There is no coming back from what he has done. How he survived this long, he’ll never know. Always thought his life would be short-lived — an atonement for his sins. Yet, here he is, decades later.  
Family huddle around his bed. Their conversations, a song-list for the rippling memories — early days of his and Eliza’s marriage, when wistful melodies from shellac records drifted from the loungeroom gramophone.
He was not a man guided by scripture, but hope has kept him going — his wildcard, and his only shot at redemption. He likes to think there is life after death. But if there is, would crossing over clutching a skeleton bar him from the gates of absolution? Instinct tells him that in his case, he’ll be condemned to wander the Earth alone, or worse, be sent straight to Hell. Nothing short of what he deserves. But despite the urge to unburden himself, it isn’t time. Not yet.
Hans opens his eyes.
“Good to have you back.” Eliza strokes his hand.
He knows what it means. He’s heard it from several others, always after he’d returned. He’s been drifting, vanishing into memory. Nightmare. Elsewhere. But time, like his emaciated frame, has thinned. Death is pulling at him. Like a drawing breath it sucks at his soul, tugging, then letting go. Over and over.
There was a time when sunlight was like a truce during war. That was before Eliza. Before he was given a second chance to make the wrong things right, if that was even possible. She saved him, and he promised himself that in return he’d stay true to her for as long as he lived. And he had. For 66 years, he respected and provided for her, never so much as looked at another woman. They shared thoughts, opinions and dreams. They married, started a family, did life together. They were honest with each other. Always. Except for this.
The thought of confessing pains him. The secret claws at his throat, yet he longs to keep it buried, untouched. He is on the verge of recovering the tiny tinderbox — his name for it, though there is nothing small about its contents. It’s vast. Monstrous. And carrying a secret so flammable he should have burned at the stake. The box had nestled deep in the pit of his belly, dormant, forgotten, sealed in silence. But the diagnosis changed everything. The box carried a life of its own. It soon became a sickening reminder that silence was not the same as absence. Its contents flickering with intent, wanted out. Tinder waiting for air, wanting to ignite. That damned diagnosis. From its depths, the box began to hum, vibrate, rattle its contents, throwing Hans into a daily, gut-wrenching nausea. Eliza blamed the treatment on his worsening condition. So did the doctors. But he knew better. It was the box. Always the box.

~

The pain resurfaces. Eyes closed, he groans. “22…I was only 22…still a child.”
“What’s that, love?” Eliza asks. But he cannot hear.
He is lost in memories, talking to people she cannot see. Staff and family come and go. Minutes turn into hours, and the sun will set again.

~

“Did you know he was born in 1920?” A great-grandchild speaks.
“Wow, he’s nearly a hundred!” says another.
Eliza keeps a watchful eye on the rise and fall of her husband’s chest. He exhales. Krupp AG, his old workplace, flickers into view like a black-and-white reel. End-of-day scenes play out. Machinery slowing, motors quietening to a dull hum, and staff dispersing. His eyes snap open. Pain anchors him here. Tethering his soul to his bones with a double backstitch. It pairs with the incessant beeping of the ECG, marking the echoes of distant cries. His body is winding down. It’s been over a week now. And time-stamped ghosts wait.
Hans squeezes Eliza’s hand, his delicate skin a fine sheet of tissue stretched over brittle bone. His shell, a vessel long past its prime. The monitor quickens. All eyes turn towards it. His soul stirs — it’s time. He needs to speak, but weariness clings like a wet cloth. Words quiver at the precipice. He is afraid to leap, fearful they will carry his soul with them when they go, leaving no chance to explain. He’s had a lifetime to prepare. Still, words evade him. Protecting Eliza and his family was always his priority, but he cannot control their reaction any more than he can control the shadows that taunt him. They’ll hate him. Of that, he is certain. They couldn’t understand. They weren’t there.
Hans exhales. Longs to close his eyes again, but it’s a gamble. Doesn’t know what he’ll get — memories or nightmares. He gives in and is hit with the latter, recalling the mornings.
Mist blankets the ground; a lingering apparition, haunted, and unable to move on. The cold, like rust to their wills and hearts, seizes control, stripping them of their humanity. Their chilled marrow, unable to thaw. The quiet voice begins to stir, quickly becoming a vice, squeezing his heart, strangling his lungs, and holding his air hostage. His body wrestles with it, but it insists on being heard, acknowledged. It knows better — it has the foresight of agonising regret. But it loses out. Survival shuts it down. Survival. At all costs.
The impulse to preserve oneself is the greatest instinct of all, but on the day he met Eliza, it ceased to exist. Walking in a hazed stupor, Hans was on his way to buy rope — one and a half meters exactly. They collided. Her basket spilled onto the road, and after he helped her collect the fallen fruit, their eyes locked. Eliza, an angel, became the crucial turning point in his life. The stuff of romance books. He was electroshocked back into coherence. She taught him how to love again. What the world could be. Who he could be. After it all.
Years after living in Wuppertal, they fled. Hans, desperate to outrun Birkenau’s shadow. He always meant to tell her, played with the words in his mouth, but none felt quite right. She wouldn’t be able to fathom his involvement in such acts. It would break her, knowing the monster he was.

~

Hans dry retches, and Eliza brings him a bucket.
“You okay, love?” She strokes his head.
“The smell,” he says, cupping his hand over his nose.
“What smell?”
Silence. Then his eyes open. “We pretended they were clouds. It made it easier.” Hans shakes his head. “Still. No one spoke for hours afterwards.”

~

The next day brings a calm over the hospital room.
“Grandpa, it’s me, Ada.” She squeezes his hand.
Opening his eyes. He can’t help but smile. It’s the irony of it all. The constant reminder. “Ada Cohen,” he says. He has recited her name in full ever since she married. Every time he sees her, he mutters it over and over. An acknowledgment. No! A penance. The words, imprisoned by guilt and shame, long to escape into the air between them. “Ada Cohen,” he repeats. His gaze shifts, looking beyond his family. “Forgive me,” he says. “Please forgive me.”
Eliza watches Hans carefully. She never understood the fixation with Ada’s name — assumed he liked the sound of it on his tongue. But then a thought pops into her head. The corner piece of the puzzle no longer left in shadow. The full picture emerges, and in an instant, she understands. How has it never occurred to her before? His refusal to watch war films. Why he’d sit by his children’s bedsides long after they’d fallen asleep — one time she thought she caught him crying. Why he insisted they move to a warmer country where he’d rarely see a chilly morning fog and would never have to light a fireplace. How did she miss this? Hans had carried a weight for as long as she’d known him, but she’d never understood it until now.
Tears prick her eyes. Overwhelmed with clarity she swallows. Suddenly she is aware of his breathing — its shifting. A soul writhing to be freed. She has so many questions but never wonders why he kept it from her — she already knows. Burdens like this aren’t shared, and Hans would never have let her carry it.
Eliza’s heart feels the weight of truth. He is barely clinging on — Death, no longer patient.
“Hans,” her voice breaks. “I know why you never told me.”
A single tear slips down his cheek.
And she kisses it away.