After a while, Tomasz stood, and he approached me. His face and his beard were wet with tears, and as he embraced me, he was shaking.

“Alina,” he whispered. “I have to ask something of you. Can you wait with him?”

“Wait with him?” I whispered back, my gaze frantically flicking to the man and the bodies just a few feet away. “Where are you going?”

“He is covered in their blood,” Tomasz whispered. “He needs fresh clothes—I will have to go back to your house and get something for him to wear.”

“Can’t we all go? Can’t we take him with us?”

“We have to...” Tomasz broke off. His gaze dropped, then returned to mine. “We have to bury them first, my love. It is the very least they deserve.”

I squeezed my eyes closed for a minute, then suggested hopefully, “But Jan’s clothes will be inside...”

“Jan is entirely responsible for the death of Saul’s wife and baby, Alina. I can’t ask that of him.”

I wanted to say no, and the old Alina would have. But I was determined to be an adult now, and to make Tomasz proud of the woman I’d become. Still, it wasn’t easy to agree to remain alone with a man and two horrific bodies in a space where Nazis had clearly been in recent hours, particularly given the likelihood that they’d return. I gritted my teeth as I said, “Can we at least move him into shelter?”

“The inside of the house...it is...” Tomasz trailed off, then shook his head. “Don’t go in there, love. I saw it through the door. It’s a mess.” He brushed my hair back from my face, and he whispered, “I really don’t think they will come back here tonight. He still can’t tell me what happened, but either they purposefully left him alive or he somehow hid from them. And if they do come back, it will be in a vehicle, so you’ll see the lights or hear the engine long before they near the house—take him to the barn and hide. Okay?”

My breath caught, and I bit my lip hard and I forced myself to nod. My chest felt tight, as if the fear could choke the life right out of me too. Tomasz nodded toward Saul, encouraging me to go to the other man’s side, and I whimpered a little as I made myself step closer to the bodies. I told myself not to look at the baby again. I told myself I could sit with him and pretend it wasn’t there.

But I couldn’t look away, and it was Tikva I stared at as I walked. As I came closer, the stench of blood became overwhelming, and my stomach turned over again and again. I battled to clamp down the urge to retch, but I walked to Saul’s side, and I sat right beside him as Tomasz had done.

“Hello, Saul, it’s Alina,” I said, very gently. “Tomasz is going to get you fresh clothes. I’m going to stay with you. You are not alone. We are here for you.”

The man turned to me, and I could see him trying to focus his gaze.

“Thank you for your kindness, Alina,” he choked out. I nodded once, and as I went to look away again, he blurted, “I don’t know if they caught Jan or if he turned us in. But he must have told them everything—everything—where we were hiding, how we were surviving. They wanted us to give Tomasz up, they told Eva they’d let her go if she told them where to find him but she was far too smart for that, my beautiful, brilliant wife. But then they took Tikva from Eva’s arms—”

“You don’t have to tell me,” I whispered hastily, but he didn’t seem to hear me.

“—and they put her on the ground and they shot her in the chest because they thought then we’d talk—but didn’t they realize? Once they shot her, we had nothing left to survive for anyway. And then my wife...”

It occurred to me then that he wasn’t speaking for my benefit at all. This was a repeat of those moments with Emilia each Sunday, on my own front steps. Just like little Emilia, Saul just needed to tell someone what had happened to his family, and I happened to be the only bystander now that he was ready to talk.

“Eva was hysterical, and the soldier who was holding her—he threw her against the wall and she went quiet and I could see her skull was... I tried but...it was...no... So I was hoping I’d be next and we could travel together to the afterlife but I didn’t flinch or try to fight to get away once the others were gone. The sergeant was so angry that I didn’t struggle...he said to leave me. He said it was a worse punishment to let me alone to die slowly.” Saul’s voice broke again. “I begged them to shoot me. I want to be with my family.” I didn’t know what to say to that, and all I could think was to do as Tomasz had done, and to slide my arm over Saul’s thin shoulders. He slumped forward again, utterly broken as he whispered, “How God must hate me...to leave me to suffer like this? Surely...”

“Don’t you say that,” I said fiercely, and Saul startled, as if he’d only just noticed I was there. I was sorry to speak so harshly to him—but I knew all too well that the only way we’d survive the darkness was to hold on to a vestige of hope. There was nothing else I could do for Saul, except to keep my arm on his shoulder, and point him back to what he still had—and all that he had was his faith. “You must believe that if God allowed you to survive this far—there is a purpose to it. You must believe that there is work left for you to do on this Earth before you are released to peace. Hold tight to what you have left, Saul Weiss. And if all you have left is your faith, then you cling to it with every shred of strength you have left—do you hear me?”

He blinked at me. For a minute, I thought I’d gone too far, and I was shaken by an intense regret. Who was I to speak so harshly to this Jewish man about his faith—in the very moment when he nursed the cooling bodies of his entire family? Saul’s shuddering breaths were coming harder and faster, but then he nodded sharply, and he turned his head toward the fields and he closed his eyes.

The string of words that burst from his lips was a language I didn’t know, but our traditions were irrelevant in that moment—the depths of his loss transcended every one of our differences. We weren’t Jew and Catholic, we weren’t even man and woman—we were simply two human beings, grieving an inhuman act.

I squeezed my eyes tightly closed so I didn’t accidentally look down at the face of the baby beside me, and I bowed my head while Saul and I prayed together.

* * *

Tomasz was very quiet when he returned, carrying two full pails of supplies, and with a set of clothing for Saul over his shoulders. He emptied the supplies onto the ground, then filled the pails at the well nearby. While I sat some distance away to give them privacy, my wonderful Tomasz helped Saul to clean the bodies, and finally, he helped Saul to bathe and dress himself.

Saul insisted on digging the grave, but he was just too weak and eventually he had to accept help. He would labor with visible difficulty until he had to stop, then Tomasz would work furiously until Saul had rested and was ready to take another turn. There wasn’t time for depth or care—instead, they were seeking only to give Eva and baby Tikva the dignity of a resting place.