My grandmother wants to see her homeland one last time.

Babcia passes me the iPad now, and I open the AAC and swipe vaguely through the icons, wondering how I’m supposed to use this limited language to say “there’s no way in Hell I can arrange to fly to Poland and take some photos for you, especially not on short notice, and we have no idea how long you have left so I’d have to go straightaway anyway.”

How do I tell the woman who offered me endless love and acceptance for my entire life that the first favor she’s ever asked of me is one I have to decline? How do I tell a person who’s given me everything that the one thing she wants from me is too much? The answer comes swiftly.

I can’t. When the family matriarch tells you to do something, you damn well do it.

But she’s asking something of me that I’m not even sure I can physically arrange in the timeline we have. But there is no icon for “maybe” on the AAC—the concept is too vague for children like Eddie, and that’s who the program was designed for. Instead, I swipe to the Notes screen to type the word maybe, but I’m startled to find there are already notes there.

Trzebinia

Ul. S´wie˛tojan´ska 4, Trzebinia

Ul. Polerechka 9B, Trzebinia

Ul. Dworczyk 38, Trzebinia

Alina Dziak

Emilia Slaska

Mateusz and Truda Rabinek

Saul Eva Tikva Weiss

Prosze˛ zrozum. Tomasz.

I look at up her, confused. Those notes are in Polish, which she knows all too well that I don’t understand. I lift the iPad so she can’t see the screen, then swipe to Google, load Google Translate, and type in the words Can you understand me? I hit the speaker icon, and words that mean nothing to me fill the air, but Babcia’s eyes widen and she nods enthusiastically. We share a grin, and then I flick back to the Notes section on the iPad, and my heart sinks again.

I can feel my grandmother’s eyes on me, sharp and questioning and desperate and hopeful. I swallow, hard, then I raise my gaze to her. We stare at each other in the silence, until she nods, just once, and then she seems satisfied. She sinks back into her pillows and closes her eyes again, the echo of a smile lingering on her lips.

I have no idea what she thought she saw on my face just now. But I spend the rest of the day at her bedside, trying to figure out if there’s a way to make this work.

CHAPTER 13

Alina

Tomasz and I immediately fell into a pattern of nightly visits where we’d share a few innocent kisses and an awkward cuddle through the window frame, but it was impossible for us to speak much, because my parents were always asleep on just the other side of the wall. I had a million or more questions I needed to ask him—so many things I wanted to tell him or to hear him say—but it all had to tumble out in fragments of conversation because he never dared stay more than a few minutes at a time.

“Let me come to the woods,” I would plead with him. “It is too hard for us to talk here the way we need to.”

“I don’t think that’s a good idea, Alina,” he would whisper back. “If your parents catch you leaving the house, it will be impossible for you to explain.”

“But if they catch us talking here—”

“If they catch us talking here, I promise you I will disappear so fast you will think I’ve turned invisible.”

There was the cocky boy I’d fallen in love with, arrogant in the confidence he had that he could protect me. He seemed to think he had transferred the risk of our meeting from me to himself by coming to the house, but I wasn’t so sure. The problem was that it was impossible to argue with him—not least in part because we had to talk in whispers. I wanted explanations, but my desperation to meet him in the woods ran even deeper than that. I wanted to hold him and kiss him and to talk with him openly. I quite desperately missed Tomasz’s stories. I missed the fairy tales and the exaggerations and even the possibly outlandish facts about far-flung lands and biology and science—but there was no time for extended conversations like that when we were whispering through my window. Those visits each night were a fleeting luxury, one that felt increasingly too short, but I didn’t dare feel disappointed, because at least he was back and I was well aware how lucky I was to have even that.

It was only a few days after Tomasz’s return that Mama and I walked to tend the field near the Golaszewski property and found Jan on his hands and knees, weeding. I was walking in front, and soon found I was near enough that I felt it only polite to greet him.

“Hello, Jan,” I said, as politely as I could manage. “How are you today?”

Jan’s bushy gray eyebrows dipped low and his forehead creased as he peered up at me.

“Ola has taken Justyna away. I thought you would like to know.”

“Jan,” Mama greeted him abruptly as she approached.

“Faustina,” Jan said, his tone just as short.

“Where has Justyna gone?” I asked hesitantly. “To...to the city?”

“Yes, to the city,” Jan confirmed, but his face was reddening and his nostrils had flared, and I knew that he was not pleased with this turn of events. “In any case, she is gone, and that is that.”

He nodded curtly once more at Mama, then he dumped his tools into the dirt, then turned and walked away, across the field to their home. Jan had always seemed so imposing to me, but that day, he seemed smaller somehow, perhaps because it was evident to me that for all of his bluster and energy, he was actually just a man, and now a very lonely one at that.

“I am sorry your friend is gone, Alina,” Mama murmured, as we returned to our own home.

“Thank you, Mama.”

I so rarely saw Justyna, I knew I’d barely miss her. Still, I was a little sad, but perhaps not nearly as sad as I would have been had it happened a few weeks earlier.

* * *

On nights when the moon was full and I could really see Tomasz well, there was no mistaking that the hollows of his cheeks grew with every passing day. I decided I would find a way to get him some food.

I was aware that I would be stealing food from my mother—who was likely stealing food from the Nazis—but I was far more terrified of Mama than I was of the invaders, and that was saying something. The first time I passed Tomasz a cup of scraps from my dinner, the flare of sheer hunger in his gaze was worth the terror I’d felt squirreling the food away.

“How did you get this?”

“From my dinner,” I said. He hesitated, and I waved toward the food. “Please, Tomasz. Go ahead—I had plenty.”

He laughed incredulously.