Page 38 of The Lost Husband

I step between them, unsure if Avi might snap and attack Elias. I lift a palm to each of them. “Elias, it’s kind of you to care about us. We appreciate it. I think we’re all hungry and tired, and saying unnecessary things.” I realize I’m breaking up a juvenile argument between…two young people who have experienced the worst of humanity at far too young an age. “If the Soviets are moving northwest, they must be heading toward a source of transportation—possibly a railway that’s still in service.”

Avi takes a step back and paces in a small circle, tugging at an uneven strand of her dark hair, twisting it into a tight coil.

“Celina’s right,” Elias says.

Avi stops pacing and stares east, between Elias and me, straight toward the sun. Her voice lowers and words slip out slower. “Shelter and food are what we need. We stay behind them. Not with them.”

“We continue with caution. That’s the compromise here, is it not?” I add.

Avi huffs and turns her back to the sun and to us.

Our walk continues in silence, thankfully, but also tempered with heavy steps and huffs and puffs. We were strangers two days ago, but if they’re anything like me, they’re strangers to themselves right now too. I don’t recognize my thoughts, endurance, weakness, or strength. This is not someone I ever had to be before the day Noah told me to run. Told me to live. For…both of us…an equation he wasn’t even a part of.

I glance down at my concave stomach, wishing I could remember the sensation of movement rather than the nagging pain from whatever bacteria was eating at my insides for weeks.A motor rumbles from behind us. That’s not the sensation I was recalling.

“Truck,” Elias says.

I scan our surroundings, looking for a place to hide. A handful of trees up ahead on our right might be the only place. We move as quickly as we can and sink down into the snow, hoping the slight snowbank drifting toward the road will be enough to conceal us between the trees.

“It’s moving so slowly,” Avi mutters.

There’s no other reason to crawl along this road unless searching for something. The questions of “what if?” never cease.

What if…whoever is in this truck sees us?

What if…they’re German?

What if…they’re Soviets who don’t want us here either?

What if…they’re Polish citizens who see us the way the Reich made Jewish people out to be?

My heart races, an incessant knock from within my body. Snow seeps through the wool of my coat and the fabric of my uniform.

The engine sputters and the tires rotate slower than the second hand on a clock. The wind heaves snow into my face, and I hold my breath, praying the truck will keep moving. “More bodies,” a man says, his accent unplaceable. The snow keeps pummeling me in the face, making it so I can only hear something hit the ground with a small thud.

Another what if…

Several more minutes pass of me convincing myself we’re almost safe again, even though I’m now soaked from the wet snow. But at least the rumbling engine has gone silent.

With a break in the wind, I peek out toward the road, spotting nothing but open space on the other side of the trees. “It’s clear.”

My stomach cramps, the familiar pain that keeps coming back, but I push through it and clamber back up to my feet. The cold seeps from my head down my spine. My uniform hangs heavier across my shoulders now sticking to my arms and legs. As if the cold itself wasn’t already enough.

As the road ahead grows clearer, across the road, in front of the tree line, I notice a rock wrapped in a red scrap of fabric sitting in front of a snow mound with hints of a German uniform poking through.

“They were marking bodies,” I tell Elias and Avi.

They don’t argue or disagree, just pull themselves up too.

* * *

The struggle against the elements to move up the road’s icy incline is draining every bit of energy I might have recuperated last night. And with each break in the trees, there’s nothing to see but frozen fields of flattened hay—a desolate world.

“The snow over here is more rigid from the tire marks,” Avi says, veering to the left of the open road.

Elias steps ahead of her, forming footprints larger than ours to follow. “You smell that?” he asks.

My nostrils are frozen. With each sniffle comes a cold crackle, but there’s something faint in the air. Something acidic and smoky.