"Brittany…" Anna said again, her voice stifled by my dress. I held her closer and leaned my head down, smelling the honeysuckle fragrance of her hair and feeling her feeble grasp on my back. She had grown so much in the past year—I hadn't even been able to send her a letter for her ninth birthday. I thought about all of the letters that I had written to her in my journal, and how that journal, which held some of my deepest feelings and darkest secrets, was still in Auschwitz, wide open for anyone who would find it. I felt a twinge of hate at the thought of Herr Eberhardt finding it, and reading of my feelings for Santana and our fairytale dreams for the future. I hoped that he read of how much Hans adored Santana, and how when he was hysterical, only she could calm him, and how when I spoke of her next to him, I called her Mamá so that he'd learn to call her so as he grew as well. Some part of me knew that if Herr Eberhardt had in fact read those journal entries, he would make it impossible for me to see our son ever again. But some part of me still hoped that he had, and that he had read of my feelings for him, and how I thought that he was much less than a man and much more than loathsome. If I was killed in the process of trying to rescue Hans, I wanted Herr Eberhardt to at least know that not for a second did I feel any respect, admiration, or love for him, and not for a second did I regret being unfaithful to our marriage.

Anna said something incoherent and then began to sob quietly. "I thought you were dead…" she whispered, and I felt that twinge of hate again, but this time for myself. If it weren't for this cursed war, if only I had any methods of communication… If I had tried hard enough, I could've written them a letter or two, so they'd know that I was well. Anna, with her nine-year-old mind and wild imagination, must have taken my yearlong silence as a sign that I was killed.

"Who is it, Anna?" I heard Nikolaus's voice call. Hurried footsteps approached the door from inside the apartment, and he and Johanna appeared behind Anna in robes and slippers. They froze, their eyes wide and jumping between Rolf, Santana, and me. They hadn't changed in the past year—Johanna's auburn hair was still as beautiful as I remembered it and Nikolaus's round glasses were still a bit crooked on his nose. We waited in silence, glancing at each other worriedly and hoping that they wouldn't shut their door on us.

"Well, what are you waiting for?" Nikolaus asked finally, in a reprimanding tone. "Do you want the Gestapo at our door? Come in, before anyone sees you!"

We hurried into the apartment, and Johanna quickly closed the door behind us. Anna gripped my hand with both of hers. I knew she was afraid that I would disappear again.

We stood awkwardly in the doorway, not sure whether we should make ourselves at home or wait for Nikolaus and Johanna to invite us into the living room. I had been to this apartment hundreds of times before, it was like a second home to me, and Nikolaus and Johanna like second parents, but everything seemed different—off. Nikolaus and Johanna looked as they had a year ago, but at the same time, they looked much, much older. As if this year had lasted twenty.

Anna was still sobbing quietly, so I hugged her to me again. I turned my head to glance at Santana, who was standing to my left, and found her looking back at me with the tiniest of smiles on her face, a smile that was mostly shown in her eyes—the smile that she always wore when I did something that she loved. Her eyes lowered to Anna, and I knew that she was thinking of how much my sister loved me, and how great of a mother I was to Hans, something that she'd said to me whenever she watched me breast-feed him. I smiled back warmly.

I saw Nikolaus move out of the corner of my eye, so I turned my attention back to him, watching as he crossed his arms over his chest and shook his head lightly. "Is it true what they say?" he demanded.

I glanced back at Santana momentarily before shifting my gaze to him again. "What do they say?" I asked quietly.

Nikolaus turned to Johanna, who bit her lip and looked away, as if she didn't want to be the one who spoke of what "they" said. "They say," he began slowly, "that you escaped from Auschwitz." He turned back to me.

"Then they are correct," I admitted.

"They say that you smuggled a girl out of the labor camp."

"It's not a labor camp," I retorted, furious at the fact that the people of Deutschland themselves did not know the horror of the Nazis' actions. "It's an extermination camp. Thousands of people have died there."

Anna tightened her hold around me, and I realized, a bit too late, that this was not something that I wanted her to hear.

Nikolaus and Johanna looked wholly dumbfounded. I thought about how it was for me to find out that the Nazis were performing mass murder and genocide, what it was like on the first day that I travelled down to the camp and found Santana, starved, bald, and filthy, being beaten and nearly raped by three utterly abhorrent soldiers. If someone had told me before I moved to Auschwitz that thousands, maybe millions, of innocent people were being killed in Nazi camps, I would've been doubtful, much less would I have believed such a terrifying truth.

