She watched the dark water and tried to remember what the city had looked like before the war.
Sometimes she couldn’t.
Behind her, a truck rumbled across the temporary bridge the Americans had built. Their headlights swept across the ruins like searchlights over a battlefield that refused to end.
Anna wrapped her coat tighter and finally walked back toward her apartment.
Inside, her sister Lotte was already asleep on the narrow mattress they shared. The elderly neighbor, Frau Dietrich, sat by the small stove feeding it scraps of wood.
“You’re late,” the old woman said quietly.
Anna shrugged off her coat.
“Work.”
Continue on the next page:
