January 3rd, 1945

Brother,

I hope this letter finds you safe in the New Year. The last you wrote, your location was somewhat precarious. Mother hasn't written to tell me one way or the other about your condition so I must assume you are alive.

Leon, I am at a loss. If I must watch another Dutch mother begging for food for her half-dead child, I may go mad. When this began, we were the heroes. Where did the evil start? Was it always there or did it creep in like the night? I remember when I first joined and was sent to the front, I tried to explain away the Gestapo's hunt for those of undesirable blood. We were protecting the Fatherland. But I cannot look away anymore. I cannot stand and do nothing. It won't be long now till the end. I am sure of it. But still, all we wreak is pain and anguish on those around us. We are no heroes. I doubt we could ever have called ourselves that.

All I can do is hope to see you and mother and Wilhelm soon. Though part of me wonders if I deserve such a blessing. I have been an aid to deprive so many others of their loved ones. I seek no absolution for what I have done. I cannot forgive myself, how could somebody else? If this letter should fall into the wrong hands then so be it. We are all dead men walking anyway.

Paul

"Do you remember when- when I said-" Leon's teeth are chattering, "I told you about my brother."

His fever flared up with a vengeance around midnight. The penicillin isn't working anymore. The doctor has spoken to me and they are to amputate his leg in an hour. He doesn't know yet. I assured the physician I would tell him. I still haven't managed to gain the courage.

"Yes. Your older brother." I push back the hair from his damp forehead.

He swallows hard, his Adam's apple sharp against the skin on his neck, "I lied."

"What do you mean?"

"He wasn't killed in action."

I kneel at his bedside, holding his hand in both of mine. My grip grows tighter. There is something in his eyes that makes me wary of where the conversation is leading.

"How did he die?"

"There was a plot by the Dutch resistance." His eyes grew as cold as they were the first time I saw him, "There was an incident on a road where an SS General was shot and injured. In retaliation, they massacred of all the men in the nearby village and many other prisoners of the Gestapo. Hundreds."

The back of his hand is pressed into my breastbone. I know he can feel my heart thudding through my shirt. This isn't the first time I have heard of the merciless slaughter of innocent people by the German Army. And I fear it won't be the last.

"The soldiers lined them up and shot them like animals. But my brother and one other soldier-" Leon lets out a shaky breath, "My brother did not do as he was ordered. He laid down his weapon and joined the men on the other side. He was executed by his own men. I only learned of it because one of them wrote to tell me."

I breathe in hard through my nose and lift a hand, running my trembling fingers through his hair. Leon's eyes drift close.

"You were right." I whisper, "He was very brave."

I hear the clock strike two o'clock. They will be here to take him into surgery in only a few minutes.

"Why did you lie, Leon?" My hand pauses at the crown of his head, "Why did you tell me he had been killed in action."

"I was ashamed."

"Of him?"

"Of myself." His gentle voice ripples across the silence between us, "Of my own cowardice."

"Leon-"

"Just hear me- please-" A violent shiver cracks down his spine, "Please, Ruth. I only ask that you listen."

"I'm listening, Leon."

"I was eighteen when I came to the front in '42. Holland, I saw the trains for the first time. I heard of the camps. I turned away. I had no direct hand in the business. I felt I was exempt from what I knew to be wrong. By '43 before the invasion, in France, I assisted in herding them into cattle cars in Marseilles. I stood by the car doors with my gun as though hobbling old women and scared children were a threat. I knew it then." Leon breathes deeply, his eyes open, "Their blood was on my hands from the beginning. To stand back, to say nothing in the face of evil, to watch without action-"

"You were acting on orders-"

"Orders?!" His voice rises to a feverish pitch as he turns towards me almost violently, "Orders."

He runs his hands over his face. I rise on weak knees and sit down on the chair. My mind reels.

"One of the other men kicked a woman who had fallen. She was a cripple. Her child was trying to help her up. The woman looked up at me and I just stared. I did nothing. I stood and stared."

Rocking forward, I rest my head in my hands.

"They ripped her to her feet with her toddler and threw her in. They shut the doors and the train left. And I stood there. I did nothing."

"Why are you telling me this?" I ask soggily, rubbing at my damp cheeks, "I cannot give you absolution."

