all my practiced speeches have flown out of my head.
“I want you to know, I didn’t want to leave you,” I continue. “I swear I didn’t. One day they came looking for girls who could sew. I thought it was just a work detail and I’d be back by the end of the day. I thought there might be better food or that it might be closer to the men’s side of camp.” I slide off Breine’s bed and kneel in front of him. The apology spills from my lips inelegant and raw. Each sentence feels like the opening of a wound, a reminder of all the small and large ways I’ve failed. “I didn’t know they would send us away. If I’d known all that would happen, I wouldn’t have—I left you alone. I did the one thing I promised I wouldn’t do, and I left you alone. I abandoned you. I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m so sorry.” Tears squeeze out of my eyes, and my voice shakes heavily.
When I reach the end, the horrible end, I force myself to confront the next possibility: that Abek won’t forgive me. What if he never realized I’d volunteered for the assignment that took me away? What if he’s angry that I didn’t find a way to take him, too?
He looks down at his hands now, clearing his throat before speaking.
“It’s okay, Zofia.”
“It’s not. You must have been looking for me in the camp. You must have wondered why I wasn’t trying to sneak you food, or—” My voice breaks. “You must have thought I was dead.”
“It is okay,” he insists. “I didn’t even know you never came back to Birkenau. I wasn’t there very much longer, either.”
“Where were you?”
He swallows. “Five places. I kept moving, but I ended up in Buchenwald. It’s here in Germany. The Americans liberated the camp in April.”
“You’ve been here in Germany?” I repeat, trying to process this.
He wasn’t there. All those times I hated myself for leaving for Neustadt or wondered if I should try to go back. He wouldn’t have been there anyway. He’d already left. He didn’t know I never came back.
“But what about the job I’d gotten for you? The commandant?”
Abek looks down. “It didn’t work out. He was transferred to a new camp, and I guess he thought he’d find someone he liked better.”
The phrasing—someone he liked better—it’s such a little-boy phrasing, it breaks my heart. Still kneeling in front of him, I take his hand, almost unable to believe his hand is actually here for me to take.
“Abek. Why didn’t you go home? After it was over? I was in the hospital for months, but I went back to Sosnowiec as soon as I could after. If Buchenwald was liberated in April, did you try to get on a train? Where have you been?”
He shrinks back a little at my questions; I’ve been shooting them rapid fire without giving him time to answer. I can’t help it; I’m so hungry to learn everything I’ve missed.
“There was an old widow,” he begins, deciding to answer my last question first. “Outside of Buchenwald. She said she would give us room and board to help through planting season. I worked for Ladna, and on weekends I would try to travel to different camps looking for you.”
“Ladna!” I exclaim.
He looks at me, curiously. “Yes. The old woman, her name was Ladna.”
“I know, but—Ladna, like in The Whirlwind,” I explain, waiting for him to catch on, to remember our favorite fairy tale. The daughter of the king and queen who was so beautiful that many princes came to woo her. “Like in The Whirlwind,” I repeat. “Where the lovely Princess Ladna is kidnapped by a dwarf on her wedding day.”
He laughs, just for a moment, and my heart fills with impossible joy at the sound. “I don’t think this Ladna would have had a wedding day. She was very… particular. She was like Mrs. Schulman.”
“I can’t believe you remember Mrs. Schulman!” My parents hired Mrs. Schulman to teach Abek and me when we weren’t allowed to attend school anymore. She was harsh, making us repeat assignments over again until they met her exacting definitions of perfection. We hated her, but Mama encouraged us to be kind: She had no one else.
“Poor Mrs. Schulman,” I say.
“Poor us,” Abek corrects. “Our poor knuckles. How could our handwriting be perfect if our knuckles were always bruised?”
“Still. Maybe, like Ladna in The Whirlwind, she just needed her own prince in