, following her own path back up through the long grass.

“Come on, Rese!” Malia yelled.

And now they were all hooting at her and calling encouragement. Rese’s grin got bigger and bigger the closer she got to them. She was soaking wet, her clothes had grass all over them, and yet it all made Adeline realize that she’d never known someone quite like her sister-in-law. Rese was pretty and smart and very funny. She did not care what other people thought of her when she did crazy things like this. She was . . . well . . . free in a way that Adeline had never known before. Like Emil said, you know freedom when you see it.

Emil’s mother’s head was sticking out the side of the boxcar, looking at her daughter as Rese reached the bottom of the ladder by the forward left corner of the boxcar.

“What were you thinking?” Karoline yelled at her.

“I wasn’t thinking, Mama,” Rese said as she grabbed the rails of the ladder and stepped onto the first rung with her right foot. “I was swimming, and it felt great!”

She lifted her left foot to make the second rung when the train suddenly jerked and shuddered and jerked again with enough violence to fling Rese sideways and forward off the ladder in a spiraling fall that caused her to crash face-first in the grass and gravel, her chest and belly below the railroad tie and her shins across the rail. The coupler that held the coal car to their car was right behind and above her.

It all happened so fast, Adeline had barely cried out in response to Rese’s fall before the locomotive sighed and the train lurched forward again. The wheels of the boxcar rolled slowly over Rese’s legs, severing both of them at midcalf.

Chapter Fifteen

Emil erupted from his position on the roof of the boxcar, bellowing at the engineers in the locomotive to stop the train. Evidently, Major Haussmann, who was riding in the locomotive, saw the accident and shouted the same thing before the brakes hit, sending shrieks from the wheels and rails that were not loud enough to mask the trumpets of horror blaring from the crowded boxcars as Rese convulsed, squirmed, and rolled down the embankment into weeds at the edge of the clearing.

Scrambling to the ladder, Emil could see blood spurt and mist, spurt and mist from the stumps of what had been her legs. Stop the bleeding, he chanted to himself as he all but slid down the ladder. Stop the bleeding or Rese dies.

He landed hard and spun around to find the SS major almost to his sister. Emil ran to them, stripping his belt as he did.

Haussmann had already removed his own belt and was trying to get into a position to help without being sprayed with blood. Emil did not care; he went straight into the blood and to his knees beside his sister, seeing she was unconscious as he got the belt around her lower left leg, above the stump, and cinched it tight enough to staunch the spurting and the misting. Across from him, the SS major had done the same to her right leg and was now shouting for a medic.

Emil was aware of other people yelling now as he tried to comfort his sister, who was shivering as if it were well below zero while he felt as if he were burning in a hot haze of light.

“Save her!” his mother sobbed. He looked up to see Karoline standing there, her face bleeding from the fall she’d taken from the boxcar after seeing her daughter’s legs severed, and his father behind his mother, struggling to keep her on her feet as she keened, one bony hand covering her mouth and the other outstretched in misery.

“Save her,” Karoline sobbed again, and then looked up at the blistering sky. “Take me, but save her, God. She’s all we have left.”

Adeline came down beside Emil. “What can I do?”

“We’ve stopped the bleeding,” Major Haussmann said, putting his bloody fingers on Rese’s neck. “But she needs morphine, blood, and a surgeon.”

Ernst Decker, a medic and SS sergeant in his late twenties, raced from the rear of the train, carrying a pack while two soldiers followed with a stretcher. Sergeant Decker did not blanch at seeing the state of Rese’s legs, but instead calmly asked Emil to move aside, and took her vitals, saying, “How long have the tourniquets been in place?”

“A minute,” Haussmann said. “No more.”

“I need her in a more stable place,” he said. “Not out in the sun like this.”

“We’ll put more people on top and make room for her in the car,” Emil said, and glanced warily at Haussmann who’d gone stony. “I am sorry, Major. She’s my sister.”

Haussmann seemed to be studying him again. Had he recognized Emil just then? Emil didn’t care at that point and returned the stare until the major nodded.

“Do it. Get your sister inside by the door where there is air.”

Sergeant Decker got out a glass-and-steel syringe and gave Rese a small shot of morphine, enough to keep her sedated during the transfer. In moments it was done: she was on the stretcher, and hands in the boxcar were lifting her inside and placing her litter across the Martels’ wagons where Decker went to work.

Emil was going to climb into the boxcar to help the medic, when he saw Walt standing forward of the coupling and looking down between it and the coal car. He walked to his older son, who peered up at his father in bewilderment.

“They don’t look much different except right at the top where the wheels crushed them. Below that, they’re the same as they were when Aunt Rese still had them.”

Emil looked and saw it was true. The wheels, the weight of the coal, and the rail beneath had all served to cut the legs relatively cleanly.

“What do we do with them, Papa?” Walt said. “Do we just leave them there?”