“Maybe the American officials know that too. Maybe that’s why they’ve done this. Christopher said that even Calvin Miller, my boss here at Redstone Arsenal, has no idea my official file is fictional. There’s even talk about citizenship in a few more years.”

“Citizenship…” I repeated. “How do you feel about that?”

Jürgen hesitated.

“I’ll always be German. I just don’t know what that means anymore. America has become home to me, and that will be the case even more now that you and the children are here. I’m grateful. I’m relieved. But…” He shook his head, shadows in his gaze. “I don’t deserve this second chance, but it’s been offered to me. That’s some astounding grace, isn’t it? How else could I respond to that but to work tirelessly to build a life here I can be proud of? It won’t erase what happened at home—nothing can do that. The most I can hope for is to one day again be proud of the man who stares back at me in the mirror.”

“You only ever wanted your work to benefit mankind. To extend our reach and understanding.”

“Exactly.” He smiled sadly. “I have a chance to do that now, and I intend to grab hold of it with both hands.”

“Then that is what I will do too.”

Later that night, I unpacked the last of my clothes into the dresser in our bedroom, and I took a tattered, multicolored blanket from my suitcase and spread it on the end of the bed. That blanket and the little collection of photos I brought from Germany were my most prized possessions.

One was a photo of my first three children. Georg and Laura sat cross-legged on the ground, beaming, with newborn Gisela lying on a rug in front of them. It felt like a moment from someone else’s life, but I adored it anyway. That was how I needed to remember Georg and Laura—innocent, happy, untarnished.

The next photo was of me and Jürgen on our wedding day, young and blissfully in love and so carefree, as if the world had only peace and happiness to offer us. Then there was a photo of Jürgen’s great-aunt Adele, sitting in her courtyard—smiling serenely as she looked past the camera, to the sanctuary she’d built herself over many years.

The final photo was of me with my best friend, Mayim. We were standing arm in arm in the lobby of my family’s mansion in Potsdam, suitcases at our feet, grinning like loons as we stood at the threshold to adulthood—the Star of David on a chain around her neck, stark against her pale skin. My last-ever nanny took that photo when Mayim and I were hours away from embarking on the journey to finishing school in Lausanne.