If she had not gone down to swim. If she had listened for once in her life, she’d . . . she’d be . . . He wanted to say . . . whole, but instead thought . . . not my sister. Rese had been her own person from her first word as a little girl. Most kids said Mama or Dada. Emil’s little sister said, “No.” And she’d remained a contrary soul ever since.

A half hour passed and then an hour. The heat and the merciless sun of midafternoon blistered on as they rolled slowly toward Bratislava. Rese’s blood pressure stayed steady, and the wounds had been redressed. Clotting had begun. Emil was feeling sure that the worst of Rese’s crisis had passed when Marie said, “I need to feed my boys at the next stop.”

“And I have sick men in the rear cars to attend,” Sergeant Decker said.

“I’ll sit with her,” Emil said, right before his sister moaned and arched. A convulsion shuddered through her body, which stiffened and then collapsed.

Decker and Marie rushed to her side.

“What happened?” Karoline asked. “What’s happening to her?”

The medic had his stethoscope out, listening to her heart while Adeline’s cousin put her hands upon Rese to soothe her.

“Heart rate’s up, but it’s settling again,” Decker said to Emil. “That seizure could have been a lot of things caused by the body’s natural way of dealing with shock.”

Decker was packing his gear ten minutes later when the train whistle blew and they slowed to a stop for a train to cross ahead of them. Marie had not moved from Rese’s side, hands on her thigh and stomach, watching for signs of another convulsion.

It came when the train had come to a full stop, a shorter fit than the first, but no less shuddering. Emil’s sister arched and bent with an internal convulsion and then collapsed again.

Rese panted and moaned.

“What’s happening to her?” Karoline cried.

“I don’t know,” Decker said.

“I do,” Marie said, reaching up Rese’s skirt. “She’s in labor.”

“Labor?” Emil said. “Rese? No.”

“She’s broken her water,” Marie said, then looked at his mother. “How far along is she, Frau Martel?”

Karoline said nothing for a moment, then looked around, anxious and disgusted that there was no way out of facing reality. “Three, maybe three and a half months,” she said, sounding crushed. “She only told me the night before we started out on this insane trek.”

“Well, she’s losing her baby along with her legs,” Marie said, then looked at Emil as Decker climbed down from the boxcar with promises to return. “I’ll stay with her. But can you go get Adeline and Malia to come down and help me here? I need to feed and tend to my babies before your poor sister gets any worse.”

Emil climbed up on the roof. He helped Adeline and Malia lower the basket holding Marie’s twins, then watched until his wife and sister-in-law were safely down the ladder before admitting that he was utterly exhausted, worse than after his longest days in the fields or in the brewery, beyond bone-tired. Having expended every bit of energy and love on his sister, he was drained of everything but the need for sleep.

He sat down between his sons, legs under the rails, feet dangling as Rese’s had been only hours before. He hugged Will and Walt, and then, as the train began to roll north again, lay back, put his cap across his face, and fell into a hypnotic, buzzing sleep where he remained aware of certain real noises around him—the talk of his sons, the chop and squeal of the train wheels, and the low thudding chug of the locomotive—even as the awfulness of the accident replayed over and over.

There is no God, his inner voice said. No force for good would take her legs like that. Our pleas are not heard by some invisible force in the sky. We are alone. We fight for survival every day. We can count on no one but ourselves.

When Emil awoke, they were rolling north of Bratislava, heading toward Trnava. The sun was lower, partially blocked by bands of thunderclouds in the west. They were passing through old vineyards with swollen buds about to flower, and then into lush, rolling green country with small farms in the dells and snowcapped mountains beyond.

He yawned and sat up, seeing hobbled horses grazing in a field and feeling a pang for Oden and Thor. What was their fate? What were they doing for the Nazis?

“This is a nice green valley,” Will said, “but it’s not ours.”

Emil shook off his grogginess and was about to tell his younger son not to believe in such nonsense, that whatever color the land around their new home turned out to be, there was no doubt that it would be harsh and cruel and laced with suffering at some level. He was about to tell Will that these facts were unavoidable in life and that he did not believe there was a place on earth where a true paradise like Adeline’s existed.

