“You know, I didn’t truly appreciate the story until Marta came to live with us. She was fascinated with how my parents met and she peppered them with questions I never thought to ask. I knew a lot of my father’s war anecdotes, but I really had no idea of how important my mother’s work was until she told Marta about it…”

The YMCA girls tried to think of everything and anything an exhausted, anxious and homesick soldier could want. They made a reading room in the glassed-in conservatory, pulling easy chairs into the puddles of sunshine, making sure writing paper, pens and envelopes were always at the ready. A man from Huyler’s, the New York City candy and restaurant chain, came out to install a soda fountain, and soon the girls were making hundreds of ice cream sundaes, milkshakes, phosphates, egg creams and sodas. When they weren’t filling the soldiers’ bellies with treats, the girls were organizing dances, games, entertainment, trips into the mountains, sightseeing. If a soldier wanted diversion, he got it. If he wanted a chair in the sun and a book, he got it. If he wanted to sleep the day away, nobody disturbed him, other than to bring up a tray with a sandwich.

“And your father was one of them,” Astrid said. “They met and fell in love?”

“They met in March of nineteen eighteen,” Kennet said slowly. “Then Paps went back to the front and they wrote letters. Each thinking they’d never see the other again because a fellow’s chance of survival was slim to non-existent. But Paps lived to see another eight-day pass, and he went back to Aix-les-Bains in June. It was springtime in the Alps. My mother was there. And she remembered him.”

“It’s like something you’d read in a novel,” she said. “Or see at the pictures. And— What are you giggling about?”

“The surprise ending,” Kennet said.

“What do you mean?”

“I was conceived in that old casino in Aix-les-Bains.” He looked up at her. “I always thought it would make a great opening line for a novel. Or my autobiography.”

“Well, well, well,” Astrid said. “C’est la guerre, indeed.”

“Yes, along with learning to appreciate my mother’s war work, I also learned to count on my fingers. And I don’t think Ma and Paps knew that I knew she was pregnant when they... I’m sorry, is this a crass topic?”

She laughed long and hard. “Oh my goodness, look at you. You’re blushing.”

He rolled on his stomach to hide his heated face. “I seem to have run out of polite conversation.”

“Nyck, this is truly the best story I’ve ever heard in my life.”

“Ma would spank me for telling her tale out of school.”

“I wish I could’ve met her.”