“One of us will be given a permit to stay here and help them run the farm. Mama and Father have to choose,” Filipe told me softly. He brushed my hair back from my face, then added, “But to ask them to choose between their children is a cruelty that we will not tolerate. Stani and I will go. You will have to work hard, Alina—and you are lazy, so it won’t be easy. But it is safer for you to stay here.”

“But I’m going to marry Tomasz soon, and then I’ll move to Warsaw,” I said stubbornly.

“Alina,” Stanislaw whispered impatiently. “There is no university left at Warsaw. I heard that the professors have all been imprisoned or executed, and most of the students joined the Wehrmacht. Tomasz is either in prison or working with those monsters, but it doesn’t even matter which—you’re not moving away.”

I was indignant at the very idea that Tomasz would ever align himself with the Nazi troops.

“How dare you—”

“Hush, Alina,” Filipe said tiredly. “No one knows where Tomasz is, not for sure, so don’t get upset.” Then he glanced at me, and he added slowly, “But if you stay here, he has a chance of finding you if he manages to get out of the city to come home.”

I’d thought the same thing myself. For just a moment, I clung to the idea greedily, but then I remembered what the trade-off was. I tried to imagine my life without the twins, but the very thought of it filled me with loneliness.

“But I don’t want you to go to away,” I whispered tearfully, and Stanislaw sighed.

“So, Alina, instead—will you go to the work farm for us then? Miles away from Mama and Father—all on your own?”

In the end, the boys would not be deterred. When the day came for them to leave, Mama, Father and I walked them into Trzebinia to the train station. Mateusz, Truda and Emilia met us there, and when Emilia saw me, she skipped to my side and smiled sadly.

“This is just like when we said goodbye to Tomasz,” she whispered.

I nodded, but I was distracted, absorbing the shocking scene before me. It was an overcast day, just like Tomasz’s departure, and we were at the train station again—but Emilia was very wrong, because I was immediately aware that this moment was something altogether new.

This time, no one was waiting on the platform to send their loved ones on to some exciting adventure. None of these children were leaving Trzebinia to learn or to explore—they were being stolen from us. To the invaders, they were nothing more than a resource to be exploited, but those of us left behind knew that a part of the soul of our district was being torn away. Even Nadia Nowak, who had already lost her husband in the bombings then had her precious Paulina taken for Germanization, stood on that platform and wailed loudly as she said goodbye to her three oldest teenagers. Nadia joined a sea of other mothers who sobbed with equal grief and terror, and a crowd of fathers who cleared their throats compulsively, and dabbed frantically at their eyes to hide any hint of moisture.

The young people stood woodenly for the most part. Some of the very young ones cried, but it wasn’t the unrestrained emotion we saw in their mothers—these were tears of shock and disbelief. I got the sense that even once the train arrived at the work farms, those young people would take weeks to accept the reality of their situations.

And that would have been me, but for my brothers.

I’d been relieved since the decision was made that I would stay, but as I faced the consequences of my easy acceptance of my brother’s nobility, I was swamped in a wave of grief that threatened to knock me to my knees.

Emilia tugged my hand suddenly, and I looked down at her to find she was staring at me intently.

“Do you think Tomasz is still alive?” she asked me. I blinked at her, surprised both at the question and the resigned tone with which she asked it. I shook myself mentally and forced myself to focus, because there was something not at all right about such a grown-up, pessimistic tone coming from sweet little Emilia. I ruffled her hair and I said firmly, “Of course he is. He’s alive and he’s well and he’s doing everything he can to get back to us.”

“How can you be so sure?”

“He promised me, silly. And Tomasz would never lie to me.”

Her sharp green gaze didn’t waver from mine, and it took every bit of strength I had not to look away. I wouldn’t break the stare, because I feared if I did, she’d see right through me. Was I as sure as all that? Not at all. But for all of the desperation in our lives that day, I wanted to save Emilia the one small trauma of doubting her beloved big brother.

She nodded suddenly, abruptly, and went back to staring at the assembled crowd around us. All too soon, announcements came that it was time for the young people to make their way to the train. Filipe stepped toward me and enveloped me in a bear hug.

“Look after Mama and Father, Alina. Work hard.”

“I wish you could stay,” I whispered. My guilt was so palpable in that moment I couldn’t even make myself look him in the eye.

“I couldn’t stay. Not when the alternative was for you to go,” he said gently. Then he kissed my forehead and whispered against my hair, “Be brave, little sister. You are so much more than you know.”

Stani approached me as the tears filled my eyes. He kissed my cheek too, but he was silent, even as he embraced our parents. Father stood frozen, his muscles locked, his teeth set hard. Mama silently cried. Truda was clutching Mateusz’s arm so tightly her fingers were white, but her expression was solemn.

The boys gave a simultaneous nod, and they walked away to join the line to fill the train. They kept their chins high, and they both managed a smile and a wave back toward us just before they disappeared from our view.

I was awed by their courage and bewildered that even that moment didn’t seem to faze them one little bit. Of course, they must have been terrified—they were only boys, and all of the things that had scared me about the forced labor arrangement would have been equally overwhelming to them too. Neither one spoke much German, neither one had ever lived out of home before.

I knew the very act of hiding their fear was one of sacrifice, just like the decision to go in my place. They were good people—the best people.

I still think about my big brothers. I sometimes wonder if I would have done anything different that day, if only I’d known that within a year they’d both be dead—and that those quiet moments by the train station would be the very last time I ever saw them.

CHAPTER 6

Alice

Mom has turned Babcia’s retirement home unit upside down but she can’t find the box. Now she’s headed back to her house; she has some of Babcia and Pa’s things in storage. It’s been a few hours and she’ll be a while yet, but Eddie is pressing the lunch button on his iPad dozens of times a minute, and it’s driving me, Babcia and the nurses insane. I turned the sound down, but Eddie turned it straight back up—just like Babcia did earlier. One of the nurses quite gently asked if I could take the iPad off him, but it’s his voice and his ears, so I refused.