Zelda toiled in the dimly lit tavern, the warm air thick with the scents of stale ale and aged wood. Dust danced in what few shafts of sunlight dared to penetrate the grime-covered windows, lending an ethereal quality to the otherwise mundane scene. She moved with a practiced rhythm, the clink of each glass as she wiped it out and set it down the only sounds in the empty space.
Suddenly, the tranquility was shattered by the abrupt intrusion of a figure in the doorway. The air seemed to still as her eyes darted up, her heart lurching at the sight of Alex’s haggard form. His arm was cradled in a makeshift sling, and a bandage obscured one eye. He looked like he’d fallen into a blender, with his ripped clothing and the bruises marring his skin; even so, there was an undeniable aura of resilience about him as he met her gaze.
With a mixture of shock and relief, she hurried to his side, supporting his weight. She marveled at his survival, the extent of his injuries a testament to the horrors he must’ve faced at Voight’s hands. One arm hung limply in a makeshift sling, while his left eye remained obscured behind layers of tape. A bandage wrapped around his head, stained with dried blood and other ominous fluids, spoke of a harrowing ordeal endured in darkness.
Marta appeared and, together, she and Zelda ushered him into the kitchen.
The harsh fluorescent light cast stark shadows over his abused form, accentuating the severity of his injuries. Marta swiftly fetched a chair while Zelda guided him into it; her heart ached as he winced in pain. Cautiously, she began unwrapping the bandages around his head, her breath catching at the sight of the angry gash cutting across his scalp. Marta leaned in, inspecting the wound with a critical eye. “You’re not going to win any beauty contests,” she remarked bluntly. “But at least it’s not infected.”
Zelda noticed that Alex’s wound had also been competently, if crudely, stitched. “You saw a doctor?”
Alex shook his head, and grimaced. “I saw someone.”
“We’re closing for the afternoon,” Marta announced, before heading back to the front door to lock it.
Zelda couldn’t shake off the nagging sense of futility, as she re-wrapped Alex’s head. What was the point of acting like that mattered? Voight had proven himself capable of breaking through any barrier, physical or otherwise, if it served his sick purposes. Still, she couldn’t stifle the surge of disbelief and gratitude that kept washing over her at the sight of her friend, battered but alive. Grateful for some good news, however small, she hurried to tie some ice inside a washcloth. As Alex pressed the homespun compress to his head, she leaned against the prep table, her mind racing with questions that she didn’t have the words to frame. “What happened?”
He didn’t answer at first and, when he did, his voice was strained. “After that maniac major got through with me, I was thrown into some sort of prison.” His lips pressed into a thin line. “I couldn’t tell where, I didn’t recognize the building. But his goons dumped me into a cell and, for a blessed moment, I thought they’d all forgotten about me.” His breaths came in ragged gasps, each one seeming to echo a relentless barage of pain; his muscles remained tense, as if bracing for another onslaught. “Then,” he concluded, “Voight came back.”
Alex’s words enveloped her like an icy shroud, a gasp escaping her lips. Her hand flew to her mouth, in an instinctive effort to stifle the rising horror. He’d been gone almost a week, now, lost in a labyrinth of unimaginable torment. “When the Sturmbannfüherer wasn’t there,” he finished, “someone else was.” His voice was a mere murmur, laden with the haunting echoes of his memories.
In the silence that followed, she felt an unbridgeable chasm yawning between them, a divide between the nights she’d spent fighting with her sister and his nights in Hell. She longed to reach out to somehow, to offer solace or understanding, but his eyes remained fixed on some far point. Unable to breach the fortress of his thoughts, she remained a silent observer.
Marta reappeared, her presence a jolt back to the mundane.
She frowned at Alex. “What did you tell them?”
“That you have a bad husband,” Alex quipped, with forced levity.
Marta’s chuckle held a nervous edge. “When did you get out?”
“Like that’s any of your business,” Alex grumbled, his voice rough with exhaustion. “This morning,” he added after a minute, sounding defeated. Then, his gaze swung back to Zelda’s, weariness replaced by a steely determination. It felt as though he was trying to see through her, searching for some buried secret. “What about you, Zelda?”
A knot formed in her stomach, and she fought the urge to look away, to retreat from his insinuation. “That night,” she admitted.
Marta scoffed. “I didn’t get home until night before last.” She poured herself a finger of bourbon, her gaze darting between Zelda and Alex as she drank. Zelda felt Marta’s suspicion, and Alex’s, bearing down on her as she struggled to catch her breath. Both of them seemed to think that her having been released so soon was somehow evidence—but of what?
