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The Kaufmen name meant something in our town; it garnered respect, it opened doors, and it carried a weight of its own.

I had learned this, I had experienced this, and I had perfectly understood this by the time I was 17.

So, when the school diverged from the topics of science, matches, and languages to teach us more and more about the war, our fatherland, and our great leader, I struggled to cope.

When the teachers taught us how bad the enemy was, I could not correlate.

Because Mr Cohen was nice, he bought me chocolate, and he kept me company when father was busy, and told me that I would one day become a doctor like my father and grandfather.

He loved me like I was his own.

He was a great employee to my father and an even greater friend.

I still remember the day he was taken. Father wanted to try, but his reputation, his name and his status in life forbade him. But what stopped him the most was the letter Mr Cohen handed him just before he was dragged away.

Father read the letter and hid it immediately. That day, not only did Father lose his assistant, but he also lost his dearest friend, and we all lost a member of our family.

Even though life went on after that day, nothing was the same. I could feel the hole in our home, the hollowness between us all.

I was the only child my father had that too a daughter, his hands were tied in every sense of the way.

Two years passed, and there was no trace of Mr Cohen.

We all know where he had been taken and how unlikely it was for him to come back from there, but we all still hoped.

Until one evening, when father returned from his clinic, and he had a strange expression on his face.

I had turned 19, a young woman now. And I often assisted father at his clinic.

He didn’t seem happy, but he didn’t seem so sad either. Mother quickly noticed, and the same expression covered her face too.

I had no idea what was happening, and neither did I ask.

But the answer came to me at midnight when the door bell rung and Dad rushed to the door and flung it open.

In the dark of the night on the snowclad streets stood a thin figure shivering, covered with layers of cloths and a suitcase resting by his feet.

Things happened in a whirlwind after that. Father pulled him in, and mother rushed with a tub of hot water. My parents helped the boy get off his layers of clothes and sat him on a stool in front of the burning fire. He dipped his feet in the tub of hot water and shivered.

I was plastered to the far wall as I watched everything unfold, and when things finally began to settle, I moved a little closer.

The boy turned around, and our eyes met for the first time, and a gasp left my mouth.

If it weren’t for the dim arrange glow of fire on his face, I could have easily mistaken him for Mr Cohen. But this boy looked much younger. He looked frail and aged, but not in the way a man in his 50s would look.

This boy was… not Mr Cohen.

“Jocylin?” the boy whispered, and it shocked me how he knew my name.

Realisation drew on me like a creeping vine, slow and steady.

“Benjamin?” I whispered when my father entered the room again.

“Here, Benny, drink this.”

He handed him a bowl of leftover soup from our dinner, and Benjamin, or should I say benny ate it like he had been starved for days.

Had he been starved for days?

Before I could speak to him anymore, my parents rushed him upstairs. They didn’t stop on the 1^st floor, not on the second, but went into the cold attic.

As I heard their footsteps rattle the old furniture in the attic.

I realised what Mr Cohen had written in the letter.

He asked my father to look after his son, Benjamin Cohen. The boy who used to play with me on the swings behind our home when I was 4. The boy who used to read me books, the boy who used to make silly faces at me when I cried. He was Benny, my best friend, Benny.

Who was sent away in France when Mrs Cohen died when I was only 6.

But he was back now, and he was living in our attic.

We knew what that meant for us, we knew what that meant for him, but I knew my father would do it no matter what for his best friend.

Benjamin Cohen was the boy in my attic.

No, scratch that, Benjamin Cohen was the JEW boy in my attic.

And I wouldn’t have it any other way…

(To be continued...)

If you liked the story please like ❤️and comment, so I will be inspired to write more and more cute love stories for you all.