The Invisible Hour
I began my life for the second time on a June night in the year I turned fifteen. My name was still Mia Jacob, and I was still made of blood and bones, but when I stepped into the road on that night I walked into a different future. I left the way my mother had arrived, alone and in the dark.
The moon was yellow and the woods were pitch black. If you didn’t know there were mountains and fields and that this was Western Massachusetts, you would think you had come to the end of the earth. In some ways that was true, at least for me. I could feel every breath that I took rattle inside my chest. Every heartbeat echoed. Freedom is not what you think it is. It’s cold and hard and bright. That was what it felt like to change everything. To pick up the ashes and let them blow in the wind.
In the morning I was to be punished out in the cow field, in front of everyone, a cautionary tale so that one and all could see what happened to anyone who disobeyed. I was meant to beg and plead. I had asked to be forgiven in the past, but I was someone else now. I was the girl who knew how to escape, the one who could become invisible, who believed that a single dream was more powerful than a thousand realities.
They thought I only had a life that I lived here, but I had found other possibilities every time I read a book.
PART ONE
Little Sister
Amsterdam, May 1940
Once, there were two sisters. One was beautiful and well-behaved, and one saw the future and stepped inside it. One planted a rosebush, but the other one noticed that every white flower was turning red. One did as she was told, but the other one wrote down everything she had seen.
When you write it down, they cannot pretend it never happened.
Chapter One
They were walking home through the River Quarter in Amsterdam on the day before everything changed. The sisters were three years apart, and at fourteen and nearly eleven they were opposites in practically every way. Margot, the older girl, was beautiful,
although she didn’t seem to know it. The younger girl, Anne, had always been envious of her sister, for Anne might be considered ordinary, if you didn’t know her. She had light brown eyes and dark hair, and she was always curious, making people laugh and talking nonstop as she entertained her friends in class, even during lessons. All the same, some people found her willful and headstrong. Most people didn’t have any idea of who she was deep inside. The sisters sometimes met after their classes to go home together. Margot would make a detour to pick up her sister, then walk her bicycle. It was only ten minutes’ time if they were quick about it, which they rarely were, for the weather was glorious, and today they lingered longer than usual. The world seemed perfect on this day, with bright sunlight falling through the branches of the trees. Why should they rush home to the chores that awaited them? They were young girls, in love with life and with all the possibilities of a wonderful future. It was May, their favorite time of the year, the season when the birds returned to nest in the trees along the river and the canals. Only the magpies stayed all year round and managed to survive the ice-cold winters, but now the skies were filled with migrating birds returning from Spain and Morocco.