Alex’s brows furrowed deeper. “That night?”
“I didn’t know anything,” Zelda retorted defensively.
Neither Marta nor Alex offered a response, as unspoken accusations hung in the air. Marta’s footsteps echoed loudly against the floorboards as she strode to the sink. “I’m calling a meeting,” she announced abruptly, slamming her glass down. She stormed out of the room a minute later.
Zelda exchanged a look with Alex, wishing she could mend the rift between them. But she couldn’t, so she guided him up the narrow stairs to Marta’s apartment. Below, Marta made her calls, gathering their ragtag coalition of neighborhood shop owners. They’d formed their own resistance cell like modern Minutemen, echoing the spirit of defiance that’d inspired the Founding Fathers to throw off their oppressors so long ago.
They settled onto a worn sofa, the faded upholstery offering little comfort. Zelda’s gaze roamed restlessly around Marta’s living room, until it fixed upon a statuette of a milkmaid. The porcelain figure seemed frozen in serene indifference, a grim contrast to her own growing unease. Each tick of the clock echoed through the small space, amplifying the awkward silence between them.
Alex’s hand reached out to hers, a wordless plea for connection that stirred a whirlwind of conflicting emotions within her. She understood his feelings and desires all too well, yet the painful truth remained: they’d broken up for a reason. His enduring the horrors he had tore at her heart, but also didn’t erase the fact that they weren’t right for each other. How could she tell him so, without feeling like the world’s worst person? “Don’t worry,” he offered with a gentle smile, his attempt at reassurance only intensifying her burden of guilt. “I look worse than I feel.”
An unsettling sensation gripped her as she pulled away, resenting the intrusion into her personal sphere. “I should make coffee,” she interjected hastily, eager to break the intimacy of the moment—and to escape her own tumultuous thoughts. When Alex didn’t respond, she went into the kitchen.
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Alone again, she immersed herself in the familiar routine, the rhythmic clatter of cups and saucers offering a comforting distraction from the suffocating pressure of his expectations. Alex had been her best friend since he’d rescued her from a mud puddle when she was in kindergarten and he, a wiser fourth grader, had seemed like a hero. Back then, he and Charlotte had been in the same class, enjoying their roles as mentors. But while Charlotte had gracefully accepted Zelda’s growing independence, Alex hadn’t. Their fleeting romance, born from her need for comfort after her father’s passing, had been fraught with tension over her insistence on being true to herself. She yearned for the Alex of old, the one who laughed at her silly jokes and who cherished their bond for what it was…without strings attached.
The arrival of a third person, Bob from the jewelry store, was a relief.
A handful of others trickled in, but not more. Their group had been severely diminished, the absence of so many familiar faces a harsh reality check that they were no longer playing at patriots. Over a dozen had been arrested, that fateful afternoon, and most were still missing. No one spoke, their shared sense of disillusionment pressing down upon them.
Finally, Bob’s voice broke the spell. “Does anyone know where Bill is?”
Marta stared at Zelda as she replied. “No.”
Karen, the owner of an appliance repair shop, joined in next with a probing question. “This Sturmbannführer Voight, how does he even know about Bill? Or any of us?”
Alex jabbed a finger at Zelda. “Ask her.”
Zelda’s mouth dropped open in shock. “What?”
“When the Sturmbannführer wasn’t subjecting me to his twisted games,” Alex began, “he left me hanging from the ceiling.” His voice, rich with disgust and pain, barely rose above a whisper. “Just when I thought I’d finally be allowed to die, he’d cut me down and start again.” He paused, letting this statement sink in. “I didn’t know it was possible to endure that much agony.” An ugly note crept into words that dripped with suppressed rage, as he turned his gaze on Zelda. “But it was different for you, wasn’t it? You were home for dinner.”
Her pulse quickened, her breath catching in her throat. “That wasn’t my fault.”
A smug smile played on his lips as he reveled in her discomfort. “Wasn’t it?”
Her face burned with indignation. “No!”
“The room held its collective breath as Alex forged on, his words full of righteous condemnation. “You’re a mole, aren’t you? Feeding Voight information, about all of us, and that’s when you’re not cozying up to him.” The curl of his lip left no doubt as to what he meant by cozying up.
She forced herself to meet Alex’s gaze, steeling herself against the rising tide of panic. “Voight makes my skin crawl.”
“I’m the one who makes your skin crawl!” Alex snapped, a storm brewing behind his eyes.
