A maid opened the door, and Bucky delivered the introduction of himself that he’d rehearsed in 1942. She ushered him into the pleasing sunlit room that he remembered, and he took a seat in one of its sumptuously upholstered chairs. His aunt, silver-haired but still slim and willowy at sixty-two, rushed into the room minutes later, expressing in fluting French her joy and surprise at seeing him, her dulcet voice sobering when she answered the question her nephew had come to ask: Where was his father buried?

“I will take you there,” she said.

First, Bucky told her, he had one more thing he must do and explained.

He walked across the street to the park where he’d met the man feeding the pigeons that cold winter day and made for the plane tree by the stream. The hole in the trunk was still there and Bucky, taking a chance that it was not the habitat of a creature that would take issue with the intrusion, thrust in his hand. His fingers felt something like age-stiffened plastic. Gingerly, he drew out the item and his heart began to pound as he unwrapped the waterproof covering of an envelope. He opened the flap and removed a letter dated August 17, 1944. “Dear son,” it began.

*  *  *

Alistair quickly located the house of Raina Desjardins in Lion-sur-Mer by consulting the fountain of all information in a village, its local priest. He had decided not to telephone beforehand in case the woman should put him off. He’d determined the best approach was simply to knock on her door with John Peterson’s book in hand—a gift from his local library, since only one other person had checked it out, and Alistair was a generous contributor at fund-raising time. He found her at home, a place from which she rarely stepped foot except to tend her garden, according to the priest. “A bit of a recluse and unapproachable since her paramour died,” he’d said. “We in the parish look after her as best as she’ll let us.”

But Raina Desjardins invited him in almost eagerly when Alistair explained in French in his most golden tones that he was an admirer of the late John Peterson’s work come from America to have a word with her about it, if she’d be so kind. He put her age at a well-worn seventy-something, and her house smelled of deeply embedded cat urine, but thank God the offenders were nowhere to be seen, Alistair thought, as he took a seat in her cluttered living room. Dogs were his choice if one must share a habitat with a four-legged creature. He declined her offer of tea and got right to the point, designed to flatter the author’s scholarship and remarkable attention to detail. Raina Desjardins preened at the praise and said that she would provide what help she could.