“Here we go,” Adeline said. “Let’s walk as far as we can today.”

She picked up the wagon handle, gave one last glance east down the road to that corner where Emil had disappeared more than three months before, and then turned her head west and started walking. They’d gone less than a kilometer to the outskirts of the town, joining a steady stream of other refugees headed west, when Will said, “Mama, how far is Germany?”

“One hundred kilometers,” Adeline said, already feeling her feet start to ache.

“And Berlin?” Walt asked.

“Nearly three hundred.”

“Ahhh,” Will groaned. “We’re never going to get there.”

They covered twelve kilometers by sundown that first day. Adeline did not have time to wonder if Emil was seeing the sunset somewhere in the vast Soviet east. During the course of the day, she’d somehow become the de facto leader of the family and had to decide where they’d camp for the night and what they’d eat and where each of them would sleep.

Adeline had the boys dig out an oven for her in a stream bank, then made soup and heated the bread she’d made the day before and rationed the dried meat she’d bought back in March on the black market when the Reichsmark still had value. While Will and Walt fed the fire, she and Malia washed the dishes.

“Can you believe they’re gone for good?” Malia asked. “Rese, Johann, Mrs. Sunshine?”

“I’ll miss Rese and Johann,” Adeline said.

“Something in my stomach says they’re going to regret it.”

“I told them that, but she wouldn’t listen.”

“What else is new about her?”

Adeline told Malia why Karoline had taken her aside.

“Are you trying to tell me she has a soul after all?”

“Maybe.”

“Maybe people can change. Maybe people can surprise you if they live long enough.”

Adeline was suddenly overcome with emotion and hugged her older sister.

“What was that about?” Malia asked when they separated.

“That was thanks,” Adeline said. “For being you and being here and sticking up for your little sister. And because of what happened, what we heard earlier today.”

Her older sister sobered. “I imagine there will be a lot of that.”

“Not with me,” Adeline said. “I’ll claw and bite until they bleed if they come.”

Later that evening, she lay between her sons on the ground, facing the last of the glowing embers in the fire and hearing Marie trying to soothe her twins. Rutger had developed a hacking cough during the day, and Hans had come down with the fever as well. But Adeline could not take her mind off the young refugee girl, no older than sixteen, whom they’d seen two Soviets drag off the road into a barn.

They had all heard her screaming, even the boys, who had been frightened and asked what was happening to the girl and why. Adeline had told them she didn’t know and didn’t want to know, and she’d told herself that she would not let it happen to her. No matter what, she would not let herself be raped by animals. But lying there on the ground, with a mad chorus of bugs and night birds calling to her from the creek bottom, she knew she had never felt so frightened and alone in her entire life despite her mother and sister being less than ten meters away.

Emil was gone and with him her unwavering faith in God and her ability to survive and keep her sons alive. During the entire trek out of Ukraine, her faith had stayed strong, and she’d believed that God walked at her side. Now, she realized it was Emil who had really walked at her side, and with him gone, she felt abandoned, thrown to the wind, forgotten by grace.

For the hundredth night since she’d last seen Emil yelling at her to go west, Adeline shut her eyes and prayed to God to save him and to take her and the boys safely west where he could find them. And for the hundredth night since she’d last seen him, she fell asleep, plagued by a dark silence that made her heart ache all the more.

The next day, Adeline and the boys pushed and pulled the little wagon for fourteen kilometers. The third day, they managed ten. The boys never complained, because they saw the thousands of other refugees just like them jamming the roads, all heading toward German soil. It rained for a while that third afternoon, which helped everyone but Marie’s sons, who were burning up with fever and were weakened by the rattling, choking cough that ravaged their lungs.

They camped in an abandoned silo that night, and the sounds of the twins’ whimpers and cries and Marie’s soothing words echoed all around them. Marie’s sons finally settled down. Adeline fell into a deep, dreamless sleep that was broken by machine gun fire. Bullets pierced the silo above them, letting thin shafts of sunlight in, and turning every one of them hysterical with fear.

The shooting stopped as quickly as it had begun. They heard men laughing. They all screamed that there were people inside. If they heard, they didn’t care and raked the upper silo with a few more bursts before it stopped.

Will was crying and held Malia. Walt had gone quiet but held tight to Adeline. Lydia was sobbing. So was Marie, who crouched over her twins, protecting them.

Shaking from adrenaline, Adeline told Walt to stay with Will, went to the hatch door to the silo and pushed it open. She ducked her head out, seeing three Russian soldiers walking away, vodka bottles in their hands, machine guns over their shoulders. Beyond them on the road, hundreds of other refugees were already on the move, streaming toward the broken Fatherland.

When she turned back, Will was wiping the tears from his eyes. Walt sat on the floor of the silo, staring down, silent. Malia and Lydia were staring off into the distance. And Marie was still crouched over her little boys and crying in low, terrible moans.

“It’s okay,” Adeline said. “They’re gone. Couple of drunken soldiers is all.”

Adeline went over to her cousin, who continued to moan, crouched, and rubbed her back. “I said it’s okay, Marie. They’re gone now.”

Marie’s chest heaved, and she groaned. “Make it stop, Adella. Please make it stop.”

“Hey,” Malia said, kneeling next to her. “What’s the matter, sweetie?”

Marie lifted her head at last, her expression tortured, her eyes like bloodred saucers. “My little boy’s gone,” she whispered, “and I don’t know what to do.”

Adeline was confused and then horrified when she looked under Marie at the twins, seeing Hans in his cloth diaper, squirming on his blanket, his chubby cheeks flush with fever, and his brother stiff, cold, and blue.

While Malia and the boys dug a grave outside, Marie stayed in the silo, all but ignoring the squawking little boy in her lap as she gazed dumbly at the shawl covering his twin.

Adeline remained at her side the entire time. “Hans wants to eat,” she said softly.

“He wants to, but he doesn’t when his fever’s spiking like this,” Marie replied in a daze. “Rutger did the same thing two days ago.”

Walt stuck his head in. “It’s ready, Mama.”

Marie’s face twisted in pain. She held out Hans to Adeline. “I’ll carry Rutger.”

“No.”

“I’ll carry my boy,” she insisted.

Remembering the day that she buried her own firstborn, Adeline took Hans and watched her cousin wrap her dead boy in the shawl and carry him outside. When she went to lower Rutger into the grave, she almost fell in after him, but Malia grabbed her and held her tight.

Lydia began to recite the Lord’s Prayer. Malia joined her. Adeline was unable to give much voice to the words while Marie sobbed out her heart and soul.

After they’d filled the grave, Marie said, “I’m not ready to leave him. I can’t.”

“You have to,” Adeline said, handing Hans to Malia and going to her cousin. “You have another boy to think of and cherish.”

“But I’ll never be here again.”

Adeline went to the grave, grabbed a handful of the earth, and wrapped it in her handkerchief. “You’ll take this dirt with you, and when you find a home, you’ll bury it and put up a cross so you can grieve properly. But for now, as hard as it is, you’ll have to leave him behind and think about Hans.”

Marie had a piteous look on her face as she took the kerchief that contained the grave dirt. She clutched it to her chest as she trudged toward her wagon. Adeline knew that hunched-over, tortured posture all too well and mourned for Marie, understanding that the only thing that would unwind her cousin’s pain was time and the joy of other children.

July 2, 1945

Near Wykroty, Poland