Chapter 7: Walk Like You Belong to Me

"No," Jakub said.

"You haven't heard what I want."

"You want to go into the market and look at her. The answer is no."

"I have to see her face."

We were in the kitchen, with Hana's tablet between us, and the post still open on it.

The picture showed Bethany in a camel coat, smiling on a bridge in the snow.

"If she sees you, she wins," he said. "You told me nothing, and I do not ask. But I know what afraid looks like."

"I'm not asking you to ask. I'm asking you to come."

He looked at me for a long time.

Then he looked at Hana, who was cutting an onion with great concentration and not listening.

"One rule," he said. "You do not leave my arm."

"Deal."

"Babička, the brown scarf."

Hana put down the knife and went to the wardrobe, and she came back with a wool scarf that smelled of mothballs and wrapped it twice around my head.

"Now you are a Czech old lady," she said. "Walk slow."

The Old Town Square was full of light and noise.

A hundred wooden stalls stood in the snow under a giant lit tree, and the smell of roasting sausage and hot wine drifted over everything.

Church towers rose black against a violet sky.

Jakub steered me by the elbow through the crowd.

I kept my chin down and my hand flat on my coat, over the place where the baby was.

I saw her before I meant to.

She was at a gingerbread stall at the far end of the square, in the camel coat, with her long brown hair loose over her shoulders.

She was laughing at something the stallholder had said.

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