“Perhaps.” Not Gypsies, she thought. There had been nothing so romantic as wanderlust in her hopscotching travels through Europe. Only dissatisfaction, and a need to hide until wounds had healed. “Have you ever been?”

“When I was very young. But I would like to go back now that I am old enough to appreciate it. The art, you see, and the atmosphere, the architecture. What places did you like best?”

“A little village in the countryside of France where they milked cows by hand and grew fat purple grapes. There was a courtyard at the inn where I stayed, and the flowers were so big and bright. In the late afternoon you could sit and drink the most wonderful white wine and listen to the doves coo.” She stopped, faintly embarrassed. “And of course, Paris,” she said quickly. “The food, the shopping, the ballet. I knew several people, and enjoyed the parties.”

Not so much, he thought, as she enjoyed sitting alone and listening to cooing doves.

“Do you ever think about going back to the Soviet Union?” she asked him.

“Often. To see the place where I was born, the house we lived in. It may not be there now. The hills where I played as a child. They would be.”

His glasses only tossed her own reflection back at her. But she thought, behind them, his eyes would be sad. His voice was. “Things have changed so much, so quickly in the last few years. Glasnost, the Berlin Wall. You could go back.”

“Sometimes I think I will, then I wonder if it’s better to leave it a memory—part bitter, part sweet, but colored through the eyes of a child. I was very young when we left.”

“It was difficult.”

“Yes. More for my parents who knew the risks better than we. They had the courage to give up everything they had ever known to give their children the one thing they had never had. Freedom.”

Moved, she laid a hand over his on the gearshift. Margerite had told her the story of escaping into Hungary in a wagon, making it seem like some sort of romantic adventure. It didn’t seem romantic to Sydney. It seemed terrifying. “You must have been frightened.”

“More than I ever hope to be again. At night I would lie awake, always cold, always hungry, and listen to my parents talk. One would reassure the other, and they would plan how far we might travel the next day—and the next. When we came to America, my father wept. And I understood it was over. I wasn’t afraid anymore.”

Her own eyes had filled. She turned away to let the wind dry them. “But coming here must have been frightening, too. A different place, different language, different culture.”