She let him pull himself up on her, his head banging into her knees as he balanced on the floor. So she’d finally put her foot down. Liesl wished she could tell Uta. She wished she had the energy to be proud or relieved, but she didn’t. Locking Hans up merely produced another thing to wait for: the moment when she let Hans out. She would add it to her expanding list: for Frank to return, for the raids to end, for Ani’s health to be restored. It saddened her to realize that she’d seen enough of Ani’s behaviors—the twitching, the stumbling, the conversations with the invisible—to know what triggered them, and if she kept Ani away from loud noises and crowds, she could minimize his outbursts. What else could she do but lock him up, too? Her aunt’s reply had been kind, but Liesl could read between the lines: There simply wasn’t room for them all in Franconia. And wouldn’t it be safer to stay put in a small spa town? Was it safer? Liesl’s constant dread of raids, of the American invasion, made it hard to focus.
