September 23, 1945, fell on Sunday. At two o’clock that afternoon, quiet tears streaming down her face, Victoria sat by her mother’s hospital bed and held her hand as her life slowly ebbed away. Her father and brother stood behind her, each with a consoling hand on her shoulders, surprised at the emotional intensity of her grief. The death was not unexpected, and her family had said their good-byes to wife and mother some time ago. Elizabeth Grayson had suffered from heart problems for years, coupled by a quick and devastating onset of Alzheimer’s disease detected shortly after Victoria went away. By the time she came home, the mother she knew and loved was gone. Her final heart attack had occurred at four o’clock that morning.

Her brother bent to her ear. “There are times you just have to release and let go, sis. It’s for the best.”

Victoria shook her head. “No, not this time,” his sister said, her tears shed for those she could not release and let go.

Victoria had been summoned home from her uncle’s New York City apartment where she had arrived the day before to finalize plans with the caterer. On the way to the municipal airport, she had the taxi drive her to the New York Public Library before it opened to drop an envelope through the mail chute. It was addressed to Major Alistair Renault with instructions to the librarian that he would be meeting with three male associates at two o’clock in the Rose Main Reading Room. The enclosed letter included her full name, address, and phone number and explained the circumstances of her survival. The taxi driver saw his fare pause with her hand on the mail chute after releasing the letter and bow her head in dejection, or maybe in prayer that it would reach its destination.

The librarian to whom it was handed diligently followed instructions but she saw no man enter the library in a military uniform wearing the rank of major—no serviceman, period. A number of meetings were going on, one a study group of college students, another a congregation of three men she took to be researchers, another a gathering of old codgers who used the library as a hangout, and in a far corner some sort of gleeful reunion consisting of four men, one much older and shabbier dressed than the others, looking nothing like a military officer, and a woman, a very pretty young lady sporting the latest in fashion.