It was almost impossible to hide my grin as I said, “I’ll start tomorrow.”

Mama shrugged.

“Maybe your prayers will be the ones that inspire God to end this nightmare, so you should get started as soon as possible. Start today.”

I could not believe my luck—I was actually going to get twenty minutes alone with Tomasz every day—free to talk and to embrace and to see him in the daylight. I ate the rest of my biscuit far too quickly, and then as if things weren’t wonderful enough, Mama caught my elbow as I moved to run from the house and pressed something into my hand. I looked down at it, then gasped. She’d given me a surprisingly hefty chunk of bread.

“Mama!”

“To sustain you,” she said quietly. “For your time of prayer.”

There was an undertone in those last three words but I was too excited to really let myself think about that and all of the dangers it might represent. Instead, I smiled at her as innocently as I could manage and I packed up the breakfast dishes, and then went to collect my rosary beads from my room. I made an exaggerated show of holding the beads in my open hands, just to be sure Mama saw them. Even once I left the house, I walked slowly through the field because I wasn’t sure my parents weren’t watching me—I couldn’t seem too eager to commence my “time of prayer.” I knew my story was flimsy, but it was the best I could come up with, even after racking my brain half the night.

The woods were thick, a curious mixture of dark green fir branches up high and bright green birch trees nestled below. Most of the rest of the land surrounding the hill had been completely cleared for farmland, but this little patch of woods was so rocky and steep it had been left dense and wild. I half expected to see Tomasz sitting on the long, flat boulder in the big clearing at the top as he’d always done in the prewar days, but as I neared it, I realized that was far too exposed now that he was in hiding. I almost called out to him, but then it occurred to me how foolish that idea was.

If he was deep within the woods, I’d never find him—and that was the point, wasn’t it? He wasn’t even expecting me today—when we made this plan at night, we expected it would take me some time to convince my parents I should come. I walked just inside the thickest part of the woods and found a log to sit on. I was disappointed and dejected, but I couldn’t go home so soon, not without arousing suspicion, and I wasn’t about to blow this amazing arrangement on the first day.

“Alina,” a soft voice called, and I spun around—but still, couldn’t see him.

“Tomasz?”

“Look up, moje wszystko,” he said, his voice lilting with amusement.

He was sitting in the fork of a tree, far too high for my comfort, especially with his legs swinging on either side of a branch that looked barely strong enough to hold even his meager weight. He grinned, then slipped easily from the tree and walked a few steps toward me.

“That is not a safe place to hide,” I protested, as I rose from the log and jogged toward him.

He shrugged easily and said, “Nothing is safe anymore, Alina.” He said the words as a joke, but there was a heaviness in his voice too. I was reminded that we had so much left to talk about now that we could finally talk.

“Tell me. Tell me now about this trouble,” I demanded, but he hopped over a few boulders to reach me, then he wrapped his arms around me.

“It is so wonderful to hold you again in the daylight,” he whispered against my hair. I pressed my face into his neck and closed my eyes, breathing him in. Soon, I lifted my face toward him and simply stared up at him in the daylight for the first time since his return. He stared right back at me, and spontaneously, we shared a contented smile. Even deathly thin, even with a smear of dirt on his cheek, even with a scruffy beard and unkempt hair, he was still handsome to me. The world seemed utterly perfect in that moment—the morning light peeking through the canopy overhead, the smell of dew on the ground, the birds in the distance, and best of all, Tomasz’s arms around my waist. He tucked a wayward lock of my hair behind my ear, then he bent to kiss me gently and sweetly.

“One day, I will take you away from here,” he whispered, “One day, we will go someplace safe—someplace peaceful. One day, when you’re my wife, we will have the nicest house in the nicest street and the cutest children in the town and everyone will say, ‘Look at Tomasz and Alina, childhood sweethearts, now growing old together.’ You’re going to be one of those women who ages well. I can see it now—even when you’re an old babcia you’ll be breathtaking and I won’t be able to keep my eyes or my hands off you.”

“You’ve always been such a dreamer,” I sighed, but I was happily distracted. I was relieved to see a glimpse of the old Tomasz, relieved that this lighter side of my love had survived whatever had kept him away from me for so long. In those disjointed nights at my window, I’d caught glimpses of a man who wore guilt and sadness like a mask. It was every bit as much a relief to see this sweeter side of him reemerge as it was to hold him close to me.

“So, how did you convince your parents?” he asked me.

“I told them I wanted to retreat to pray the rosary,” I told him, and I lifted the beads from my pocket to show him. He burst out laughing.

“And your parents actually believed that you were taking meditative prayer walks in the woods?” he asked me incredulously. I giggled as I nodded, and he kissed my hair again.

“You need to trust me,” I scolded him gently. “I can keep your secrets, Tomasz.”

“I have no doubt about that,” he said quietly. “But I have a responsibility to keep you safe—above everything else. It’s risky enough for us to meet just now.”

“Have you joined the resistance?” I asked him. The Polish underground army had been chipping away at the Nazis for some time—more of an irritant to the occupying forces than a matched opponent—but Truda occasionally brought whispers of a secret newspaper and supplies shipments delayed or destroyed by organized attacks. I was scared for Tomasz—but I was also proud to think he might be involved in those efforts. I had a feeling our liberation was only a matter of time if heroes like Tomasz Slaski were on the job.

“I am fighting back the only way I know how,” he whispered. “Do you trust me?”

I pulled away to look up at him a little incredulously.

“How can you even ask me that. Do you trust me?”

“With my life, Alina,” he said.

The intensity in his gaze was breathtaking, but I wasn’t distracted this time. I gave him a pointed look and said, “Then you must tell me everything.”

“I will,” he promised. “I will tell you every excruciating detail, just as soon as I can. But today...let’s sit somewhere here and pretend it’s an ordinary day and the world isn’t going to Hell around us.”