Girl in the Blue Coat(6)

“She was gone?”

“Vanished. Her bed was empty. Her coat was gone. Her shoes were gone. She was gone.”

“What time was it by then?”

“Around ten. After curfew. Sometime between five thirty, when Mirjam said she was going to lie down, and ten, she disappeared, and there is no explanation.”

Finished with her story, she refolds the paper and starts to put it back in her pocket before handing it to me instead. There are matches near the burners on Mrs. Janssen’s stove. I fetch one now, strike it against the box, and let Mrs. Janssen’s penciled sleuthing burn into sulfur and ash.

“What are you doing?” she asks.

“What are you doing, keeping written records of the girl you’ve been illegally hiding?”

She rubs her forehead. “I didn’t think of that. I don’t know these rules. It’s why I need your help, Hanneke.”

The Westerkerk chimes again in the background. Another quarter hour has passed. Before, I was using the time as an excuse to leave, but now it really is getting late. I fold my arms over my chest. “You were visiting with a neighbor for an hour. Couldn’t Mirjam have walked out then?”

“Mrs. Veenstra lives right across the street. We sat on her steps and faced my house; it wasn’t too cold yesterday. Mirjam couldn’t have left through the front door without me seeing her.”

“You have a back door?” I shouldn’t be getting her hopes up by asking questions like this, when I’m not planning to help her. But the situation she’s described is strange and unbelievable, and I keep feeling like she must be explaining it wrong.

“The rear door doesn’t close properly—it hasn’t for years. I used to get so mad at Hendrik; to think of a furniture maker not making the time to fix his own door. Finally last year I got fed up with asking and I installed a latch myself. When I noticed Mirjam was gone, I checked it. It was still closed. She couldn’t have left through the back entrance and closed a latch on the inside of the door.”

“A window?” It sounds unlikely even as I’m saying it. This neighborhood is wealthy, the kind of place people would notice unusual things like girls climbing out windows.

“Not a window. Don’t you see? She had no way to leave. And no reason to. This was the last safe place for her. But she can’t have been discovered, either. If the Nazis had come to take her, they would have taken me, too.”

There has to be a rational explanation. Mrs. Janssen must have turned away for a few minutes at Mrs. Veenstra’s and not seen the girl leave. Or maybe she has the timing wrong, and the girl disappeared while Mrs. Janssen was taking an afternoon nap.

The explanation doesn’t matter, really. I can’t help her, no matter how sad her story is. It’s too dangerous. Survival first. That’s my war motto. After Bas, it might be my life motto. Survival first, survival only. I used to be a careless person, and look where it got me. Now I transport black market goods, but only because it feeds me and my family. I flirt with German soldiers, but only because it saves me. Finding a missing girl does nothing for me at all.

From outside the kitchen, I hear the front door squeak open, and then a young male voice call out, “Hallo?” Farther away, the sound of a dog barking. Who is here? The Gestapo? The NSB? We hate the Gestapo, and the Green Police, but we hate the Nationaal-Socialistische Beweging most of all. The Dutch Nazis, who have betrayed their own people.

Mrs. Janssen’s eyes widen until she places the voice. “Christoffel, I’m in the kitchen,” she calls out. “I forgot he was coming back today,” she whispers to me.

“Pick up your coffee. Behave normally.”

Christoffel the errand boy has curly blond hair and big blue eyes and the tender skin of someone who hasn’t been shaving long.

“Mrs. Janssen?” He fumbles with his hat in his hands, uncomfortable to have interrupted us. “I’m here for the opklapbed? This is the time you said?”

“Yes, of course.” She begins to rise, but Christoffel gestures for her to stay seated.

“I can manage on my own. I have a cart, and a friend waiting outside to help.” He nods toward the window, where a tall, stout boy waves from the street.

When he disappears for his cart and his friend, Mrs. Janssen sees my alarmed face and reassures me. “Not that bed. Not Mirjam’s. He’s taking the one in Hendrik’s office. I barely go in that room anymore. I asked Christoffel if he could find a buyer, and I was going to use the money to help support Mirjam.”

“Now?”

“Now I’ll use the money to pay you to help me.” I’m shaking my head in protest, but she cuts me off. “You have to find her, Hanneke. My older sons—I may never see them again. My youngest son is dead, my husband died trying to protect Mirjam’s family, and her family died trying to protect him. I have no one now, and neither does she. Mirjam and I must be each other’s family. Don’t let me lose her. Please.”

I’m saved from having to respond by the squeaking wheels of Christoffel’s pushcart, to which he and his friend have lashed Mrs. Janssen’s other opklapbed. It’s more ornate than the one in the pantry, the wood smooth and varnished and still smelling faintly of lemon furniture oil. “Mrs. Janssen? I’m leaving now,” he says.

“Wait,” I tell him. “Mrs. Janssen, maybe you don’t need to sell this bed now. Wait a day to think about it.” It’s my way of telling her I’m not going to be able to agree to this proposition.