Patrik knelt on the hard wood floor as Éva wept. “Hush now, hush. You must be quiet. It’s likely they’ll conduct a search of the block and come looking for us. We have to be quiet.”
She gazed at him through tear-stained lashes but quieted her sobs. “Why, Patrik, why?”
“I don’t know.”
“He’s my brother. And I love her like my own flesh and blood. And the baby. Oh, the baby.” Fresh tears coursed down her pale cheeks.
Patrik cradled her close to his chest and allowed her to weep. His own throat swelled. Too much pain. Too much heartache. Too much loss. “They’ll be fine.”
“We have no guarantee. Not of anything anymore.”
“We never did.” To lose one of their own was always difficult. Unfortunately, it happened way too often.
Once spent, she sat upright and stroked his own damp cheek. Had he been crying?
“You have to help them. Isn’t there something you can do?”
“I don’t know.”
“You have connections. What about the man who owns this house?”
“I can speak with him.”
Her countenance brightened.
“Don’t get your hopes up.” He didn’t want to crush her, but they had to remain realistic. “I’m not sure what can be done. We’ve managed to get people released from custody before, but it’s not easy, not without its dangers.”
“You have to try. Please. If not for my sake, for Zofia’s.”
His chest tightened. “Don’t you know I would travel to the moon and back for you?” She was so delicate, so vulnerable. If only he could protect her, keep her from this craziness. Her brown eyes. Her smooth skin. Her red lips. He leaned in.
Then pulled back. Not when they were hunted. Not when her brother and sister-in-law were in the hands of monsters. Not until he could fulfill the promise her kiss had asked for.
They sat together in the darkness. As the minutes dragged into hours, he stroked her hand, her back, her hair. She dozed against his shoulder. So good. So right.
No pounding at the door, no Germans demanding entrance. How strange. Very unusual. What was going on?
Deep in the night, György crept up the stairs. “I think you’re in the clear. I can’t believe they didn’t stop here. From my window, I watched them. They raced away with the others and never searched for you.”
A coldness settled in the pit of Patrik’s stomach. This wasn’t right. “It doesn’t feel good to me.”
“To me either.” György scratched his messy beard.
“Do they have a plan to draw us into the open?”
Éva stirred and awoke. She rubbed her eyes. “What’s going on?”
“We don’t know.” Patrik smoothed her blond hair from her cheek. “It’s odd they didn’t come after us.” As he spoke the words, the truth dawned on him. They were torturing Zofia and Ernő for the information.
Pain throbbed behind his right eye. Whatever he did, he couldn’t let on to Éva. Already, she was too upset.
“What do you plan to do to rescue my brother and sister-in-law?” She directed her question to György.
“We’ve never sprung anyone from the prison. Other prisons, yes, but not this one. They don’t take chances this close to the border.”
“You have to do something. At least try.”
Her pleas stirred Patrik. “Bram had a German uniform.”
“If we could get one, maybe some false papers to go along with it, we might be able to get them out. Just maybe.” Hope flickered in him. For her, he’d risk it all. Prove to her he wasn’t a deceiver and a betrayer but a man who loved her and would travel to the edge of the universe for her.
György nodded. “I could get my hands on one.”
Éva knelt, leaning toward György. “How?”
He waved her off. “No questions. Didn’t you teach her, Patrik, to never ask? It’s better you don’t know. Let me get to work on this.” He retraced his steps out of the room.
Silence cloaked them for a while. They had blankets and pillows, items they could take with them into the floor cavity if they needed to hide. Had Éva fallen asleep again?
If only he could. His mind whirred with the thousand possibilities of what tomorrow might hold. With a uniform, he could infiltrate the prison, but then what? His German wasn’t perfect. Maybe it would have been better for him to go as a member of the Hungarian police. Then he wouldn’t have to work on his accent.
He should tell György. He reached to move Éva from his shoulder to one of the pillows.
“Patrik?”
“Oh, I didn’t mean to wake you.”
“I wasn’t sleeping. I was thinking.”
“About?”
“What György said. It’s better that I not know. I can … can see the truth in that now.”
“What do you mean?”
“Is that why you did it?”
He could again ask her what she meant, but he already knew. Is that why he had lied to her? “I didn’t want to, but for your own good, I had to. These days, the less we share with each other, the better. Hard as it is.”
“You said difficult decisions needed to be made.”
“The hardest. Ones that rip your insides out.”
“Did you have to make difficult ones?”
“More than you care to know.”
“Ones that involved your family?”
She was ripping off a scab and baring the wound. “Igen.”
She stroked his cheek. “Tell me.”
“When the men came and hurt my mother, I hid. I was only twelve. But I should have been braver. Apu was gone. I was the man of the house. I chose to protect myself instead of her. If I had, maybe she wouldn’t have—”
His voice broke. And suddenly, there they were—the tears he’d held off so long.
