Page 2 of The Lost Husband

Light streaks across the gray walls with barred windows and a wooden door. I nudge the door open a crack, peeking out to confirm if a guard waits for me or not. The front gates aren’t visible from here, and the SS haven’t demolished all the buildings. If the SS are only stationed at the gates, that must be why people are returning to the cellar beneath the infirmary. They can come and go without being noticed.

I hold my breath as I push the door open wider for a better look. I can’t make sense of what I’m seeing. Stepping outside, Birkenau’s landscape is motionless and silent. Shallow barracks form endless rows, their brown wood blackened by ash, windows sealed with soot. Where harsh order and rows of blue-striped uniforms once stood, dark gray snow blankets the ground.

I pause, pulling in a breath that stings my lungs, eyes searching the nearest watchtowers and the section barriers. Not a guard nor an officer in sight, just as the younger man had said. My insides twist again, as if my body is turning against itself. I need food, even if I can’t keep it down. I have to eat before I can think about what to do next.

Wind hurls a flock of snow into my face—the elements taking no mercy on me. I just need to make it down the row to theKanada inventory warehouses. That’s where the SS store food and supplies. Everything torn away from incoming prisoners has been stashed and organized within those walls, from suitcases and shoes to sometimes perishables.

I keep to the side barrier of the path where the snow is thinnest, listening to the camp’s sounds of despair. Fences moan and wood creaks. Somewhere to my right, a structure collapses with a tired sigh.

The ground rumbles again, just like I felt in the cellar until this morning, and I stumble.

The fences surrounding me rattle violently. A deep, earth-shattering groan tears through the air, vibrating in my chest and between my teeth. I can’t move—not to run or hide. I’m frozen as an explosion splits the sky—light flares along with a wave of scalding heat, and the brick walls of the crematorium ahead fly in every direction.

“They’re still burning the place down.” The reminder of the man’s words steals my breath.

Smoke swells into thick black clouds. As the crematorium crumbles, the air pressure tightens around me, the air raging against me with a force I’ve never experienced. Something hard smashes into my shoulder, spinning me around before the ground vanishes beneath my feet.

My head crashes down hard, my breath ripping from my lungs. Hot ash and debris flutter down, stinging my eyes, filling my mouth, coating my tongue with grit. My ears ring, a high-pitched, piercing whine.

Leather-gloved hands seize me from under my arms.

My heart lurches into my throat, arms thrashing to get free. A German uniform. I should have known better.

The officer pulls me backward, my feet dragging on the ground, heels catching on crags of ice and broken brick as the world moves in reverse, away from the collapsing ruin and coresite of the explosion. I’m dragged behind the shell of a barrack as another blast thunders through the sky.

His body folds over mine. Is he going to beat me for leaving the cellar? I brace myself for the worst, screwing my eyes shut.

But instead of the pain I thought was coming, I only feel a light pressure against the pulse in my neck, a hot breath against my forehead. Confused, I crack open one eye, and my heart stops.

I keep my eyes fixed on the arc of freckles along the bridge of his nose, the tension lines between his brows.

It can’t be.

Forcing my gaze up, his eyes meet mine—a sunburst of gold, green, and brown pigments, like a hazy memory breaking through the fragile walls of my mind. He has the same eyes I’ve stared into more than I’ve looked into my own in the mirror. The eyes of my husband…

My chest caves in, questioning my sanity… “Noah…” The name slips off my tongue.

It can’t be him. Of course it can’t. Not here, not in a German uniform. Noah is dead.

But the man pauses, just for a blink, and whispers, “Run.”

Run…the word repeats in my head.

“Blockführer!” a German soldier shouts from behind, his voice ripping through the smoke, his boots stomping over snow, ice, and rubble. “Was machst du?”

Hands seize the man who saved me, and he doesn’t fight back.

“Ich komme zuruck zu meinem Block.” He’s speaking German now, the words rattling in his throat.

The guard turns once, catching my gaze as he’s yanked away and into the smoke—and as I cling to the image of my beloved Noah, even if I know it’s wrong, even if I know he’d never be oneofthem, the high-pitched ringing in my ears roars louder and everything fades to black.

TWO

CURRENT DAY

Auschwitz, Oswiecim, Poland

The day after the crematorium blew up in front of me, sunlight grazes over my closed eyelid, my cheek flush to a wooden floor. Pain pulses through me as I push into my palms, dry dirt molded against my flesh. I don’t know how I ended up inside. I was left out in the snow…