How many times had Annie pictured knocking on Lena’s door? You won’t remember me, but …
（The fantasy was always brief: Annie had never been able to decide what she’d say next.）
For the rest of her life, Annie will remember how she’d dragged the confused dog up those three wide stone steps to stand at Lena Meeker’s front door. She felt the morning sun on her back, a buzz of nervous adrenaline in her stomach. She was vaguely aware of how tightly she gripped the leash with her left hand, how the rough nylon abraded her palm.
Annie balled up her right fist and knocked.
CHAPTER TWO
It wasn’t that the knock frightened Lena, although it was startling.
She had been deep into chapter 7 of Beyond the Fields （just wonderful!）。 Odile, escaped from the concentration camps, was hiding up in a tree in a Bavarian forest, salivating at the smell of cheese and bread from the German family’s picnic a few feet below her. Trying to stop herself from fainting from hunger, Odile shifted slightly in the tree and accidentally rustled its branches. The family’s little girl looked up and—
Had Lena perhaps imagined the knock?
Nope, there it was again. Three impatient raps.
Tommy, her UPS man, rang instead of knocked and it was too early for packages anyway. Rudy the landscaper wasn’t due until eleven, which reminded Lena, she had to collect fresh mint leaves and get his tea brewing soon.
Another two knocks, insistent, harsh: I know you’re in there! An aggressive Gestapo knock.
Lena always wondered while reading Holocaust novels, which she did with some frequency: When the Nazis were rounding up people from the ghettos, did anyone just not answer?
Presumably breaking down a door would be nothing for the SS—they were capable of much worse—but did anyone in the ghetto successfully grab that small window of time to escape?
Lena would bet they didn’t. When faced with true evil, your mind tricked you into minimizing it. Work with it, it commanded, just go along.
At least, Lena’s mind commanded that; maybe other people had more admirable instincts.
A third series of knocks pounded on Lena’s door. In her mind, Rachel shook her head in alarm.
Don’t answer it.
The version of Rachel who lived in Lena’s mind was constantly judging Lena’s bad choices. It hadn’t always been that way between them, but unfortunately, before the night everything changed, Rachel had been going through an obnoxious stage. Lena had, back then, openly complained about how Rachel treated her, which she now regretted. Hearing the stories, Lena’s best friend Melanie had compared sixteen-year-old Rachel to a demanding hotel guest.
Lena decided to ignore the door, and turn back to Odile.
Had the little girl picnicking with her family heard the crack of the tree branch? Odile looked down and the little girl looked up into the foliage and yes, met Odile’s eye.
She had been caught.
Lena gasped—aloud—just as the bell rang twice in quick succession, sharp and accusatory.
This was why everyone answered when the Gestapo knocked: it was futile to do otherwise. The authorities never gave up. Lena had read with rapt attention about one fugitive who responded to the knocks of federal agents by darting into a back room, trying to hide under the bed.
Not an effective strategy, as it turned out.
She placed her finger in the middle of the book to hold her place, and carried it with her down the front hall.
When she opened the door, she tried to place the small woman on the other side of the door, who was immediately familiar. She stared at Lena from under the brim of a dark baseball hat, her lips pursed tightly in a not-quite-smile.
It was the Fierce Walker, the slight woman who thrust herself around the neighborhood loop at a breakneck pace in rain, shine, or snow, pumping her little arms and dragging behind her that muscular ugly taupe dog, who now stood next to her on Lena’s front step.
The dog had yellow eyes, which slanted as it regarded Lena with a sharp-toothed pant. Not a Nazi dog, Lena was pretty sure—they only used German shepherds—but hardly cuddly.
The Fierce Walker worked to maintain a brittle smile, because what else would Lena inspire?
Lena and Tim had picked the Cottonwood Estates neighborhood all those years before because of the natural beauty and the community—the bridge clubs, the cocktail hours, the tennis tournaments, the poker nights. Everyone in each other’s business was wonderful for social creatures like the Meekers!
But there was a dark side to having everyone in each other’s business that Lena hadn’t foreseen. For starters, the judgment. Even if Lena never heard it, she could feel it drift uphill with the wind: Poor, lonely Lena, rattling around in that big house.