Emil debated whether to remain silent, but then said, “I don’t know, Major.”

“I do, actually,” Haussmann said, laughing acidly. “Your face stood out because it belonged to the first true coward I faced in Ukraine. You remember, don’t you, farm boy?”

Emil took a deep breath, said, “Major, that rule was—”

“I don’t give a damn about some other coward’s rule,” he seethed, shaking the gun.

“Himmler’s rule,” Emil said.

“What does Reichsführer Himmler know, really? Was he in the field with rifles and pistols, solving his Jew problem? No. I was in the field solving his Jew problem. I should have shot you that night, and I didn’t. And now, miraculously, I have a chance to fix that.”

Haussmann’s pistol rose, and Emil, trembling, looked over its barrel at the Nazi. “You’re going to just shoot me?”

“I’ve done it before.”

“Wait, please,” Emil choked. “I have been a good German since. Please, all I want is a better life for my family. I beg you not to leave my wife a widow and my sons without a father. My wife’s father was taken to Siberia and was never heard from again. She couldn’t bear being left like that.”

Haussmann pulled the trigger.

Adeline was still watching the knoll Emil had disappeared over with Major Haussmann when she heard the flat crack of the gunshot and jerked violently. Her hand flew to her mouth, and she staggered left and stabbed out her hand to grab the side of the little wagon.

“No,” she gasped weakly.

“Mama?” Walt said, rushing to her. “What just happened?”

Adeline stood there in shock, staring at the knoll and the last spot where she’d seen Emil, silently screaming from the depths of her soul for God to spare and protect him.

Please, God, if there was ever a good man, a good father, and a good husband, it’s Emil Martel. In all my years of knowing him, he’s never wavered from doing what was right. Not once. He deserves better than this; he deserves—

A second shot shattered the morning.

Emil was on his knees, shaking from head to toe, ears ringing, and sure he was about to die because both shots had gone right past his ears and slammed into the embankment behind him. Haussmann wouldn’t miss a third time.

He looked up to see the Nazi smiling at him and then lowering the Luger.

“It is enough,” Haussmann said. “Seeing you like this, quivering, about to crap your pants. It’s enough. I used to have to see them die, watch the blood and the life drain out of them. But about a year ago, I realized I enjoyed the begging and the reaction to the intentional first missed shot more than I did the actual kill. Seeing you destroyed is enough, Martel. Get up. Go back to your family.”

Feeling weak as a lamb and distrusting the man, Emil got unsteadily to his feet and looked walleyed at Haussmann. “I can go?”

“Yes, but don’t think for a second your punishment is over,” the major said. “It will go on well after I am gone. I’ve made sure of that. And as you and your family suffer in the months ahead, I want you to think about your acts that night in Dubossary. Your cowardice.”

He gestured at Emil’s jacket. “I want you to think about the clothes you’re wearing and the place you’re blessed to live in because of people like me. And I want you to decide whether you really do want to be part of the Third Reich, or whether you should go back to living under Stalin and his filthy Yids.”

Will had begun to cry. “Mama! Where is he?”

Adeline couldn’t answer. She was still fixed on that point on the knoll where she’d last seen Emil, still praying to God to deliver him, when she caught movement.

Walt, who’d stood up on the wagon, screamed, “It’s him! It’s Papa!”

Adeline started running toward Emil as he crested the knoll. Walt and Will did, too. But he held up his hands, shook his head, and ran to them as they slowed.

“What happened?”

“A rat,” he said, pale and sweating as if he’d been running for an hour, and gesturing at the wagon. “Let’s go. Now!”

She wanted to press him, but she could see he was in no mood to be pressed.

“They said lorries are coming for us soon.”

“I don’t care.”

They assumed their positions fore and aft of the little wagon. Emil began to pull it hard across the open ground. Adeline, Malia, and Lydia puffed to stay with him.

“Slow down, Emil,” Adeline gasped. “We can’t keep up.”

“Then I’ll pull it myself until we’re in the forest,” he said, and strained all the more.

Ten minutes later, with the rest walking and only Emil and Adeline still moving the wagon at a trot, they went over a rise in the road and into the shade of hardwoods. Only then did he slow. Only then did he grunt, “Enough. That’s enough.”

Still holding on to the wagon handle, Emil stopped, leaned over, and panted. Then he heaved and vomited violently.

“My God, Emil!” Adeline said, rushing to his side. “What happened?”

“I just needed water,” he said. “From the running.”

She got him a cup of water, looked back, and saw the boys jogging to them. Emil gulped the water. By sheer will, he stood and wiped his face clean to meet them.

“We’re okay,” Emil said, throwing his arms around them and stealing glances at Adeline. “We’ll go to our new home now. We never have to think of that place or that man ever again.”

Chapter Nineteen

Trucks rolled by them. One stopped to let them load their wagons. Two hours later, they arrived in Wielun, the very first town Hitler attacked when he invaded Poland in 1939. A sizable portion of the town still lay in ruins from the Wehrmacht and Luftwaffe bombardments. The buildings left standing were either empty or filled with resentful Poles, who glared at the Black Sea Germans as they unloaded their meager belongings and set out to find their new place in the world.

There had been no canvas roof on the rear of the truck, so Adeline had been able to see that the surroundings were largely farmland. Much of it had lain fallow, which surprised her and made her anxious. If crops weren’t being raised, how were they to eat? The dry goods they’d brought from the East would last only so long.

She voiced her concerns to Emil as they wandered through the narrow streets and bomb rubble, looking for their new home.

“They said we get ration cards,” Emil said. “Besides, I don’t want to stay here long. At some point, Adeline, we have to go west.”

“At some point. But not now. The boys need a calm life for a bit, and so do I.”

They found the address: a gray, dilapidated, three-story, wood-framed building badly in need of repair. The building’s front stoop sagged. The door hung crookedly on its hinges and moaned when Emil used the key to open it, revealing a narrow hall and a narrower staircase that ascended into shadow.

There were six apartments inside, two on each floor. The first-floor flats were uninhabitable. Emil’s parents and Adeline’s cousin Marie and her twins took the second-floor apartments. Emil’s family and Adeline’s mother and sister would take the third-floor flats.

The air inside was hot and rank with human odor. When they climbed the staircases, the risers made cracking and popping noises as if they’d break away under their feet.

“Is this safe?” Lydia asked, holding the flimsy banister with both hands.

“Let’s go up and down one at a time until we’re sure,” Emil said.

“Do you feel that breeze?” Adeline asked. “It’s coming through the wall.”

“Beggars can’t be choosers,” Karoline said as she went into her apartment.

Adeline climbed another flight and opened the door to their flat, revealing a narrow room with three stools, a wooden table, and a kitchen at the far end. The sink was filled with dishes and the floor covered in dead flies and mouse and rat shit. So were the plates of black, unidentifiable food on the table and the globes of the flameless lanterns.

“Looks like they left in a hurry,” she said. “Probably during the bombing.”

“It stinks in here,” Will said.

“It’s hot, too,” Walt said. “I don’t like this place.”

“We don’t have a choice,” Adeline said. “We’ll do the best we can with what we’ve got. But it is hot in here. Go outside, watch our wagon, and stay together.”

After the boys left, she and Emil found the source of the stench—two dead rats—in the narrow single bedroom, which boasted a small window, two wooden bunks, and no bedding. The walls were littered with penciled numbers, equations, and geometry proofs she recognized from her school days. A forgotten ragged sweater and a ripped shirt hung from a nail on the back of the door.

“Well,” Adeline said, taking in the total bleakness of their new home, “I guess we can only go up from here.”