"Why her?" Nikolaus asked weakly, motioning at Santana. "If thousands of people have died there, why did you save only one, and why her in particular?"

I lowered my eyes and could hear Santana shifting uneasily beside me. Anna leaned back and wiped the tears off of her face, looking up at me curiously with her round blue eyes. I had a feeling that Nikolaus already knew the answer, but in fear that my relationship with Santana would seem repulsive to him, I couldn't bring myself to say the words, Because I love her.

"Your father would be most disapproving," Nikolaus said, and I looked up to see him shaking his head again.

I bit my lip. "My father should accept me the way I am after what he put me through," I said quietly, but knew that I was both angry and grateful to my father for giving me away—angry because I was given away to Herr Eberhardt, and grateful because if I hadn't been given away to him, I would've never met Santana.

"Where is he? And my mother?" I asked, glancing at Johanna and then at Nikolaus, who both closed their eyes as if in pain. "Did they go to work at the factory and have you take care of Anna for the day?"

Nikolaus and Johanna didn't answer, but Anna began to sob again. My eyes jumped between the three of them. "Did they go to the market, then?"

Nikolaus sighed deeply, and Johanna's chin shook as if she was willing herself not to cry as well. "They've travelled out of the city?" I continued. "How long have you been watching Anna?"

"Three days," Nikolaus answered, his voice unsteady.

"Then they should be back soon, should they not?" I asked. Anna's crying grew louder.

Nikolaus closed his eyes again, and a few tears began to slide down Johanna's face. I looked down at Anna, my stomach tightening in pain at seeing her sob so miserably.

"Should they not?" I repeated, and raised my gaze to Nikolaus again, panic starting to rise in me like the sun on a cold early morning.

"They're not coming back," Nikolaus said, his voice cracking with the last word.

I stared at him incredulously. "Why?" I stepped forward. Nikolaus didn't answer. "Where did they take them?"

Nikolaus took in a deep breath, and opened his eyes again. "When news of your escape reached Berlin, your parents were taken into interrogation."

I froze. It seemed like the entire apartment was shrinking by the second, closing in all around me, leaving no room to move or think or breathe. I felt lightheaded, like all of the objects in the room were spinning around me at an impossible speed, and I feared that I would fall if I wasn't allowed to lie down. My parents were taken into interrogation. My parents, fine citizens who had done no wrong and helped this rotten state in every which way, had to undergo physical and mental torture so that they'd tell the truth that was not known to them. Barely anyone ever returned from Gestapo interrogations—and those who did were incredibly important officials who were too precious to the government to be killed. My parents were factory workers whose only Nazi pride was their Aryan daughters. They were useless in the eyes of this heartless regime.

I felt weak, and as if reading my mind, Santana enveloped me into her arms, proving once again to be my light in all that was dark. She guided me to the couch and seated me, her arms still wrapped around me and soft whispers of condolence parting her lips. I held her hand, felt the warmness of it and the love and comfort radiating from her, and opened my eyes to look at Nikolaus again. "What happened?" I asked, my voice sounding distant and hardly like it came from me at all.

Nikolaus sat in a recliner across from us, rubbing his knees and looking like he was doing his best not to cry. He and my father were the best of friends since secondary school—this experience must have been nearly as traumatic for him as it was for Anna and me. "A friend of theirs who works closely with the officials phoned them several minutes before the Gestapo arrived, to warn them, but they didn't have time to hide or leave the city. They hid Anna in a cupboard and told her to come to us once the apartment was completely quiet. Last night…" He inhaled shakily, pausing momentarily and taking the time to steady his breathing. I closed my eyes. "The friend who had warned them came to us to make sure that Anna was well, and to let us know that we'd be taking care of her from now on."

I leaned my head into Santana's shoulder and she tightened her arms around me. I wanted to cry, but I found myself unable to—not because I was not mournful, not because I had been angry with my parents for the past year, but because some part of me refused to believe that they were gone. I knew that they were; I'd known that they were from the moment Gestapo interrogations were mentioned, but that part of me, the part that liked to hope even in utterly hopeless situations, it hoped now, too—it hoped for something for which there was no hope at all.

