“Laura replied,” she said heavily. “She told me you and Jürgen had both been killed for disloyalty. She told me not to contact her again. So I thought you were gone. I mourned you.”

“Georg died toward the end of the war. He was shot fighting with his Hitler Youth unit. With Hans.” Jürgen had been holding my hand and passing me handkerchiefs throughout the call. At the mention of our first son’s name, he squeezed my hand. I stared at him through my tears as I admitted the truth about my daughter. “After the war ended, Laura struggled. She was grieving Georg and unable to let the Nazi ideology go. She and Hans turned to one another for support. At first I thought it was a good thing, because I knew Hans was heartbroken too. But while I was trying to drag Laura back into the real world, Lydia and Hans were determined to keep her in the old one. It breaks my heart that she would find your letter and lie to you, but it doesn’t surprise me.”

“I’m so sorry, Sofie. I’m just so sorry. Where is she now? Is she with you in Alabama?”

“In time, her relationship with Hans changed—and when I told her I was coming to America to be with Jürgen, she ran away to Lydia’s house. I tried to bring her home, but the housekeeper wouldn’t even let me see her. Just before we left, Lydia pushed a note through the mail slot to let me know Laura and Hans were married and didn’t want to hear from me again.” As I explained this to Mayim, I finally realized that the letters I’d been sending Laura since I left Germany would never truly reach her, even if Lydia did pass them on, even if Laura did read them. “The end of the war came too late for her,” I said, finally accepting the truth myself.

Mayim told me about meeting her husband, Benjamin, at the Red Cross camp where he was working for the United Nations, and how they fell quickly in love and married only a few months later. They settled in Washington, DC, and had their daughters, Sidonie and Celina.

“I have everything I dreamed of,” she told me. “A beautiful home. A wonderful, handsome husband and my two beautiful girls. My life is a miracle, Sofie, and every single day I wake up and thank God for it. But then one day last week, Ben came home from work, just about jumping out of his skin because he recognized Jürgen’s name in the newspaper in an article about what happened in Huntsville.” She laughed weakly. “Ben knows all about you—I swear I’ve told him every story at least twice. And here we are.”

“And here we are,” I whispered, laughing through my tears.