Agnes nodded stiffly, not trusting herself to speak. She took another sip of the water. “They could not tell… from her face… who she was.”

Sarah couldn’t stop herself from grasping at this last fragment of hope. “Then maybe it wasn’t Gerda at all! How can you be sure if-”

“Her shoes,” Agnes said, her voice barely a rasp.

“Her what?”

“Her shoes. She had new shoes. They were… red.” She said the word as if it were vile. “Red shoes, she repeated, silently asking if Sarah had ever heard of such a thing.

She had not. “How… unusual.”

“She said she bought them herself. She said she saved the money by walking to work instead of taking the trolley. But she could not have saved so much money herself. Someone gave her those shoes. A man.” Agnes’s light blue eyes flared with fury. “We knew it, but we could not stop her. She would not listen, and now the police comes here to tell me my little sister is dead!”

She started to cry again, and once more Sarah saw her rubbing her side. A glance at her watch told her the contractions were only a few minutes apart. Agnes was in advanced labor.

“I think you should lie down for a while,” Sarah said. “You have to think of yourself and the new baby. Come on, I’ll help you.”

Agnes looked around as if she had suddenly remembered something important. “My children? Where are my children?”

“Mrs. Shultz and Mrs. Neugebauer took them so you could get some rest. They’ll be fine.”

“My babies!” Agnes wailed as Sarah helped her to her feet, but the shifting of her weight resulted in a gush of fluid from beneath her skirt that succeeded in distracting her completely. Her water had broken. “Mein Gott!” she cried, and began to mutter hysterically in German as Sarah half led, half carried her into the bedroom.