“It’s not your fault. You were a little boy.”
“I knew my sisters were in the camp here. I came to see what I could do. What was there to be done? I should have tried harder.”
The drops coursed down his cheeks and dripped from his chin. “I should have gotten them papers at the same time I got them for myself. I failed them. Failed them all.
“So now I try not to fail anyone else.”
She drew him to herself and stroked the back of his head. “It’s not all up to you. There are others working. And God is taking care of everything.”
“Igen, igen, igen. He is. We both must remember that.”
“Trust not in ourselves, but in our God.” She kissed his neck. “Choices of who lives and dies are impossible. Soul wrenching.”
“And there may be even harder choices ahead.”
She answered with a strangled sigh. “I know.”
Every muscle in Éva’s body protested her movement as she awoke on the hard floor. Where was she? She raised herself to her elbows and peered around the room. Thin shafts of light poked through the small window.
Like a wave against a rocky shore, the events of the last few hours crashed around her. Her heart bled. Here she was, sleeping, safe, as safe as anyone these days, while Ernő and Zofia were facing—what?
Patrik had tried to put a good face on it last night, but she wasn’t naive. She’d heard the rumors. She had eyes. Remembered the camp at Kistarcsa.
The Nazis were not gentle.
And Patrik was willing to put his life on the line to help her.
Where was he? His pillow and blanket remained folded beside her. Had he slept at all last night?
Her head ached, probably from crying. And the strange events. Never had she dreamed she would be running from the Germans. Never had she imagined Ernő in mortal danger along with his pregnant wife. Never had she imagined she would do what she was thinking about doing.
She couldn’t allow Patrik to go into the Gestapo headquarters as a German. His accent was terrible. Hers wasn’t any better, but her plan was far different.
She rose to her feet. She had to find him and speak to him. Tell him what she had in mind.
Wait, what had György said last night? That it was best she didn’t know. That must go both ways. If it was best Éva didn’t know what Patrik was up to, then it must be best if he didn’t know her plans.
Here she was, withholding information from Patrik. His deception was what had broken their relationship. Now she understood. That was how war worked.
And she had a plan for what she had to do if there was any chance of getting Zofia and Ernő out of that miserable place and across the border.
Freedom lay so close.
They couldn’t allow it to slip through their fingers.
She descended a flight of stairs and discovered a small water closet with a sink. Just what she needed to splash water on her face and run a comb through her hair.
She pushed her hair back with a couple of combs and allowed it to flow over her shoulders. What she wouldn’t give for a tube of lipstick. That would make this charade easier to pull off. Well, she couldn’t worry about things she couldn’t change.
Her soiled yellow dress hung on her frame, but that was another thing she couldn’t fret about. She leaned on the sink and stared at herself in the mirror. “You can do this, Éva. You have to do it. For Ernő, Zofia, and the baby. Think of them. This is all for them.”
For Patrik too, though she refused to allow those words to cross her lips. She understood. Difficult choices had to be made. He hadn’t wanted to lie to her. What he did in not telling them about Zofia was a good and honorable action. So opposite from Károly’s betrayal.
How had she been so blind? She inhaled long and slow and let the breath out little by little. While trust would take time to rebuild, she could show him she now understood.
Life never turned out the way you dreamed it would. Difficult choices needed to be made, and sometimes that involved secrecy.
God, I need You more than ever. Show me what to do.
She knew what she had to do.
She descended the final flight of stairs to the ground floor and discovered Patrik and György sitting at a round kitchen table, leaning close to each other, speaking in low tones.
“Good morning.”
They both startled and stared at her, their eyes large. Patrik came to his feet. “You look like you slept well.”
“I did get some rest, thank you. From the sight of you, I’d say you didn’t.” Dark bags hung underneath his bloodshot eyes.
“We’ve been working on the plan all night.” He needed a shave. “Let me get you some fake coffee.”
She flashed him her best effort at a genuine smile. “Köszönöm.”
“And a slice of bread to go with that.”
“Nem.” She wouldn’t be able to keep anything in her stomach more than the bitter brew that passed for coffee.
A few minutes later, she sat at the table, sipping the warm liquid, fortifying her insides. Her hands, though, refused her command to stop shaking. “I’ve made a decision.”
Again, the weight of their stares pressed on her shoulders.
“I’m going to be the one to rescue Zofia and Ernő.”
Patrik stuck out his neck. “You’re what? Nem. I won’t allow it.”
“What have I done other than bring bread to a child in a camp? In the end, what good did that small action do? Nothing. But I can be of assistance here.” She touched Patrik’s hand. “On a good day, your German is poor.”
“I’ve been up all night practicing.”
“A few hours aren’t going to make a difference. Let me do it.”
“And what’s your plan?”
“It’s best you not know.”