Instead, Emil said, “No, it isn’t. We’re going to a place called Lodz, Poland.”

“What’s it like, Papa?” Will said. “Lodz?”

“I don’t know,” he said. “We’ll all find out together.”

They fell into silence, and Emil was hoping the train would stop again so he could go down and check on his sister’s condition, when Walt said, “Papa, why did that have to happen to Aunt Rese?”

He sighed and hugged his older son again. “I don’t know. Life can be cruel at times.”

Walt was quiet for several moments before saying, “At first, I didn’t like that we left her legs and feet and her shoes like that.”

“I didn’t, either,” Emil said. “I still don’t.”

“But then I remembered you said birds would probably find them, and I felt better because her legs would get to fly like a bird.”

Emil looked down at Walt, smiling at the way he seemed to see the world, from a slightly off but always interesting angle.

“You want to fly someday?” Emil asked.

Walt grinned. “Maybe. Why not?”

“That’s right,” Emil said. “Why not?”

“I’m going to build things,” Will boasted.

“Like what?” Emil said, interested because he, too, liked to build things.

His younger son pointed at a grand old villa on a hillside. “Like that.”

“No, you won’t,” Walt said. “That’s too big.”

“It’s not too big,” Will said. “Right, Papa?”

The villa did look huge, bigger than anything Emil had ever built or been a part of building. Maybe it was seeing Rese’s life changed for the worse in a heartbeat; maybe he just wanted to spare his son the despair of never having a dream at all, but something in him told him not to discourage Will’s vision of life, whatever it was.

“Why not?” Emil said.

Chapter Sixteen

Rese Martel lost her baby as the sun set over eastern Czechoslovakia that hot day in May 1944. Marie guided and helped Adeline and her sister through the entire ordeal. Karoline refused to participate and sat as quiet as Johann, who stood beside her while their unconscious daughter labored to deliver a stillborn son.

Marie clamped and cut the umbilical cord and handed him to Adeline. Curled fetal, Rese’s son, slick with fluid and blood, fit in the palm of her hand. Malia came over, looked at him, and after a moment began to cry.

“The poor thing died sucking his thumb,” she said, her hand going to her lips.

Adeline saw it was true and felt her own heart ripped open yet again that day. “A little miracle that never had a chance.”

“Miracle,” Karoline snorted in disgust behind them. “More like a deadly sin, proof of lust before God and man. Mark my words. The Lord took her legs and that . . . sin in your hands because of her fornication.”

Adeline, her sister, and cousin were so stunned by the venom in Rese’s mother’s voice that they turned to look at her swathed in shadows. So did many other people near her.

Aware of them and not caring, Adeline said, “He’s your grandson, Karoline. If you’re going to say such things, you should look at him and say it. A quarter of his blood descends from you.”

Her mother-in-law leaned forward into a slat of light, revealing one eye and a twitching cheek. “Throw that thing out the train door, or I will.”

Looming over her suddenly, Johann stunned the crowded boxcar, roaring, “You’ll do no such thing! And I’ll hear no more from you, woman! Do you think I survived the mines and the miserable walk home to hear your constant and never-ending shit-stirring? Wanting this. Fearing that. Condemning that. Comparing this. Destroying that. Judging who is good and who is not. All with your acid tongue!”

Karoline had shrunk against the forward wall of the boxcar, her voice meeker when she began. “Johann, I do not—”

“Shut up, you evil, evil bitch!” he bellowed down at his wife. “Shut up, or so help me, God, I’ll throw you off this train myself and be rid of you for good!”

There was a long, stunned, uncomfortable silence in which Adeline felt confirmed in every ill emotion she’d ever had toward Emil’s mother, but also aware that she should be preparing Rese’s son for burial at the next stop.

Karoline said bitterly, “Maybe I’ll help you, Johann, do you a favor. Throw myself off this train before Rese wakes up. Be rid of me for good.”

“There she goes again,” Malia whispered in Adeline’s ear. “Turning the tables. Playing the persecuted.”

“Do it, then, and be quick about it,” Johann replied finally, leaving her side for Rese’s.