“Why do you believe a radio?” she said dismissively. “I thought we learned to ignore anything said on the radio by a government.”

“This was different,” he insisted. “This came from the West, from England, where people are free to tell the truth. Wahl says that at some point the Wehrmacht will retreat to Berlin, and when they finally surrender, we want to get to the Americans or the British as fast as possible, or we’ll be caught by the Soviets and . . .”

Adeline’s anger was gone, but now she seemed preoccupied.

“Don’t you see?” Emil said. “Please don’t ignore me. Wahl sees it, too.”

She pivoted her head to look at him blankly. “Sees what?”

“The West, Adella—freedom, what we want, the Allies—they’re coming at us! We need to be ready to go to them, or the Soviets will get us from behind, and we could all be going to Siberia or worse.”

Adeline blinked a few times, absorbing what he’d said before her hands fell to the table. “Okay. I surrender. When do we go on this suicide mission?”

“It’s not a suicide mission,” Emil said, smiling as he sat across from her and held her hands, which were cold despite the late-summer heat. “That is why Sergeant Wahl is so important to us. We will know when the time is exactly right to run, because he can listen to where the Allies are on the BBC German Service every night.”

Adeline shook her head as if clearing cobwebs. “Why would he do that?”

“Because he is going west, too,” Emil said. “He will help us if he can.”

“But why would he do that? Why even talk to you in the first place?”

“He said he just saw me working harder than anyone else and wanted to talk to me about it. There are some good people left in the world, Adeline. Even among the Germans.”

“I hope so,” she said. “When does your friend think we’ll go? Tomorrow? Next week? Before winter?”

“Wahl says the war could be over before Christmas, and we should plan on traveling as soon as the Allies get across the Rhine River, closing on Berlin.”

Adeline closed her eyes a moment and then opened them and sighed. “At least, I don’t have to think about it anytime soon.”

“You do need to think about it. You need to—”

“No, Emil, I don’t!” she shouted. “You need to think about it! I need to think about other things, thank you very much!”

Emil gaped at her. Adeline rarely raised her voice. His wife could be firm, but she almost never shouted.

“Why are you yelling at me?” he demanded.

Adeline tried to glare at him but looked lost and then burst into tears. “I don’t know. I shouldn’t . . . but I . . .”

He went over, and she stood up into his arms, sobbing. “I shouldn’t care, but I do. I care, Emil. I care. I care. I care.”

“What is going on? Care about what? Care about who?”

It took several moments for her to compose herself and step back from him, sniffling.

“I was cleaning this morning. I discovered something.”

Adeline went to the corner where the broom and dustpan stood. She set them aside before putting the toe of her shoe on the floorboard closest to the rear wall. The floorboard rose enough to allow her to lift it.

Reaching into the space between the floor joists, she came up with a thick, dog-eared book with a cracked and burnished dark leather cover. “It’s a Jewish Bible. I think,” she said, and then opened the book to show him writing that baffled him.

“What language is this?” he asked.

“Hebrew,” she said, tearing up again. “I saw one like this in Mrs. Kantor’s house back in Birsula. She called it a mikra, I think.”

Emil frowned. “But why are you crying?”

She wiped at her tears with the sleeve of her blouse. “I went to the well for water to wash clothes afterward, and I was talking to one of the Polish women who speaks German, and I told her what I’d found under the floorboards and . . .”

Adeline looked lost again. “She asked where we lived. I told her, and she said this whole building used to be Jewish. Then she said that every refugee apartment in Wielun used to belong to Jews. Every single one. And do you know what else she said they owned, the Jews?”

Emil was feeling shaken, though he sensed the answer. “What?”

Adeline lifted the fabric of the sleeve of her blouse as if it were thorny.

“Our clothes,” she said, tears streaming down her face. “She said they made all the Jews take off their clothes before they were killed, and we were given their clothes after they were boiled clean. The woman looked like she wanted to spit on me for it and then walked away.”

That hit Emil hard, made him recall multiple headlights cutting the twilight.

Adeline said, “Don’t you understand, Emil? We’re wearing the clothes of good people like Mrs. Kantor and Esther. Maybe the good people who lived right here. People who loved and had children and—”

She choked. “It makes us a part of it, doesn’t it? Their hatred? Their murdering? I feel so dirty and ashamed, Emil. I don’t know what to do.”

At that, Emil had to sit down. His head ached from Sergeant Wahl’s beer and now swirled with guilt and regret and hatred. He never asked to wear a dead man’s clothes. He never asked that the SS be in Dubossary when he’d had to fetch building supplies. He never asked Haussmann to single him out and . . .

“Emil!” Adeline shouted. “I need you to listen to me!”

“I am listening to you!” he thundered back before lowering his voice. “I hear you, Adeline. You are not part of what they’ve done. It makes my skin crawl that these are the clothes we’ve been given. If I could, I’d strip them off and buy others, but I can’t and neither can you.”

“What do we do? I mean, we’re living with ghosts all around us, Emil. We’re wearing their clothes and sleeping in their beds. How do we live with that?”

“We won’t for long. Until we can buy new clothes, we thank the ghosts for their clothes and their beds, and we go on. If things were reversed, we’d want them to do so. Life goes on, Adeline. They were gone before we got here. It’s not like we threw them out ourselves.”

They heard the boys laughing and shouting, their feet pounding up the staircase. Emil got a cloth, dipped it in the bucket, and handed it to Adeline. She washed the tears off her face before breaking into a smile and throwing her arms open to Walt and Will who burst into the flat, flushed and sweaty and happy as only young boys can be.

Adeline kept her focus on her family but tried not to ignore whose clothes she wore and whose bunk she lay down on at night. There were times in the weeks and months that followed, however, when she almost forgot, and the clothes seemed hers and not a ghost’s, and their apartment belonged more to the living than the dead.

Rese returned to their lives at the end of September. Praeger, the same medic who’d taken her to the hospital, brought her home. Johann was happy, whereas Karoline displayed little emotion when her daughter arrived in a wheelchair, blanket across her lap, glassy-eyed and much older in Adeline’s view. Rese seemed more resigned than happy to see her parents and the rest of the family, until the boys came around the corner. Then she got a devilish look on her face.

“Want to see my legs?” she said.

Walt didn’t seem to want to, but Will walked right up to Rese and said, “I do.”

Rese threw back the blanket to reveal she was wearing artificial legs. “Peggy,” she said, pointing to her left leg. “The right’s Hopper. They’re different lengths, so I need to keep track. Hopper’s the longer one.”

“Can you walk on Peggy and Hopper?” Walt asked, interested now.

“With crutches,” Praeger said. “She can even climb stairs.”

“She’ll have to,” Johann said.

“She’s ready,” the medic said, and then crouched by Rese’s side. “Time for me to go. I am on duty tonight.”

“Will you come back?” she asked, acting as if she feared his answer. “It’s a long way from Lodz.”

“It’s not that far, Rese,” Praeger said. “Besides, how could I stay away from your beauty and humor?”

Rese blushed before saying, “You’ll leave my medicine?”

“Right here,” he said, handing her a pouch. “Make it last. And here are your crutches. The wheelchair should go upstairs with her. She needs to be up on the new legs slowly at first, and every day she should practice.”

Praeger left then. Rese received a round of applause getting out of the wheelchair and climbing the stairs less with the crutches than the banister. Johann brought the wheelchair up, and she sat in it, sweat gushing off her forehead as she looked around.

“Who’d we piss off to get this place?” Rese asked.

In the month that followed, Adeline tried to visit with her mother and sister and Rese and Marie at least once a day.