She did not own a flashlight and had feared stealing one from the officers’ billet, only to have its light betray them as they ran for freedom. In the end, she decided a night run was not worth the risk. Now, however, as the train hurtled toward dawn, she was feeling regret.
No, she thought, clamping down on the emotion. I have to believe this is the right time and the right way to go.
Adeline closed her eyes and was actually starting to doze when she heard the conductor’s question echo in her mind. Aren’t you putting your kids in danger?
She came to again, alert, tense, her chest heaving when she glanced at Will and then Walt, feeling her heart pang with alarm for them and for her. They were in danger, terrible danger, all of them. They’d been in peril from the moment they’d left the house with the wagon. If they were caught, the Soviets could separate her from the boys. They could send her east to a work camp and Walt and Will to an orphanage. With every kilometer that passed along the route heading west-southwest from Berlin toward Oebisfelde, the border, and the British Zone beyond, her anxiety rippled through fear toward terror.
What if I’m shot? What if the boys are shot? And I’m not?
Adeline’s mind reeled and threw her back more than a decade, seeing herself as if from the ceiling of their flat in Pervomaisk, where she’d held the first Waldemar in the moments after he’d died and she’d known what it was to have something ripped from her heart, an agony so complete and devastating, she’d wanted to lie down and die right there.
In the train, Adeline gasped at the wrenching emotion of that horrible memory.
“Mama?” Will said, jerking her back to reality. “Are you okay?”
“Yes, I . . . ,” she said, her heart thumping and her stomach churning when she gazed down at her dear little boy in the dimly lit railcar. “Why?”
“You cried out. You said, ‘Waldemar.’”
“What?” Walt said, rousing.
“Nothing,” Adeline whispered. “Go back to sleep, both of you.”
As the boys readjusted and snuggled against her, she tried not to think about the cold sweat on her brow and the nausea in her stomach and the weakness in her chest and legs at the thought of one of them dying before she did. I can’t take that. I can’t do that again, Lord. I can’t.
Adeline realized she’d been holding her breath and forced herself to take in one inhalation after another after another. And as she did, for reasons she’d never be able to fully explain, she thought of four lines in Emil’s third letter: “Remember that Corporal Gheorghe? The Romanian with the dented head and the honey wine? I saw him again. He said to say hello to Malia if you have the chance.”
Corporal Gheorghe. Of course, she remembered him. How could she not? His hypnotic eyes and the way he talked about the Battle of Stalingrad, how he’d woken up after being shelled in the initial Soviet attack, how he’d seen the world differently, and how he’d known without a doubt that he would survive to tell the tale. That unwavering belief had seemed to protect the Romanian as he’d walked on through the bloodiest battle ever fought on earth.
I have to believe like that, Adeline thought. I have to believe with every fiber of my being, with no doubt that we’ll make it. No doubt.
Adeline suddenly understood that if she really had no doubts, none whatsoever, she’d be calmer and make better decisions in the waning darkness and waxing light that lay before her and her beloved boys.
No doubts, Adella. You’re already there.
She closed her eyes and repeated the words again and again as she drifted off, dwelling on that vision of reunion she’d held on to on the train to Berlin, feeling Emil’s powerful arms surround her, protect her, hold her to his chest while she—
“Lady,” the conductor said, and shook her shoulder. “Wake up. Oebisfelde, next stop. We need to get you and your wagon off fast. Understand?”
Chapter Thirty-Seven
March 18, 1947, 5:47 a.m.
Oebisfelde, Soviet-Occupied east Germany
“Understand?” the conductor repeated, irritated. “And I want my cigarettes.”
Adeline’s throat started to constrict, and her heart was racing again. Thoughts about losing another child returned. They tried to paralyze her.
Stop it. No doubts, Adeline. You’re already there.
“You’ll get the carton once we’re off,” she said. “Boys, wake up. We’re going for our walk.”
“A walk?” the conductor snorted. “Lady, when it counts, I’d be in an all-out sprint. The Russians shoot first and—”
“Stop,” she said as the boys slowly came to. “Please, sir. For their sake.”
“Yeah, yeah,” he said, and walked toward the back of the car.
Will said, “I’m thirsty, and I have to pee, Mama.”
“I do, too,” Walt said.
Adeline was folding the blanket and realizing that she’d forgotten to pack water.
“We’ll pee when we get off and find some water before the next train,” she promised.
Will groaned. “When’s that?”
She started to snap at him but stopped herself. “Sooner than you think.”
The train slowed. She looked out, trying to see back east, trying to find the dawn and finally spotting its pale purple hint far across a grain field covered in an inch of new snow.
“Here we go,” she said, getting them out into the aisle and following them toward the rear exit. “The traveling Martels are off on another adventure.”
“You always say that,” Will said.
“Because we’re always traveling,” Walt said with an air of condescension.
Adeline looked outside again, catching the silhouettes of rooftops before the train came to a stop with a squeal and a hiss at a two-story brick station with a single platform lit by gas lamps and the cracking dawn.
“C’mon, now,” the conductor said. “Fast.”
She climbed down, telling
