“We’ll walk if we have to,” he said.

Adeline hesitated only a moment before yet again packing their meager belongings. Her mother and sister did the same. Marie was feeling sick and needed help, but she was not waiting for the Soviets to send her and her sons back to Ukraine, either. When Emil knocked on his parents’ door and entered their quarters later that evening, however, he found his mother, father, and sister sitting by the coal stove.

“C’mon, get packed,” he said. “We’ve got to leave early.”

Karoline said, “We’re not going.”

“What? You have to go. You know what they’ll do to you when—”

“Do we?” Rese asked. “We’ll just speak to them in Russian. They won’t know who we are. And besides, I can’t walk to Germany, and you can’t carry me.”

“The wheelchair.”

Johann shook his head. “It won’t last the trip. This is it, son. We’re staying and hoping for the best.”

The temperature nose-dived that night. March came in like a lion, with snow that intensified after dawn. While he waited out the storm, Emil kept arguing with his parents and sister, telling them that their best hope was to get to the Allied lines. They wouldn’t hear of it. Karoline said she had heard rumors that the Soviets might let them return to their lands.

“Don’t believe it,” Emil said. “Not a word. They’ll say anything. Do anything.”

He stood at the window, watching the snowy streets. Every time he saw a convoy of Wehrmacht trucks heading through town, headed toward Germany, he ran down to ask for a ride for his family and their four carts. And every time they turned him down, even when he asked for his family alone.

The same pure bloods that Reichsführer Heinrich Himmler had lauded for leaving Ukraine to repopulate Greater Germany were now unwanted, discarded, forgotten, and left to their own wits. Emil was at once discouraged, isolated, and yet unbowed; he had relied on himself in difficult situations before, hadn’t he?

Never bet against me. I’ve gotten out of tougher situations than this.

The snow finally stopped on the morning of March 4, 1945, but howling east winds had caused drifting and stranded them another five days. Luckily for the Martels, the Soviets had been hampered by the same foul weather and were still encamped along the Oder River the evening of March 9, when Emil saw other ethnic Germans like themselves loading their wagons. The Martels had a final meal of mashed potatoes and sauerkraut and went to bed with plans to leave first thing in the morning.

When Emil got up at dawn on March 10, he could see other refugees already pushing their carts to Berlin. An hour later and knowing this might be the last time he would ever see his parents and sister, Emil fought off tears, hugging them and telling them each good-bye.

“We’ll see each other again,” Rese promised from her wheelchair. “I know it, just like Corporal Gheorghe said he knew he was going to live through Stalingrad.”

He rolled his eyes but couldn’t help smiling. “I’m counting on it.”

With that, Emil began moving the last of their things into the three wagons on the sidewalk out in front of the tenement. The sun was strong, melting the snow, springlike, almost balmy after the cold blasts they’d survived in the prior months. He planned to follow the other refugees, heading south first, then picking up a main road heading west. With luck, they could make fifteen kilometers a day, which would put them at the German border in roughly eight days. From there, we’ll figure out how to get to the western Allies and—

Emil felt a sharp poke at his back that almost knocked him into the little wagon. He got his balance, turned around to see what had hit him, and found two Polish militiamen standing there. One of them was aiming a rifle at him.

“German?” the rifleman said in German.

Emil nodded. “Volksdeutscher.”

“Hands behind your head,” he said. “You are coming with us. You have cleanup work to do. Here and then in the Soviet Union.”

Stunned, Emil said, “No, no, my family, we were just leaving.”

Adeline had come out of the building with the boys, her mother, sister, and Marie, who held the twins.

“You’re not going anywhere but with us,” the soldier said as the other one came around behind Emil. “March.”

“Emil!” Adeline shouted in a panic.

“Let me at least say good-bye to my family,” he said.

“No,” the soldier said. “March!”

Emil felt another jab between his shoulder blades and started walking, feeling like he was outside of himself the way he’d been that fateful night in Dubossary, apart from his body, walking on the road to doom.

