He stepped backward. “Of course.”
“Where?”
He hesitated, then slowly shook his head. “It doesn’t matter.”
“Do your parents know where you are?” When he didn’t answer, I added, “Don’t you miss them?”
“I do miss my mother,” he murmured.
So he had a mother, somewhere. I said, “Go see her! To have my family back again, I would give up anything!”
“Even me?” I immediately fell silent as Lukas kicked at the ground, then said, “Would you even give me up, Audra? That’s what Officer Rusakov wanted from you, wasn’t it?”
I paused far too long as an ache worked its way through my chest, finally managing to say, “If you know that, then you also know I refused his offer.”
“I do know that. But why didn’t you tell me he’d made the offer? Don’t you think that’s something I’d want to know?”
“I didn’t tell you …” I had to say the rest, had to make myself say the words, no matter how difficult it was. “I couldn’t tell you until I knew what I’d decided.”
He clicked his tongue and looked away, then after what felt like hours, said, “I know how hard that decision must have been.”
“Knowing that I’ll never see my parents again is awful, but if I turned you over to Rusakov, then I’d be the cause of whatever he did to you—imprisonment, or Siberia, or hanging—and I couldn’t live with that. Also …” I cleared my throat. “I’ve never had a friend before, but I’m fairly sure turning you in would make me the worst friend ever.”
Despite the seriousness of our conversation, he smiled. “Yes, I believe it would. I’m sorry you had to make such a decision. I can’t tell you if it was right or wrong, but I am glad I’m still here.”
By then, we had reached the hill of crosses, illuminated by a bright moon in the sky. The land was relatively flat all around, so although the hill wasn’t particularly high, its very presence felt significant. And just as Lukas had described, at least a hundred crosses had been planted into the ground, some made of wood, others of metal, some ornate and elegant, others equally beautiful in their simplicity.
Lukas wandered at my side until he noticed a few old sticks that had fallen from a nearby tree. He broke off the ends of two of them to make a simple cross, then tied it with some twine from his pocket.
“Here,” he said, placing it in my hands. “For your parents and all they fought for.”
“Thank you.” I walked back to the hill and laid my cross on the beam of another large wooden cross. “I believe if my parents knew what I was doing, they’d be proud.”
“You’ll have to tell them all about it,” Lukas replied. “When you see them again.”
He gave my hand a squeeze, and I realized how sad I would be if I couldn’t do this work a
nymore, because it would mean I would no longer see him, likely ever again. The smuggling mattered, but my friendship with Lukas mattered as well.
“They’re here!” a familiar voice called.
I turned to see Milda waving at us, with no disguise. Just Milda in a striped skirt with a white shirt and apron, a red vest, and with her gray hair in a netted cap. I stared back at her without waving, trying to convince myself it really was Milda. A … normal version of the woman I was used to seeing, which wasn’t normal at all. She was standing in front of an empty wagon, feeding one of the horses.
I ran down the hill and threw my arms around her, though when we separated, she put her hands on my shoulders. “Ben won’t be happy to see you.”
“Indeed I am not,” he grunted, walking up behind us, his face in a deep frown.
I’d already expected that from him, so I merely hugged him, too, even though his arms remained stiffly at his side. “You saved me, Ben. You got me out of that prison.”
Once I’d released him, Ben scrunched his face and threw out a dismissive hand. “Nah, you saved yourself. A foolish girl like you, I knew you’d come up with a wilder scheme than I ever could to get yourself back to us. I only needed to give you the right tools.”
“You didn’t know it would work, though. What if I couldn’t figure it out?”
He turned to me and his expression became serious. “I won’t always be there to save you or teach you. Lukas won’t always be there to keep an eye on you. At some point, Audra, you were going to have to learn to look out for yourself, and you did.”
“That’s why you can trust me to be here now.”
“She was good at the border,” Lukas said, offering me a hand into the back of the wagon. I gave him my books first, then climbed in with him. “Really good, and not just at the border, but everywhere she smuggles. Certainly better than I was when I started out.”