Instead of speaking, she unclasped her handbag and brought out a small brown book. From its middle, she withdrew a small photograph and handed it to me. The photograph was three inches wide and four inches long. A small piece near the top-left corner had been torn off. The photo was yellowing with age, but the image it showed was clear enough.

A sunny day. A lake in the background. Trees looming on the far bank. Patches of white where sailboats cut across the placid lake surface. A much younger, better-fed Henrietta Ackerland at the front. I could tell it had been a cold day, because she was coated and gloved. A small hat perched on her head. She was cradling a baby. Her son, Willie?

Henrietta was staring directly at the camera, a broad smile across her face. I was right. She had been beautiful once. And happy. The woman who sat across the table from me did not seem capable of such happiness.

"Where was this taken?" I asked, lowering the picture.

"Krumme Lanke. In Berlin. Do you know the city?"

"No."

"It's very beautiful. Or it was, before the war."

"You lived there?"

"Yes. I was born there, went to school there, and got married there. My husband, Jacob, took that picture."

"And this is your son?"

"Yes. Willie is his name. But I said that already, didn't I? He was six weeks old that day."

"Big boy," I said. I would have guessed his age at ten weeks. Neither of my two daughters had looked as big as the baby in the picture at six weeks. "This was how long ago?"

"November 2, 1938," Henrietta said without hesitation.

I turned the picture over. No date on the back.

"You know the date by heart."

She nodded. "It was the last time I was happy, the last time all three of us were happy together. Jacob, Willie and me. Things were turning dark for Jews in Germany, but I had my little bubble of sunshine around me."

Her tone was one of resigned sadness, a sadness that had had time to settle like silt in every vein and artery, never to be dislodged by the passage of blood or time. Her eyes remained dry. I got the sense she had cried so many tears over the past ten years that she had very few left.

It struck me that whatever her story was, I did not want to hear it. I had enough such misery of my own. Goddamn it, Reuben, why did you have to send this woman my way?