PROLOGUE

February 1945
Flossenbürg, Germany

Overhead, there was no sky.

Or rather, it was unlike any sky Maria had glimpsed before. Unvarnished gray, almost white. If the sun ever existed, it had long since fled, leaving rays void of color and cheer in its wake.

The road ahead stretched long and straight. At its end, a great brown building squatted, bricks and roof providing the vista’s only color. Everything else . . . white. Endless white. Snow on the ground. Billowing smoke. Swirling flakes raining down.

What those papery flakes represented, what they had once been, Maria couldn’t bear to think of.

Nein, she must keep to her purpose. Any deviation would be fatal to her sluggish mind, her leaden feet.

“Dietrich.” The word whispered from her half–frozen lips. “Dietrich.”

Just keep thinking of him. That would keep her warm.

It had started as a girlish game of hers, running his name over and over in her mind, turning each syllable, toying with the letters, as she went about her daily duties.

Now it was the cord that kept her body upright, her limbs moving, and her numb fingers clenched around the handle of the heavy suitcase. With each step, the case jostled against her shin.

“Dietrich . . .”

Just a few more steps.

“Dietrich . . .”

Finally she reached the half–moon–shaped entrance. A guard—weathered face etched with severe lines, black SS cap straight upon his close–shaven hair—looked her over as if she were an apparition. To him, she probably was. A fraülein of only twenty, approaching the gates of a concentration camp on foot. Only she didn’t feel twenty. The weight of these past months, years, had bestowed upon her the mind of a woman three times that.

“Guten Morgen, Fraülein.” He gave a stiff nod, his shoulders broom-handle straight.

Oh, honestly. They weren’t in a ballroom, for pity’s sake. It was cold enough to turn water into icicles in seconds. Her fingers had become claws around the case’s handle. Her hair was in tangles, her nose redder than the armband wrapping the man’s right bicep.

Still, she needed something from this man. And it was better to smile than to make enemies. Hadn’t the Tegel months shown her that?

“Guten Morgen, Herr Officer. I’m here about a prisoner.”

His gaze sharpened into even grimmer lines. Undoubtedly, this specimen of SS training had at one time been some mutter’s little boy, some sister’s playmate. Given the girl fits of exasperation, as Max had in their childhood days. Brought a whole new meaning to the word dummkopf, yet done it all so charmingly that she could only throw her hands up . . . then laugh and ply him with kuchen.

She’d have to appeal to that, the little boy hidden beneath the skull and crossbones insignia.

“You’ve got to help me.” It was all too easy to weave desperation through the fabric of her words. Desperation, something Germany—mighty, Führer–led Germany—did not condone, yet its people made bedfellows with. “I’ve walked seven kilometers here, and I’ll have to return on foot. Please, Herr Officer. I need answers. The man I’m searching for . . . he’s my fiancé.”

Success. He’d softened somewhat, perhaps at the memory of his own sweetheart. Of happier days when love was a thing to rejoice in, laughter an everyday sound.

“Ja. You have a name?”

She nodded. “Bonhoeffer. Dietrich Bonhoeffer.”

“Wait here.” He moved, as if to turn. Then snapped a glance over his shoulder. “Come inside.” A stiff motion with his black–gloved hand. “You look cold.”

Forcing her feet to move was accomplished only by sheer willpower. They made their way inside a large and dark room. A fire—color and warmth at last—lit a large stone hearth.

“You . . . um . . . can warm yourself over there. I’d offer kaffee, but we’re low at present.”

The warmth beckoned, and she crossed the floor, her boots leaving a watery trail in their wake. She crouched in front of the flames, much the same way the family dog had during long winter nights at Pätzig. For what seemed like an hour, she sat there. Finally, blessed warmth returned to her hands, and she pried them from around the leather handles. Though the tingling and burning that ensued made tears prick her eyes, at least she wasn’t frostbitten.

The presence of warmth made another of her needs starkly apparent. When had she last eaten? Her hollow stomach—where had the rosy–cheeked girl who devoured plateful after plateful of strudel, gone?—gurgled in protest.

Yet this need of hers, so weak and human, could wait. It was Dietrich—not theologian Dietrich, or brilliant Dietrich, nor even Tegel Dietrich, but the Dietrich she loved with full and startling intensity—who mattered most at this moment.

She sensed someone watching her and turned. The guard stood beside the cluttered desk, one hand resting on its top, looking at her, not with detachment, but with something else altogether in his eyes. It couldn’t be pity. Not from a member of Hitler’s trained, lauded, and equipped forces. Not from a man who viewed death as often as a scullery maid saw dirty dishes. Yet . . . yes, there was pity in those veiled eyes.

Somehow she managed to force her legs to stand.

“Well?”

“I’m sorry, Fraülein. I have no record of anyone by the name of Dietrich Bonhoeffer.”

“Are you sure?” Where else could they have taken him? They gave her no word in Berlin, no one knew here. How could one man simply disappear, even in the chaos engulfing war–torn Germany?

“I checked. Our records are meticulous.” He stiffened, as if challenging her, a red–nosed, disheveled fraülein, to question him. Then, softening again, added, “I’m sorry your journey has been wasted. These days . . . it is easy to misplace people.”

The hours of walking, the cold, the frustration bordering on despair, boiled within her like a kettle left on the stove much too long. “I didn’t misplace him.” She spat out the words, quick bursts of rage, before regret could worm its way in. “Your kind took him. An innocent man and the best that ever breathed air.” Snatching up the suitcase, she spun on her heel, strode from the building and down the road, before the man could follow and arrest her for unpatriotic talk. They seemed to be arresting everyone these days for the slightest offense—Hans, Rüdiger, Klaus.

Dietrich.

The road ahead seemed to mock her, each step one that must be fought for, triumphed over, before she could reach shelter. Frigid air bit through her threadbare coat, slashed across her thin stockings. Tears, those renegade signs of weakness, flooded her eyes and sped down her cheeks. She swiped them away with an impatient hand. Nobody cried anymore. There was just too much sorrow and not enough time.

She slipped her numb fingers into the pocket of her coat, fingertips brushing a folded piece of paper. One of Dietrich’s letters to her. Its words echoed in her mind:

The thought that you are concerned would be my only concern. The thought that you’re waiting with me, lovingly and patiently, is my daily consolation. All will come right at the time appointed by God. Join me in looking forward to that time. . . .

“I’m trying, Dietrich. I’m trying to believe that there will be a time. That one day we’ll again sit in Grossmutter’s parlor, and you’ll play the piano, and we’ll be happy. Happy not because there’s anything in particular to be glad about, but because we’re together. That’s all that matters. We’ll be together.”

There. Think of that. Though she hadn’t succeeded at the camp, the war would soon be over. This horrible, godforsaken war that had claimed the lives of one too many good men. But the memory of Dietrich and his words rose in her thoughts again: “Nein, Maria. Nothing is ever godforsaken. He is in everything . . . In the giving and taking of life. In all of our moments, even this one.”

She kept talking aloud, if only to keep her senses alert.

“Ja, Dietrich. You’re right. You always are, you know. It still amazes me that you chose me, the silly girl who couldn’t understand theology, who coaxed you into playing American music. I’m not that girl anymore, you know. How can I still be? After all these years have brought, I’ve changed, you’ve changed. But know this. Wherever you are . . .”

The exertion of her pace, the cold scraping her lungs stole her last words. But as she trudged down the endless road, the suitcase heavier than ever, the sky above gray and lifeless and empty, she let them fill her heart.

I love you.