He trailed off, and I looked up at him.

“You don’t even want to go to America,” I protested weakly. “You wanted to go back to the camp, right? To serve with the Polish army?”

He nodded, then he paused, and when he turned to me, his gaze was intensely serious.

“But...what I want does not matter in this moment, Alina. I am not proposing to do this for myself. I made you a promise,” Saul said. “I told you that until Tomasz returned, I’d care for you and your baby as if you were my own. And there is no doubt in my mind that this is exactly what he would have wanted for you both.”

“But how will he ever find me?” I asked weakly.

“Do you really think a little thing like distance would stop him from coming for you? He walked across Poland for you once before. Finding his way to a boat to cross the Atlantic will be easy after that.”

* * *

Less than a month after we left the camp at Buzuluk, Saul and I stood with Frederick Adamcwiz on the deck of the biggest boat I’d ever seen, staring in wide-eyed wonder as Ellis Island loomed before us. I was dazzled and awed and, frankly, terrified.

All I knew about this country were the things that Tomasz had told me, and even at the time, I had hardly believed him. Now, Sally Adamcwiz would travel to pick us up, and we would make our home in a tropical place that had barely any winter, a house so close to the beach that we could walk there. I was excited about the possibilities of this new life, and so hopeful—because I knew that Tomasz would find me there, and until then, I had my dear friend Saul by my side. I glanced at Saul then, to find he was staring down into the water in silence.

“Are there Jews here?” I blurted. Frederick gave me a patient gentle smile.

“Oh yes, Hanna. There are many Jews in America.”

“And it’s safe for them here?” I asked him hesitantly.

“Well, we have some problems...” Frederick admitted. “Especially here in New York, where I live. There have been some issues in recent years with gangs of youths harassing our Jewish people—a few incidents of businesses being vandalized, a cemetery desecrated... But, of course, nothing like what you saw in your homeland. America is a peaceful place, I assure you.”

I watched Saul as Frederick spoke. I watched as the blood drained from my friend’s face. I watched as his hands against the rail began to shake until he clutched it tightly in his fist to hide the tremble. I watched when he closed his eyes on what I knew was an intense wave of déjà vu.

His calm wisdom had impressed me until that moment, but I had just discovered that Frederick Adamcwiz was incredibly naive. I knew with absolute certainty that small problems in a country can become immense tragedies when left unchecked. It started small in Germany. It even started small in Poland, long before the occupation. It started with a small group of people harassing and vandalizing and desecrating, and it ended with trainloads of my countrymen shipped to furnaces and dumped into a river.

I reached for Saul’s hand then, and I squeezed it hard. As soon as Frederick left us to go pack up his luggage, I turned to Saul and I shook my head fiercely.

“You have had your lifetime’s share of persecution and suffering, Saul Weiss. Until we are absolutely sure this is a safe place for you, we need to keep your secret.”

“I can’t go through it again. God forgive me, I can’t.”

“We will keep it to ourselves until we know this place is safe,” I promised him. “It may be some time until Tomasz arrives. You deserve a few months’ rest.”

We embraced there on the deck—witnesses to a vow to hold on to a secret that we thought we could simply reveal one day. We had no idea of the gravity of that lie. We didn’t realize that time has a way of racing past you—that the long hard days sometimes make for very short years. Before we knew it, I was holding my daughter, who was always somehow our daughter because Saul took his vow to care for her very seriously from the moment of her birth. And as soon as his English was up to the challenge, Julita’s beloved “Da-da” was studying and certifying and working so damned hard to support us all, and he was doing it all under Tomasz’s name.

The day Saul was recertified as a physician in the American medical system was the day he applied to complete a program to become a pediatric surgeon. We didn’t talk about the twist on the specialty he’d achieved at home, but we both knew why he’d chosen it. And by then, we were hopelessly trapped within the prison of a lie that had seemed so sensible and so altruistic at the time. My false name was one thing—a small detail I’d eventually adjusted to, something I could have undone at any time if the need arose. Saul’s situation was so much more complicated.

It was Tomasz’s name on his certificates—Tomasz who was employed, Tomasz who held a lease for our home and later the finance arrangement for the car we purchased.

Tomasz who took a residency at the hospital as a pediatric surgeon.

Tomasz who climbed the ranks at the hospital until he was a consultant, and he was training dozens of medical students, saving hundreds of lives a year.

Only Saul and I knew that the real Tomasz was the man with the laughing eyes, the man captured in the photo I found while helping Sally in the days after Henry’s death, when we sorted through the enormous collection of duplications she’d amassed from the film he sent home over the years.

And only I knew that the tiny shoe Saul kept hidden in the top of our cupboard had actually belonged to his first daughter, his desperately loved Tikva Weiss.

It was Saul I shared my home with, Saul I shared my parenting highs and lows with. Saul who shared my bed, because we had grown so used to sleeping side by side since our “wedding” at Buzuluk. The few times we tried to establish separate bedrooms I’d wake to hear him shouting and sobbing in his sleep. Eventually, we accepted the reality of our situation. In some absolutely unique way, we were bonded to one another in spirit, if not in body.

I could not be Eva for Saul, and despite what every person in our lives thought, Saul would never be Tomasz for me. Instead, we were the very best of friends—partners in every way except that one which usually defines a marriage. We pined in company somehow—each of us eternally dedicated to our lost loves. And we were happy, and the life we built never stopped astounding me. I reveled in providing my daughter a life where she never had to learn what hunger or oppression meant. I watched as Judge Frederick’s yearly visits with books and toys at Christmastime spawned hero worship in Julita. By the time he passed away, she hadn’t yet hit puberty, but she’d already announced her intention to go to law school one day—and even more miraculous than that, she had the opportunities to make that dream a reality.

But as blessed as Saul and I were, I always waited. Every night, I’d look to the window as I fell asleep, and I’d let the hope flicker for just a second, like the flare of a match that doesn’t quite take. I’d imagine some unlikely scenario where Tomasz had been imprisoned somewhere, but even after all of these months then years and then decades, he would soon be free and would come for me like he’d promised. Perhaps he’d lost his memory? Perhaps he’d been injured and could not travel.