There was another part of me, too, and it pushed aside my hope and my sorrow and my distress. It was guilt. Guilt for my parents' deaths, guilt for Anna's orphanhood, guilt for falling in forbidden love, guilt for feeling no regrets of this love. I felt guilt for the knowledge that if the choices were laid out before me, if I were forced to choose between my parents and Santana, I would've chosen Santana. I felt guilt for knowing that if I had to relive the last year, I would've lived it exactly the same way, only more cautiously. My parents were two of the most important people in my life, that went without saying, but Santana was my other half, the only one with whom this life would have been bearable, and the only one with whom I could imagine raising my son. As much as I wanted Hans to grow up with my parents as his grandparents, as much as I wanted them to take him to the park and buy him candy at the sweets shop and be there at his promotion from primary school, I wanted Santana to be able to do all of these things with him more, and I felt an unimaginable amount of guilt for it.

I opened my eyes to find that everybody in the room, Nikolaus on the recliner and Johanna by the dresser and Rolf beside the door and Santana by my side, was looking at me with worried eyes. I felt dampness on my face, but could not remember crying. My gaze fell on Anna, who was standing by Nikolaus's recliner, and I held out my right hand for her to come sit by me, my left still clutching onto Santana's. Anna seemed hesitant, her eyes jumping between me and Santana, but her hesitance suddenly softened, and I glanced to the left to see that Santana was smiling the same motherly smile that she always smiled at Hans, the one that made my heart skip a beat and just want to sit back and appreciate her capabilities as a mother. Anna made her way to the couch and sat as I snaked my arm around her shoulder and hugged her to me.

I couldn't imagine how terrifying it was to be hidden in that cupboard when our parents were taken away. Knowing Anna, she probably tightened her knees to her body and buried her face in them, slightly rocking back and forth like she always did when she was frightened. I imagined how she must have felt when my parents argued with the Gestapo personnel, when they tried to explain to them over and over again that they hadn't heard from me in a year, that they had no idea what was going on in my life and in Auschwitz or anywhere outside of Berlin for that matter. I wondered if they were told that I had a child. I wondered if they died with the knowledge that they were grandparents, and if they had, I wondered if that knowledge made them a bit happier before their deaths. They must have been so angry with me. They must have died with nothing but hate in their hearts for me, for what I had done to them, and for acting selfish and reckless. I hated myself for bringing that hate to their hearts.

Anna wrapped her arms around my torso and I tightened mine around her, glancing at Santana, whose warm eyes instilled confidence in me and made me feel that it was going to be okay. I turned my gaze back to Nikolaus. "Did they suffer?" I asked quietly, my voice sounding a bit rough from the crying that I couldn't remember to have done.

Nikolaus looked down, shook his head, and shrugged. "I don't know," he said, raising his eyes back to me.

The room was quiet for a few minutes, Anna leaning into me and Santana's hand in mine and Rolf still standing awkwardly by the door. Then Johanna cleared her throat, wiped a few tears off of her face, and said, "It's late. We'd better find you a place to sleep."

I nodded, and Anna leaned back and looked up at me worriedly. "Where will they sleep?" she asked. "They can sleep in my room."

"No," I said, stroking her hair. "The apartment is too small to fit us all, and it would be unsafe for us to stay in plain sight." I turned to Nikolaus and Johanna. "Do you reckon we'd be able to sleep in the storage room downstairs?"

Nikolaus and Johanna both nodded. "I think that's the wisest choice we can make," Nikolaus agreed. "I would not be surprised if they came to search our apartment next."

My eyes widened. What if they did come to search their apartment? What if Nikolaus and Johanna were taken into interrogation just like my parents? What if I would be the reason for their deaths as well? I couldn't let that happen. I couldn't risk their lives and Anna's for myself.

"Don't," Johanna said, and I looked up at her. "I know what you're thinking, and you're not going anywhere. We're choosing to put our lives in jeopardy for you. We would never be able to forgive ourselves if we didn't."

"But, Johanna—"

"Brittany," she cut me off. "Is it true you have a baby?"

I glanced at Santana, who seemed to be of the same mind as Johanna. I nodded.

"Then I think we can agree that your life is of the most importance here," Johanna said firmly.

"It's not—"

"Brittany, you have nowhere to go to. I presume you're in Berlin for a reason, and I'll be quite frank with you—if you don't stay with us, you will be killed. That is all there is to it."

I looked at her and bit my lip. She was right, and I knew it. It came down to this final decision—who was more important, them or Hans? I didn't want to make this decision. I didn't want to have to choose between Anna and my son. But I knew that Anna wouldn't be killed, even if Nikolaus and Johanna were taken into interrogation. She was an Aryan, and Aryans were not expendable in Nazi Germany. The real question, then, was who would I rather save, Johanna and Nikolaus, or Hans? I knew the answer to that question before the question could even complete itself in my mind. It pained me to know it, but I would not give up our baby for anything or anyone.