“Papa! Papa!” Walt and Will yelled.

Emil looked over his shoulder, saw them bursting into tears. Adeline ran up alongside the militiamen, her palms up in surrender.

“Please, he’s done nothing wrong,” she said in Russian. “He’s not a soldier. We’re farmers from Ukraine. Can’t you hear our accent?”

“We don’t care about your accent, and we don’t care where you’re from or what you do,” the first militiaman said. “We have orders to find all Germans, including all Volksdeutsche men, and detain them until we can turn them over to the Soviets.”

“No,” Adeline said, terrified. “No, no, no, where are you taking him?”

“He’ll help clean up Poland for a while,” the soldier behind Emil said. “And then, far east. Probably Siberia.”

“No!” Adeline shrieked, and grabbed the front soldier by the sleeve. “You can’t do this! Please, my father never came back from Siberia!”

He threw her down in the snow and snarled, “We don’t care, bitch.”

Jolted by the fall, lying there in the snow, Adeline fought her way to her knees and screamed hysterically after him, “Emil! Emil! What do I do now?”

Emil looked over his shoulder at the love of his life and his dear sons coming to help her and bellowed, “Go west, Adeline! Go as far west as you can, and I promise I’ll find you!”

Chapter Twenty-Four

Adeline felt her sons’ hands on her, hugging her and trying to console her. She heard their voices asking questions but did not understand them and could not look at them. She just knelt there in the street, paralyzed and staring after the dwindling form of Emil, her husband, her life, being stolen from her when they were only minutes from making their final escape west to freedom. The sheer unfairness of the loss was magnified by the last sight she had of her husband—trudging forward into his fate with head unbowed and will unbroken.

I will remember that, Adeline thought, dazed. I will hold that image in my heart until . . .

In her mind, Emil’s last words—I promise I’ll find you—echoed against her father’s last words—I promise you all I will come back!

But my father never came back, she thought bitterly, and felt more broken than she’d been in her entire life. He never came back. He . . .

“Adeline,” Marie said. “Please, you’ve got to get up. You’re upsetting the boys.”

Though still in a daze, Adeline heard that clearly and looked up to find her cousin kneeling at her side. Marie was gazing at her with a concern and understanding born of the harshness of her own lost love. Then she felt a little hand patting on her other shoulder and looked around to see Walt there, crying.

“Is Papa coming back, Mama?” he choked.

Adeline hesitated, suddenly understanding that her faith in God, in life, in herself, lay in total jeopardy. She could feel the fear of never seeing Emil again like a night bird clawing at her heart, tearing at the root of the one thing that had always kept her going: her fervent belief that someday, somehow, their life would get better if she kept faith in God and her dream of that mythical green valley in the West.

“Mama?” Walt blubbered. “Please say he’s coming back.”

She licked her lips and swallowed before Will said, “He’s coming back, Mama. Right? He’s just going away for a while. Right?”

The shaky squeak in her youngest son’s voice triggered something more powerful than her own fear or loss. A mother’s instinct to protect her young surged through Adeline, obliterating for the moment her desperate need to cope and grieve.

“Yes,” she said, opening her arms to her boys. “Papa’s coming back. He will find us.”

They rushed into her embrace, and she held them, not knowing whether to pray to God for strength or to damn God for robbing her of a husband and her sons of a father.

“Adeline?” Marie said again. “There’s a truck coming. You need to get up.”

She pulled back from Walt and Will, forcing a smile to her lips and a glint of optimism to her eyes as she said, “Well then, we’ll just have to have our own adventure until your father comes to find us. Okay?”

The boys wiped at their eyes and their cheeks with their sleeves and nodded. She smiled again, stood, and brushed the dirt off her skirt before taking each boy by the hand, and with a nod of gratitude to her cousin, she tried to walk resolutely back to the little wagon and her mother and older sister.