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horror Adele had witnessed the night before was just a taste, she was sure. If what Vladimir had told her was correct, then the Germans were not experiencing as much victory as they’d have the world believe, despite the lavish victory concerts they always hosted. Each public event added to the deception that they were not being increasingly routed by the Allies. Why, the Germans were feverishly building fortified watchtowers all over the city and had been since September. Why would they take such measures if they weren’t fearful that a wave of the Red Army was about to wash over them?
    “There. Magnifique! ” Marina clapped her hands together. “My beautiful, perfect girl. They shall be stunned by you tonight—every officer in the audience—first with their eyes and then their ears.” Her mother tapped a finger on the tip of her nose. “Mark my words, Adele.”
    “Thank you, Mama.”
    Adele looked at her reflection in the mirror, feeling dead inside. How could she be dressed in such finery yet know that there was so much suffering all around? The contradiction took her breath away.
    “Why so quiet, pretty girl?” Adele’s mother always meant well, though her affections were usually placed in extolling the virtues of a polished and graceful persona. “Are you nervous about tonight?”
    “No. I’m not nervous.” Adele admitted the truth. She’d played onstage a hundred times before. Her mother wasn’t likely to believe that nerves had overtaken her anyway.
    “Your headache has not returned?”
    Adele shook her head against the lie she’d told to sneak out of the house the night before.
    “Then what is wrong?” Marina turned her daughter to face her and tilted her chin up with her hand. “Tell your mother.”
    Adele knew she could never tell her mother the truth. Marina Von Bron was too taken in by the glitz and glamour of their place in the Third Reich to care for any of the Jews in the city. Adele had heard her going on about Vienna’s “Jewish problem” at cocktail parties. She thought them wretched, soulless creatures and the sooner Austria had sent them all away to useful employment at the work camps, the better.
    Preoccupied, her mother stepped away and then returned and, with a marvelous white mink shawl outstretched in her arms, prepared to grace Adele’s shoulders with it.
    “Do you not wonder, Mama, what is happening out there?”
    Marina seemed confused and looked to the closed bedroom door, even as her hands smoothed the fur around Adele’s neck. “Downstairs? Well, your father has guests to accompany us to the concert hall. If you’d rather we go on our own, we certainly may. I can have a car brought around.”
    “No—I meant out there.” Adele tilted her head toward the windows that overlooked the charming Viennese street below. The streetlamps cast a soft glow outside. “Beyond our home, beyond the borders of our city. Where our boys are fighting and dying and coming home in caskets. Out there where our world is falling to pieces. Beyond parties and victory concerts . . . far beyond playing the violin on a stage. What does it look like out there? Do we even know?”
    Marina looked disturbed by Adele’s words. The talk of death and war was too weighted a subject for her view of the light evening ahead.
    She came round to stare her point-blank in the face. She grabbed onto Adele’s upper arms and squeezed hard, as if to shake her from her momentary stupor. “What in heaven’s name is the matter with you?”
    “Nothing, I—”
    Another squeeze and a shake. “Tell me this instant. Does thishave to do with your departure from a room full of dinner guests last night?”
    “I just . . .” She paused, fearful of the wild look that had taken over her mother’s usually lovely eyes. “I don’t know if I can play, that’s all.”
    “Hush your mouth this instant!”
    The sudden outburst caught Adele by surprise, so much so that she couldn’t even manage to utter a