"Come," Johanna beckoned us. "We'll go down to the storage rooms."

The storage rooms were in the basement, and Nikolaus and Johanna's storage space was divided into two separate rooms, one in which they kept old furniture and the like and the other in which they kept preserved food in case they'd have to hide down there during an air raid. Nikolaus and Rolf moved one of the couches into the smaller room with the food, and Rolf said that he'd sleep in that room because it was closer to the entrance, and he'd be able to hear if there was trouble heading down the basement stairs. Santana and I took the slightly bigger room, in which there was another couch and an old twin bed. Johanna brought us sheets from upstairs, showed us where the emergency toilets were, and bid us good night.

When I returned from the toilets, I found Santana sitting on the couch with her head between her hands. I made my way to the couch and sat down, wrapping my arm around her waist and pulling her to me. "We won't be here for long," I said gently, kissing her temple. "As soon as we have Hans, we'll leave. We won't have to be in this basement for long."

She nodded, and I could see in her eyes that she was pushing back her troubles the way she had done so often lately so that she'd be able to be there for me. She smiled and kissed my lips.

We lay in bed, and after a few minutes, even though I had been trying to hold it back, I began to cry. I cried for my parents, I cried for my sister, I cried for Hans, I cried for Santana. I cried for not being strong enough, for proving again and again to be a burden, although Santana would never agree with that. I cried because I hated crying all the time, and I cried because I couldn't stop.

After Santana had helped me calm a bit, she kissed the tears from my face, held me close to her, the kind of embrace that made me feel safe and at home, and sang a soft Spanish lullaby to me, one that she'd sung to Hans many times. Nothing calmed me like her voice. There was something about it, something angelic, something I could never quite pinpoint, that relaxed every cell in my body. By the time the lullaby was finished, I had stopped crying completely, and I just lay in her arms and focused on how much I loved her smell. I was almost asleep when a last thought appeared in my mind, and I mumbled, "Don't ever leave me."

Santana was quiet, and I opened my eyes, thinking that she had already fallen asleep, but she hadn't. She looked at me with those same warm eyes as before and brushed her fingers through my hair. "There was a man I knew once who hated everyone. He'd make cruel remarks and spit on people, not because they were particularly unkind to him, but just because he could never get along with them. But he had this parrot, whom he loved more than anything else in the world. Gretta, he called her. He took Gretta everywhere with him, and he'd taught her to only say, 'I love you,' to him, and to make snide comments to everybody else. One time she called me a hairless communist."

"How dare she," I said, but couldn't keep the smile off of my face.

Santana chuckled. "People wanted to take her from him. Said she was a bad influence, or that he was, or that they both were to each other, and that he wasn't making any efforts to make friendly contact with humans because of this parrot. But every time someone tried to step near her, this man would nearly chop their heads off. He wouldn't let anyone close to her." She paused and kissed my forehead gently. "My point is, though, that this parrot loved him back just as much as he loved her. I never thought it possible to have an animal as a best friend, but it is. I had never seen a love so strong between anyone. Not romantic love, obviously, but they were attached to each other. I hadn't seen a love so strong until I fell in love myself, and proved my love to be a hundred times stronger than this man and his parrot's."

I smiled, squeezing her hand and placing a delicate kiss on her lips. "I'd no sooner leave you than this man left his parrot," she said softly, her eyes glimmering the way they always did when she was speaking of our love. "Which means never."

I moved my head closer to hers and nuzzled our noses together, kissing her lips again and feeling her smile into the kiss. "I love you," I whispered.

Santana pulled back and looked at me with that same smile again, the one she saved only for me, the one that always let me know that her words were of the most truth. "I love you, too."

The next morning, Rolf, Santana, and I discussed the means by which we'd find Herr Eberhardt, and through him, Hans. We didn't know where they were staying, and it would have been much too dangerous for us to leave the building to find out. That really only left one option, but this option not only did not seem appealing, but was simply outrageous.

"We can't send Nikolaus and Johanna to do it for us," I said, exasperated. "Don't you think they've done enough already?"

"We don't have any choice, Brittany," Rolf reasoned. "If one of us were to leave in search of facts, and that one of us was caught, then we would all be killed, Nikolaus and Johanna included. This is the only rational solution."