“Alex.” She kept her voice calm, willing him to absorb sense. “I was arrested, too.”
He gritted his teeth. “You didn’t come close to losing an eye.”
Her voice trembled, as she pleaded for understanding. “I asked Voight to—
“You asked him?” Alex shouted. “Asked him to what?”
She opened her mouth, and shut it, his question knocking the air from her lungs. In a stomach-churning moment of realization, she finally grasped that her friend, her best friend in the entire world, thought she was in bed with the Reich—literally. Her respect for him evaporated, as she wondered how to respond. Alex had known her for over a decade, and he didn’t know her at all.
Rob sipped his coffee. “Even if Zelda isn’t a horizontal collaborator, her sister is.” He dropped this revelation casually, as though he were discussing the weather. “You know, Charlotte, that scatterbrained Bohemian? She is spreading her legs for an SS officer and it’s Klaus Dassel.”
Marta gasped in horror, but Zelda brushed the reaction aside. She had no interest in learning more about their neighbor, or what differentiated him from any other sock puppet in the laundry basket. “Nobody,” she asserted firmly, “is…doing that with anybody, especially not my sister. Of course she’s polite to him, she’s polite to everybody and he lives right across the street! What’s she going to do, lie in wait for him to come outside and then kick him in the shins?”
But her confidence wavered as Karen’s expression darkened. “I saw them, together.”
“Doing what?” Zelda retorted. “Screwing?”
“In Riverbend Park.” Karen’s lip jutted obstinately. “She was grinning at him like she’d struck gold, like he was her knight in shining armor come to whisk her away from this misery.” Her tone dripped with loathing. “And don’t tell me different, Zelda. I know what I saw.”
Zelda clenched her fists, her nails digging into her palms, fighting the urge to slam Karen’s double-crossing face into the table. But she forced herself to calm. “There’s a war on, right?” Her voice broke through the taut atmosphere, as she locked eyes with each person in turn. “The Reich is winning, and they’ll keep winning as long as we’re sitting around, gossiping like some sewing circle. Can’t you see? They’re turning us against each other, pitting friend against friend. Because as long as we’re divided, we can’t stand against them.”
Marta’s nod was solemn. “You’re right, we have to stand together. But you’re German.”
Zelda’s short-lived relief evaporated. “My family fled the Reich, just like yours.”
“No, not just like mine.” Marta’s voice carried a mix of patience and resignation. “I’m Polish, Zelda. It's only a matter of time before I end up in the ghetto. You and Charlotte don’t face the same risks. You just don’t.” She pinched the bridge of her nose, and stared out the window. “I don’t know what’s true and what’s not about Charlotte and, to be honest, I don’t care. What I do know, though, is that you and she both have a lot to gain from helping them.”
Zelda blinked, stunned. “Are you nuts?”
Karen sniffed. “How do we know your father wasn’t a spy all along?”
“So because we’re Germans, we’re automatically Nazis?” Zelda’s voice crackled with frustration. “Is that your logic?”
“Your sister obviously has no problem cozying up to them,” Karen pointed out with a smirk. “And they say that the apple doesn’t fall too far from the tree.”
“He took her out to Burdick’s,” Rob added. “Do you eat cake with your enemies?”
Marta fixed Rob with that same long-suffering look, before turning back to Zelda. “I want to trust you,” she said wearily. “But Alex is right. With everything at stake, with the losses we’ve already suffered…it’s too great a risk. You’re upset, and I understand that, but this isn’t about you.”
“The hell it isn’t,” Zelda shot back, her voice trembling with anger.
“We have to prioritize the movement,” Marta insisted.
Biting down on her knuckle to stifle a scream, she turned to Alex.
Instead of defending her, he shook his head.
She lowered her gaze, disappointment washing over her. Alex’s concern wasn’t for the movement’s future, like Marta’s, or for Charlotte’s virtue. He was simply jealous. Refusing to hold his hand had transformed her into a villain, accused of selling her soul to some monster twice her age! It was apparently impossible, in Alex’s mind, for two people to simply be wrong for each other; he needed an explanation that absolved him of guilt. “Alex,” she began again, “we are friends. I would never, ever stoop to such depths and Charlotte…she’s a good person. Whatever anyone thinks they saw, trust me, they’ve misunderstood. And,” she added, her voice taking on a bitter edge, “anyone who claims they’d turn down food from anyone is a liar.”
But Alex remained unmoved. “I think it’s best if you leave.”
Scalding tears threatened. “I have nowhere else to go.”
“Zelda.” Marta’s tone was firm. “Go.”