The Woman with the Blue Star, Pam Jenoff [highly recommended books txt] 📗

a hiding place that he thinks may be of use to the Home Army for storing things. But not if she’s caught.”

Kara’s expression softened. “There are cellar doors around the corner behind the building. Take her and I will meet you there.”

I sprinted back up the stairs and outside to the archway where Sadie hid. “Follow me.” I led her around the back of the building. There were wide metal double doors in the ground, the kind used to unload beer and other provisions. One door opened and Sadie climbed down the ladder into the cellar. I started behind her, but Kara stopped me. “You don’t need to be here,” she said coldly. “Go take care of your errand.” She might have agreed to help, but she still didn’t like me.

Sadie looked back up at me, seeming dismayed that I was not staying with her. “I’ll be back for you,” I promised. “You need to stay out of sight.”

“But I have to look for my mother.” Despite everything I had explained to her, she still wanted to go.

“I will look for her,” I added, putting my hand on her shoulder. “I’ll go to the hospital and check for you. But only if you promise to stay here.” Her expression remained doubtful. “You believe me, don’t you?”

“Yes,” Sadie replied. “But please be careful. Helping me get food was one thing, but going to the hospital and asking questions is much more dangerous.” Her brow furrowed.

“Don’t worry,” I replied, touched by her concern for my safety. “I’ll go quickly and come straight back, all right?” Seemingly satisfied, Sadie turned away.

“Wait,” I said. “What’s your mother’s name?” I had only just realized I didn’t know it.

“Danuta,” she said sadly. “Danuta Gault.” She disappeared into the cellar.

“I’ll be back for her as soon as I can,” I said to Kara. “She could use something to eat, if you can manage it.”

“I can. She needs to be gone by nightfall.”

“I swear it. And thank you.” Without speaking further, Kara closed the cellar door, leaving me on the street alone.

I hurried from Dębniki toward the bridge that connected the south bank to the city center. As I walked, I processed all Sadie had told me. I knew little about having babies, but I could not imagine what Sadie’s mother had been through, giving birth in the sewer. And to be forced to leave her other daughter behind; it was unimaginable. Sadie seemed so hopeful that her mother and sister might be all right. Part of me did not want to know what had become of them, to have to tell her the awful truth if I found out. But I had promised Sadie—and so I had to try.

I crossed the bridge and soon reached the Bonifratrów Hospital, a mammoth building on the edge of Kazimierz. Though I could tell it had once been well-tended, its redbrick facade was pockmarked and stained with soot, sidewalks cracked, the untended bushes and shrubs outside withered and brown. The front door to the hospital, set back in an archway, was locked, so I rang the buzzer beside it. A minute later, a nun appeared. The hospital was owned by a monastic order, I recalled, with a church and rectory just around the corner.

“I’m sorry, but we’re closed to visitors,” she said, looking down at me through crooked spectacles.

“I’m looking for a woman called Danuta Gault.”

A guarded look crossed the nun’s face. “I don’t know any such person.”

I was confused. Sadie had seemed so certain of her mother’s destination. Had she been wrong or had something happened to change her mother’s plans once she was above ground? “Are you sure?” I pressed. “She is a petite woman, quite beautiful, with very light hair,” I said, recalling how Sadie had once described her mother to me.

The woman shook her head firmly. “There is no such person here.” I felt a tug of disappointment. Sadie’s mother was not here. I had nowhere else to look. I was going to have to return to the piwnica and tell Sadie I had failed.

“She was traveling with a newborn child,” I said then. In my haste, I had forgotten to state the obvious. “She was trying to find a safe place for the child.”

Something seemed to shift in the nun’s eyes and I could tell that Sadie’s mother had been here. “I can’t help you.” Though her expression remained unchanged, there was fear in her voice now.

“She’s my mother,” I lied, hoping she would be more willing to help me if the person I was searching for was immediate family. “I have to find her. I’m worried something might have happened to her,” I said, feeling Sadie’s sadness and fear as if they were my own. “Please. She’s the only family I have left. If you could just let me in. I’ll only stay a minute.”

The nun hesitated, then opened the door a crack further. “Inside, quickly.” She led me into the hospital. I followed her down a long corridor, with at least a dozen rooms on either side. There came a beeping sound from a machine in one room, a low moan from another. A metallic smell assaulted my nose. My mind reeled back to when I was a small child, visiting my mother in the hospital. My father had lifted me up to kiss her papery cheek because she was too weak to hold me herself. It was the last time I had ever seen her.

Pushing the memory aside, I focused on the nun who walked briskly ahead of me and led me into a small office. I studied the picture behind her desk, a framed oil painting of Jesus at the crucifixion. Although I often wore the small cross around my neck that Tata had given me for sentimental value, we were not a religious family and I had not been to mass since my mother died. The nun cleared some papers from a chair and gestured for me to sit.

“You can only