The war had taught Lena DeVries to do many things. Hard, impossible things. She had learned to be courageous, propelled by adrenaline and faith. She’d even learned to face death, gripping the Savior’s hand. But waiting was the hardest lesson of all. Every minute seemed like an hour. Every hour stretched endlessly. The sun stood still in the sky during the day then took its time dawning after each endless night—a night like this one. Sometimes she would hold her breath without realizing it. Other times, she would find herself hoping against all reason that her husband, Pieter, was alive and would come home and she could hold him in her arms. Or hoping that her daughter Ans and son Wim were still alive and would return. She knew that if one of them walked through her door, her joy would swallow up the long months of waiting. If they ever did return.
The past seven days had been the longest week in all of Lena’s forty-five years. Tonight, her imagination partnered with fear, squeezing her heart dry, extinguishing hope. She released her breath with a sigh and rolled over in bed, whispering a silent prayer for Pieter and Ans and Wim. And for all the shadow people who waited in the darkness with her.
Sleep was impossible. She hadn’t slept soundly since the Nazis invaded five years ago. She rose from her bed, careful not to awaken her daughters Maaike and Bep, asleep in the bed beside her where Pieter should be. Lena kept her girls close to her side these days. She pulled a sweater over her nightgown and felt her way downstairs, familiar with every narrow step on the steep, angled stairs. She halted at the bottom. A shadow moved around her kitchen as if searching for something. Her heart leaped. “Pieter?” she whispered.
The shadow turned. It was Wolf, her contact in the Dutch Resistance. She didn’t know his real name. It was safer that way. “Did I wake you?” he whispered. “I’m sorry. I was looking for a pencil. I wanted to leave you a note.”
“Do you have news of my husband?”
“No. I’m sorry. But I do have good news. Allied troops are in Holland. Canadian tanks have liberated some of the towns. Here’s the latest newspaper.” He pulled the flimsy underground newssheet from his pocket and handed it to Lena. She glanced at it, then instinctively rolled it up so it would fit inside her bicycle frame. She would hide it there from the Nazis and deliver it to her friends in the village.
“But the Allies haven’t come this far yet?” she asked.
“Soon. I came to tell you and the others that it won’t be long. Maybe even tomorrow.”
Three more shadows slipped into the kitchen as Lena and Wolf talked. They left their hiding places only at night and had to disappear before dawn. How they must long to feel the sun on their faces again.
“This isn’t another false alarm like last fall, is it?” one of the shadows whispered. Lena remembered “Mad Tuesday,” when rumors of liberation had swept the country. There had been panic among the Nazis and rejoicing among the Dutch people. Many Nazi occupiers and their collaborators had fled east. When it proved to be a false alarm, they returned. Hope withered.
“This time it’s true,” Wolf said. “I saw the Canadian tanks myself.”
Lena closed her eyes for a moment. Would the waiting truly be over?
“How will we know when it’s safe to come out?” another shadow asked.
“They’ll ring the church bells in town. . . . I have to go,” Wolf said, backing toward the door. “I need to tell the others.”
“Wait,” Lena said. “Are you hungry? Have you eaten?” Wolf was shadow-thin. The deep hollows on the planes of his face made him appear skeletal in the darkness. Thousands of people who were trapped in the cities were dying of starvation every day. Cities like Leiden, where Lena’s daughter Ans had lived.
Wolf shook his head. “You already have so many mouths to feed.”
“Then one more won’t make a difference.” She opened the warming oven above the stove and pulled out a baked potato, wrapped in a cloth to keep it warm. “Here.” She pushed it into his hands. “I only wish I had more to offer you.” The potato was small and shriveled, one of the last ones from her depleted root cellar. “Thank you for coming, Wolf. I’ll spread the news.” He had given Lena hope. And hope would make waiting harder still.
She sat down at the kitchen table with the shadow people after Wolf left, talking about the war and reading the underground newspaper to them while they each ate a potato and a little boiled cabbage. She knew only their false names—Max and his wife, Ina—and that they were Jewish. Max forged false ID cards for the Resistance during the night, down in Lena’s root cellar.
When it was light enough to see, Lena helped the family crawl back into their hiding place behind the piano in her front room. Pieter had boarded up a closet on the other side of the wall as if it had never been there, then built a secret door leading into it through the lower panel of their upright piano. The bass keys no longer worked, but the rest of the piano keys did. Few people knew about the secret place, including Lena’s two younger daughters, or that this Jewish couple had lived there for more than a year.
Lena put the rest of the baked potatoes and a half loaf of bread she’d been saving in a basket, and carried it through the door that led from the kitchen into the barn. She never knew how many shadows were hiding in her barn or how long they would stay. More were hidden at the very top of the old windmill that pumped water for their fields. The Resistance would position the windmill blades to signal when it was safe for the shadow people to hide on her farm. Again, it was better for Lena not to know too much. She simply cooked whatever food she had and took it to them, asking the Lord to multiply it like the loaves and fishes.
Six men of various ages crept out of their hiding places in the barn as Lena sang a verse of the hymn that served as a signal. She read Wolf’s newspaper to them as they ate. Four of the shadows were in their late teens—her son Wim’s age. The other two looked like ordinary husbands and fathers. They were onderduikers, men who’d been forced to “dive under” to avoid being sent to German slave-labor camps. Some might be railroad workers who’d been ordered by the exiled Dutch government to go on strike to hinder the Nazis. The slender young man with wire-rimmed glasses and ebony hair was undoubtedly Jewish.
“What’s the first thing you want to do once the Allies arrive and Holland is free?” she asked them.
“Go home” was their unanimous reply. The shadow men talked about the other things they missed as they finished their bread and potatoes, and about the food they hungered for.
“I heard that the Allies are giving out cigarettes,” one of them said. “I’d give anything for a smoke.”
At dawn, one of the shadow men offered to milk Lena’s cow for her. “I grew up on a farm in Friesland,” he said. “Milking her reminds me of home.” He stroked the cow’s shoulder as if greeting an old friend before straddling the milking stool. “Shall I let her out to graze when I’m finished?” he asked.
“No, she has to stay inside the barn again today. Three cows were killed in a neighboring village by a stray Nazi rocket. And with the Allies moving closer, there’s always the danger of falling shrapnel from aerial battles overhead.”
“Someone might steal your cow for food, too,” another shadow said.