It is March of 1945 when Sofia starts getting out of bed regularly to read through Saul’s notes. There aren’t many—times of day written down in a small nondescript notebook and a list of places that Sofia assumes correspond to the times of day. Of course, she realizes, most of this would not be written down. She is awake for the rest of the night. She knows, though it has never been explicitly talked about in her home or her parents’, that Saul is useful for his language skills and his discretion. She knows they are rescuing European refugees, or helping them to get jobs, and homes, or at least helping them get off the boats and onto dry land. And once Sofia starts wondering in earnest about Saul’s work, she cannot stop.

—

By the beginning of May—her third wedding anniversary with Saul—Sofia decides she wants a job.

“Why would you want to be a part of this?” asks Saul. They are eating expensive steaks under flickering candlelight. Sofia likes her meat bleeding on the plate, soft and red in the middle. She chews. Swallows.

“I know,” says Sofia. “It’s not what I expected either.” She lifts another bite of meat to her mouth. “I’m bored, Saul,” she says. Mouth full. “I need to do something. I need to be—someone. And it’s not like if I don’t do this job, it will go away.” She takes a sip of wine. “It’s not like you’ll stop. It’s not like you can stop. And I mean, you’re helping people. You’re helping people.”

Saul, who has barely touched his own food, stares down at the lake of butter in his baked potato. “We’re helping some people,” he says. “And that will stop when the war ends.” When the war ends, he repeats to himself. It echoes in his head. The war will never end, it seems. And when it does, what will he have? Who will he be? What will be left of Saul, once he reaches the other side of the war that made him? Saul doesn’t regret taking the job Joey Colicchio offered him. He loves Sofia. He loves Julia. (And regret, says a voice inside of him, a voice that sounds like what he remembers of his mother’s voice, isn’t German. A pause. She’d touch his chin or ruffle his hair. Regret isn’t Jewish.) Saul isn’t stupid, but he makes the best of things. He adapts.

“Do you mean you wish you could do something else?” asks Sofia.

“This isn’t what I imagined for myself,” says Saul. Has he been fantasizing about driving west, or sailing east? About disappearing into the ever-changing tapestry of the wide world, and starting over? About throwing off the rules and expectations of Family life and becoming a painter or a historian or a pediatrician?

“What did you imagine?”