But not for nothing is Elfriede so beautiful as she is. She fixes her large, angelic eyes upon this ticket master, forty-five years of age or thereabouts, thinning hair and paunchy stomach, creased uniform of navy blue, who’s already stammering, poor fellow, in the presence of such a heavenly creature as Elfriede. She explains in her halting English how she’s raised these girls as her own daughters, how the nurse has absconded with them, how frantic she is to find them again. Possibly a tear or two wets her long eyelashes, and who’s to say they aren’t real, unfeigned tears? Elfriede’s desperate, after all, she’s heartbroken. She’s standing at the ticket office of this hot, cramped, dirty train station in the middle of Florida, atmosphere heavy with heat and the reek of coal smoke, and all she wants is her girls back, her beloved and irreplaceable girls, in the same way she wants air to breathe. And what do you expect? Within the space of a minute or two, Elfriede learns that one Charlotte Kassmeyer and her three minor children were aboard the six fifty-three to Savannah, Georgia, with tickets through to New York City.

But then the ticket master looks up regretfully, first at the clock and then at Elfriede. He’s sorry to inform her that the next train north doesn’t leave until noon the next day.

Five days later.

Now Elfriede stands inside another ticket office, considerably more luxurious, that of the Holland America steamship line on State Street, at the very bottom of Manhattan. Here in the middle of civilization, she doesn’t need beauty. Her title’s enough. The Baroness von Kleist and her son are shown to a private room, waited upon by an eager sycophant. The passenger lists for the most recent sailings to Rotterdam? Just a moment, Frau von Kleist. We’ll see what we can do.

They sit together bravely in a pair of armchairs, she and Johann. It’s the fourth steamship office they’ve inhabited this morning. Yesterday it was hotels, all the famous, well-appointed hotels of New York City and then some of the lesser ones. Surely this could not be so difficult? A blond woman in her thirties, speaking limited English in a heavy German accent, accompanied by three young girls, as fair as their mother, how could you fail to notice them? But New York’s a good place to hide, after all. It’s a question of numbers. A thousand hotels. Railway lines going every which way. Ocean liners crisscrossing the harbor, making their way up and down the mighty Hudson River to the waiting piers. A woman and her daughters, who has time to notice them? What’s that American expression? A dime a dozen. And every minute counted, at every hour the chances dimmed, the likelihood grew that Charlotte and the girls had disappeared forever.