Girl in the Blue Coat(63)

“We got the camera. At least,” Willem says, too kindly.

“What are you going to do with it? Give it back to Mina or destroy the film?”

They look at each other. “We haven’t decided,” Ollie says. He hands me a mug that had been sitting on his armrest. “Drink.” I lift the cup by rote, but when the liquid slides down my throat, it doesn’t even register to me what it is. In the past twelve hours, I’ve felt everything I could possibly feel. Now I’m numb.

“I should go.” I’m wearing my clothes from last night, though someone has removed my shoes. I’m wrinkled and soiled. There’s a run in my stockings, my last pair. When I try to stand, my head spins.

Willem looks worriedly at Ollie. “She should have some breakfast. Shouldn’t she, Ollie?”

“I have to go to Mrs. Janssen’s. I have to tell her what happened.”

Nothing in my body wants to make that visit, but prolonging it will only be worse. Sometimes hope can be poisonous. I need to put Mrs. Janssen out of her misery as soon as I can.

Willem brings me my shoes, telling me over and over again that I don’t need to leave yet. Eventually he realizes he won’t change my mind, and wraps some bread and an apple in a napkin for me to take along. I can’t imagine eating right now, but I don’t want to tell him that. I’ll put the food in my bag as soon as I leave the apartment.

My bicycle is—I don’t even know where my bicycle is. Still in the lobby of Mrs. de Vries’s apartment, I assume, where I left it before Ollie and I took our positions at the butcher’s. In a happier version of the story, I would have ridden it home this morning after leaving Mirjam there, safe and sound.

Without a bicycle, I have to walk to Mrs. Janssen’s, which takes nearly an hour. I have a few coins in my pocket and I could catch a tram, but I think I deserve the pain. I worry along the way about how I’ll tell her. Whether it’s better to just come out and say it—“She’s dead, Mrs. Janssen”—or whether I should start from the beginning, explaining what happened and where the plan failed.

It turns out that I don’t have to say anything. Mrs. Janssen can tell, from my slumping shoulders or my rumpled clothes, or maybe just from the way I’m walking. She was waiting by the front window of her home, and when she sees me walk up the street alone, she drops her head to her chest.

“How did it happen?” she asks when she opens the door. It feels wrong to deliver the news on the steps. But then, all of this feels wrong.

Each word hurts my throat as I force it out. “She ran. I tried to get her to follow me and she ran. They caught her. She’s dead.” I add the last sentence because caught could mean she was merely captured. I don’t want to have to explain twice that Mirjam is never coming back to this house.

Mrs. Janssen leans heavily on her cane, and I feel like I’m watching another piece of her break. Numbly, I take her elbow and help her back inside her own house. We both sit on the ugly sofa in her living room. “What happened?” she asks. “Why did she run from you?” Her grief is quiet and dignified, and somehow this makes it worse. I think it would be easier if she had come completely undone, the way I did last night, when Ollie had to drag me home because I couldn’t even think straight. But Mrs. Janssen is grieving in a practiced way, the way of someone who is used to losing things.

Why did Mirjam run from me? If she was willing to run to escape the Nazis, why wouldn’t she run with me, the person who had just told her I was there to help her?

“I don’t know,” I admit. “But I was a stranger approaching her in the middle of the night, grabbing her hand, and telling her to follow me. Maybe she just got scared. The night was so confusing. We were all scared.”

“Do you think she thought you were a plant, working for the soldiers? Or maybe that she wasn’t sure which direction you were telling her to run in?”

“I don’t know. I don’t know.”

“I should have come.” Her face is stricken. “She didn’t know you, but she knew me.”

“You couldn’t have helped,” I say firmly. “Neither of us could have done anything.” I don’t know if that’s true, though. Should I have mentioned Mrs. Janssen’s name to Mirjam? Would that have helped? Why didn’t she follow me? Finally I offer the only comforting thing I have, as small as it is.

“We have her body. My friends were able to rescue her body. It’s at Mr. Kreuk’s.”

“Who is with her?”

“Nobody, right now. Mr. Kreuk usually comes in at eight thirty. When he gets in, I’ll ask him to take care of her. I’ll ask him to find a burial plot.”

“I’ll pay,” she says immediately.

“I will pay,” I say. I’ll pay with the money Mrs. Janssen gave me to find her. It’s the only thing I can do. We should be able to afford a headstone with that money. A simple one, but nice.

“You should go to the funeral home,” Mrs. Janssen says.

“I can stay. I can keep you company.”

“You should go, Hanneke,” she says. “I don’t want her to be alone.”





I go to Mrs. de Vries’s first, though. They already know what happened last night.

“Hanneke, I’m so sorry,” Mrs. de Vries says when she opens the door, sounding as sympathetic as I imagine she can. She must have seen me come in the building from outside, because none of the onderduikers are hiding. The Cohens sit on the sofa, holding hands. Mina runs from behind Mrs. de Vries and throws her arms around me.