"I'm not asking for it." He exhales, "You had to know. I couldn't keep this from you. You had to know who I was."

"But you were so young, you still are, Leon."

"Some of them were as well. Younger still, men and women and children on trains heading for camps. We knew they wouldn't be coming back. I knew."

I stand, bracing my hands on the small of my back. I pace towards the window.

"Perhaps it would have been better for me had I died on that road." He chokes.

I find I cannot answer him. The surgeon appears from behind the screen. I turn towards him, my arms crossed over my middle and shoulders hunched. The doctor draws his glasses down on his bulbous nose and peers at me.

"Have you told him yet?"

"No."

Leon quakes, "She didn't have to, I guessed as much."

Two nurses come around with a gurney and heave him up onto it. I stand by the screen, my eyes flitting anywhere but his face. Leon reaches out and grasps my arm. I cannot bear to not look into his eyes. He is bittersweet; a perfumed poison. I wonder if I will ever recover from this man.

"Will you stay after?" He asks, running a thumb over my wrist, "For the butcher's bill?"

I jerk my head forward. He releases me and they wheel him away. I leave the hospital and catch a ride back to the village.

It is almost ten in the morning when I wake. My eyelids feel like sandpaper as I blink away the sleep. My dreams have been murky, as though I have been swimming through the disturbed silt of a stagnant pond. I trudge into the living room to find Florence standing by the window.

"I received a letter this morning."

I pause. Her voice is strident, as though she is trying to hold back tears. I sink into a kitchen chair.

"My father has fallen ill. They do not believe he will survive the week." She turns towards me, her hand fluttering up to her shirt collar to straighten it.

"Florence-" I step towards her.

"No, please, Ruthie. I can't right now-"

I don't allow her to finish the sentence. I wrap my arms around her and she lets go. I brush smooth the curls on the back of her head as she cries. She pulls away, her eye makeup smudging onto her pale cheek bones.

"I am being sent home as soon as possible."

"Good." I nod firmly, gripping her shoulder, "This is good."

"If he dies, that will leave the family business to me. My mother cannot handle it all on her own." Florence runs a hand over her face, "I will be running the ranch."

She paces towards the kitchen table. She rests against it, crossing her arms over her chest. I light a cigarette for her and bring it over.

"And the railway line." She snorts as I come up beside her.

I give a weak smile, my eyes on my bare feet, "I can't imagine any person more up to the task."

Florence takes a drag, her breath softening, "I suppose we'll have to wait and see."

"When do you leave?"

"Noon."

"I will bring you to your transport."

She hands me the cigarette and I draw in a breath of smoke.

"Will you tell Carwood?"

A smile twinges on the corner of her red lips but doesn't bloom. Florence's gaze swings from the floor to the window. There was a storm gathering earlier but it has dissipated without a drop.

"No. I don't feel its necessary."

I nod, unsure of her answer. I wonder after my own heart, if I should have left Leon as I did without a word. Perhaps both Florence and I are better off never knowing. It's safer that way.

"What happened with your German friend?"

I exhale audibly through my nose and return the cigarette to her.

"He was being brought into surgery. They had to take his leg."

"That sounds familiar."

"Before he left, he told me…" I swallow and pace a few steps forward, "He told me some things that happened. During the war."

I cross my arms tightly across my chest and meet her direct stare, her eyes puffy from weeping.

"You know," She speaks slowly, "There are none of us coming out of this clean."

"This is different."

"I gathered that. But Ruthie, we have to find a way to move past it. Rise above what we have seen or done. We need to help one another do it."

"I don't believe I can help him."

I wonder if I want to either. What he has told me has shaken me to the core. I have tasted hatred towards other human beings but it was nothing compared to the behemoth wrought by the Nazis. Looking at him as he was wheeled away, all I could see was the cold deadness that invaded his stare at times. I had thought it was weariness from the carnage we have all experienced. Now I shudder to think its roots are much darker. I wonder if such things should be moved past, there is such a danger of them being forgotten.

I meet her eyes once more.

"We all have our choices to make. Don't we?" Florence replies.

She blows out a cloud of smoke and stumps the cigarette into an empty coffee cup on the table behind her.