Hannah sits down opposite Sarah. Her heart sinks. Now she will have to give a full accounting, which she prefers not to do

"Emmy?”

Emmy stops her piano practice and turns around to face Felix. “Hmm?”

She’s usually calm after piano practice, more pliable than usual. “I have to make a small journey — only half a day. Will you come along with me?”

Emmy plays a chord, B-flat minor. “No.”

“No?”

A snatch of tune with her right hand. “Why should I?”

“I need to do some research for a story I’m working on. For my job.”

“Do not tell me we are chasing after another Hans and Bertha adventure?”

“Perhaps. I need to have a woman with me to talk to a fräulein. And you owe me a favor.”

She closes the music book and wrinkles her nose. “I must practice some more Mozart. Polite company does not enjoy the new type of music. What is this about a favor?”

“Did I not chaperone you a thousand times? Did I not come with you on your circus fiasco?”

Her face grows pinched as he says this. “Yes.”

“Well, then.”

“When?”

Chasya has given him a list of villages, some addresses. She has been asking around, and every woman in the Jewish quarter can tell her about a niece or a friend or an old neighbor or someone they know.

An hour out of Prague and they will already be in the wilderness. For this trip, it means that they can be back and forth in one day, which is the only way he can do it really, for he has used up all of Wolf’s patience.

She looks vaguely interested. “A carriage with springs. That has been reupholstered within the last year. And no fellow passengers chewing tobacco, or wanting to match me up with their neighbor’s grandson.”

“Agreed.”

“Well, then. When do we set off?”

Sarah arrives at precisely four o’clock, the earliest polite time for afternoon visitors. From the kitchen, Hannah glimpses her bustle past Gertrude and sit down on the ottoman, as if she is about to announce her reign.

Hannah takes the pot off the stove and hurries over.

“Sarah.”

Sarah does not even stand up. “So long, so much has happened, and you have not come to tell me about what has been going on.”

Hannah sits down opposite Sarah. Her heart sinks. Now she will have to give a full accounting, which she prefers not to do.

“It has been so busy. You would not believe.”

“Try me.”

Hannah takes a deep breath. What to say, what not to say?