Word Count: 84,004
Summary of Events:
The Polish and German forces declared a ceasefire, which disheartened Emil, who was invited by his father's longtime friend, Ladislav, to join resistance efforts against the Germans. Keeleigh was working in the hardware store at the Village when three rather rude teens came in that her fellow actor, Steve, had to kick out. Olga finished helping prepare supper before going to the parlour . . .
Excerpt of the Day:
"On one hand, since Henryk and his comrades had used their house, Olga hated to go into the parlour, but on the other hand, she couldn't help it.
She didn't know which of the men had died; he'd been taken out by the others when they'd left. Still, she'd been haunted, severely deprived of sleep, and found herself contently coming back to the parlour to look at the stain in the carpet since then.
As much as Henryk had swept her off her feet — and thinking of him still made her feel something she couldn't explain — she found that she'd easily seared every man's face into her memory, and she felt an ache within her to think that she'd seen a man in his last hours, and she'd been in the same place where he'd died.
In fact, she'd probably heard the shot that had killed him, and she'd never even realised it. She felt sickened that she hadn't thought that some of the staccato shots she'd heard had been German return fire, striking down a rather young man who still had a lot of life left ahead of him.
Tears blurred her vision again as she looked at the spot. All the different colours in the carpet pattern showed the discolouration, as well as the fact that the fibres were stiff and clumped together with his blood, but the discolouration showed strongest on the ivory, which was turned a red-brown colour that looked somewhat rusty, but mostly like dried blood, there was nothing else it could really be called.
She couldn't shake the overwhelming feeling that, somehow, this had been her fault, that she should've found them a better place to hide or something, such as maybe finding the key for Papa's office and letting them in there.
What good would it have done, though? Who said that he wouldn't have been killed in Papa's office either?
Swiping the tears from her eyes, Olga tried to clear her vision, but to no avail. She wished that they could get away from all the fighting, or that they could drive the Germans out and everything could get back to the way it had been before the Germans had decided to attack them.
But it would never be able to return to the same. Too much had changed. She'd never be able to read like she once had, it was just impossible, considering how unexciting her books had suddenly become — in fact, she could see why Emil and Jarek had called them immature and fanciful.
She wasn't even sure that she'd be able to feel safe walking the streets of Warsaw at night again, or even be able to sleep through the night because of the soldier who'd died and all the other horrors that she'd only just gotten glimpses of throughout the course of twenty seven days of fighting."
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