I turned to Santana, seeking her opinion. She looked a bit hesitant, but finally said, "What matters the most is that we rescue Hans, and Nikolaus and Johanna agree with that. I think Rolf's right. This is our only choice."

I leaned back into the couch and looked up at the ceiling. How many more people would risk their lives for us until our luck ran out? And when it did run out, would all of those people be killed? How much more blood will be shed in our trail?

Rolf and Santana looked at me expectantly. Finally, with a grand sigh, I nodded, and Rolf hurried out of the room to fetch them. I leaned my elbows on my knees and put my head between my hands. Santana stroked my back, whispering softly that this was the right choice and that we'd soon have our Hans back.

Rolf returned with Nikolaus after a few minutes. The latter took a seat on the couch and looked at us, raising his eyebrows at our silence. "Well?"

"We'd like to ask a favor," Rolf began cautiously.

"I've gathered that much. What is it?"

Rolf glanced at us momentarily before continuing. "We need information on the whereabouts of Brittany's husband, Richart Eberhardt. We'd find this information ourselves, but—"

"Absolutely not, you would get us all killed," Nikolaus cut him off, and Rolf nodded. "Where can I obtain this information?"

"You said Brittany's parents had a friend who was close with the officials?" Rolf asked.

"Right," Nikolaus nodded. "I could phone him."

"Could you?" I said hopefully.

"I will," Nikolaus stood on his feet and straightened his shirt. "Richart Eberhardt, you say? Of what rank?"

"Gruppenführer," I answered quickly.

Nikolaus nodded, mumbling the name and the rank once more to himself as he left the room. Rolf, Santana, and I glanced at each other uneasily, hoping that this one telephone call wouldn't ruin everything for us.

It took Nikolaus thirty minutes to return to the basement, thirty minutes that were spent with the three of us pacing around the room anxiously and looking at the clock every few seconds. Even though he was my parents' friend, we didn't know if we could trust this man, and we hoped that Nikolaus would find a way to ask for this information without revealing that he knew of our whereabouts.

"Well?" I asked as soon as he reentered the room.

Nikolaus wiped some sweat from his forehead. "He's staying at a hotel in Friedrichshagen. The Dietrich. Apparently, they haven't reassigned him yet, so he's been staying at a hotel."

"Thank you," I said in relief. He nodded.

"Is everything all right?" Santana asked carefully, the first words that she had spoken to Nikolaus.

He raised his eyebrows. "Yes, everything's quite all right. It just was not as easy as I imagined it to be to leave the three of you out of it. I had to think of a false reason for which I needed this information."

"Was he suspecting?" Rolf asked worriedly.

"No, I don't think so," Nikolaus assured us. "Your husband must be staying at a grand suite," he said to me. "The Dietrich is a pompous hotel."

"He must be," I agreed. "Knowing him, he would not want to be in the same room as my son and the nurse that he must have hired for him."

"How will you break into his room?"

Rolf looked at me, then at Santana. "I know how to pick a lock. All we need is his room number and the time of the day in which he is not in his room."

"I imagine he wouldn't be in his room now," Santana began, looking at me for confirmation. "He never liked to stay in the house during the day."

"It would be a risk," Rolf said uneasily.

"A risk that we must take," Santana said. "The longer we wait, the more dangerous it will be."

"We'll need our forged legal documents." Rolf disappeared to the other room for a few moments, and we could hear him searching his bags for the documents. Finally, he returned with them in hand. "Shall we leave now, then?"

"Now's as good a time as any," Santana agreed. I crouched to grab my shoes, but Santana stopped me. "No, Brittany."

"No?" I asked, confused. "I thought you said we were leaving now?"

Santana bit her lip and breathed in deeply. I tried reading the look in her eyes, but I couldn't decipher whether it was worry or grief or doubt. Then I understood. "No," I said. "You're not going without me."

"It's too dangerous—"

"No!" I shrieked. "I will not sit here while you die!"

"Please, Brittany—"

"You promised, Santana," I choked, tears welling in my eyes. "You promised that you'd never leave me."

Santana froze, a look of pain in her eyes that I'd never seen before. I knew that if she left me behind, I would never see her again, and that thought crippled me to the point that I couldn't stand anymore.

"You promised."

Translations

German

"Deutschland" - Germany.

"Gestapo" - The secret police of Nazi Germany.

"Gruppenführer" - Major General, rank in the Nazi SS.