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

23

Ella

After Krys put the munitions into the sewer and we left the grate, I returned home. I lay awake all night, imagining the awful things that might happen. I never should have let Sadie say yes, I berated myself. I saw her face, timid yet resolved to help however she could. Neither she nor Saul were equipped for what Krys had asked them to do for the Home Army. In ordinary circumstances, it would not be all that difficult to store a few boxes overnight. But nothing about Sadie’s existence was ordinary; there were at least a half-dozen ways it could all go horribly wrong and each played over in my head like a bad dream I could not escape.

The next morning, I slipped from the house before dawn, too restless and worried to wait any longer. I needed to check on Sadie and make sure she was all right. The August morning air was warm and clammy as I made my way across the deserted bridge. I went to the grate first, but of course Sadie was not there at such an early hour. I could not see anything below. From there I went to Dębniki. The café was shuttered and locked and the cellar doors to the piwnica were, too. I even went up to the room on the top floor where Krys sometimes stayed, but it was deserted. When I pushed open the unlocked door and peered into the bare space, it looked as if no one had ever been there, that night or ever.

My anxiousness rose. I could find no one, nor find out what had happened. Defeated, I started back toward the city center. I would have to wait hours until my scheduled meeting time with Sadie. After everything that had happened, I didn’t even know if she would still come. I reached our house on Kanonicza Street and stepped inside, hoping to slip through the foyer and skip breakfast. I couldn’t bear to sit across from Ana Lucia and make conversation. But when I passed the dining room, it was surprisingly still, the table cleared. I did not hear Hanna in the kitchen either. I wondered if my stepmother had already eaten or not come down yet. Perhaps she was not home at all. I started up the stairs.

As I neared the fourth floor, I heard a rustling from above. My uneasiness grew. Someone was in the garret.

“Hello?” I called. I prayed that it was Hanna, tidying up. But the footsteps were too heavy, the sound of the movements deliberate.

Ana Lucia appeared in the doorway to my bedroom, red-cheeked and winded, as if from a great climb. Her face bore a triumphant expression.

“What is this?” she demanded.

In her hand, she held Sadie’s necklace.

My blood ran cold. Ana Lucia had Sadie’s necklace with the Hebrew letters. How had she discovered it? By snooping through my room. That did not surprise me. But I wondered what had made her go looking.

“You went through my things? How dare you?” I said, outraged.

Ana Lucia had the upper hand here, though, and she knew it—she stepped forward, undeterred. “The Jews, where are they?”

“I have no idea what you’re talking about.” I would never give up Sadie to Ana Lucia.

A light dawned suddenly in her eyes. “There are Jews, aren’t there?” Although I had admitted nothing, her suspicions seemed somehow confirmed. “And you are helping them. That’s why you were asking so many questions about them at my lunch a few months ago. Friedrich will be so pleased to have this information.”

“You wouldn’t dare!” I could see her mind working as she planned to tell her Nazi boyfriend, calculated exactly how much favor it would buy her with him.

“What a lot your father left me with! You, a Jew lover and a nosy little do-gooder. That brother of yours, the ciota.” She used an awful term for men who liked other men.

“You leave Maciej out of this!”

“You think they are treating the gays so much better in Paris?” she asked, then smiled cruelly. My heart ached to think of my brother, who was so far away. “You’re both a disgrace.”

“Better than you, collaborating with that Nazi scum.” I lifted my chin defiantly.

She stepped forward and raised her hand, as if to strike me. Then she lowered it again just as quickly. “You have an hour,” she announced calmly.

“To do what?” I asked, confused.

“To leave. Pack your things and go.”

I looked at her, stunned. I had been born in this house, spent my whole life here. “You can’t do that. This is my home. It belongs to my family.”

“Belonged.” I looked at her blankly, not understanding. “Your father’s estate papers came last week. I was going to tell you, but you are never here because you are running around with those sewer rat Jews.” The papers were official notice of Tata’s death, stating that his will could now be probated. “Now that he is gone, the will states that the house and everything in it goes to me.”

“That can’t be true.” I could not believe Tata had been that heartless. Had he really been so blind to Ana Lucia’s evil that he had left her everything? Perhaps it was a trick, some legal maneuver on her part. I had no way of knowing. “But where am I to go?” I panicked. For a moment, I considered pleading with Ana Lucia. If I stopped helping Sadie, or promised to anyway, she might let me stay.

“That is hardly my problem. But I would advise you not to go to your Jews. They won’t be there long either.”

My blood froze. The intent of her words was unmistakable: she was going to tell the Germans about Sadie.

“You didn’t really think you could save them, did you?” Ana Lucia’s words were mocking, cruel.

I lunged forward and grabbed her by the throat. My every instinct was to squeeze the life out of her. But that would not help me—or Sadie. A second later, I released