Their feet crunch softly on the gravel. Nearby, a woman’s feeding the pigeons. They flock around her, hooting and fighting, dirty and overfed, and Elfriede wonders why the woman does this. The pigeons don’t need the food, clearly. Some maternal instinct, maybe? Some desire to be needed? To be the center of somebody’s universe, even if that somebody is only a bunch of dirty, mindless Berlin pigeons? To matter, that’s all.

Johann speaks suddenly, with force. “We’re not going to find them, are we?”

“What’s that? Of course we’ll find them. Why do you say that?”

“I mean they don’t want to be found. They don’t want us anymore.”

“That’s . . .” Elfriede pauses before she completes the half truth. “That’s not true, darling. They’re your sisters.”

“They’re not my real sisters,” he bursts out.

“Johann!”

“It’s true. Isn’t it?”

Those last two words turn plaintively upward. He’s making a question, not a statement of knowledge. Elfriede keeps walking, keeps marching them forward, shoes grinding into the path. From the opposite direction, a man approaches them in a pale, crumpled suit, smoking a cigarette.

“Who told you this?” Elfriede asks quietly.

“Aunt Helga said—”

“Aunt Helga. Yes, of course.” Now Elfriede stops and turns, kneels into the gravel to face her son. Above them, the clouds hold down the stifling August air. “Listen to me. It doesn’t matter what Aunt Helga said. All four of you, you are your father’s children, do you hear me, you’re all his children in God’s eyes, fair and equal, and God . . . why, God does not make mistakes, Johann. Human beings make terrible mistakes sometimes, but God does not. Those girls are your sisters.”

The man walks by, and the smell of his cigarette sends a jolt through Elfriede’s chest.

Johann asks in a small voice, “Then Aunt Helga’s a liar?”

Oh, for wisdom! For wisdom at such a moment! Elfriede grips her son’s shoulders. “Don’t say such a thing. Of course your aunt’s not a liar. She doesn’t know, that’s all, she doesn’t understand the truth. She thinks—she thinks I made a mistake, that’s all, an awful mistake, and maybe I did, we all make mistakes, but tell me this! Would you rather I hadn’t made this mistake? Would you rather you had no sisters at all? Would you rather they didn’t exist?”

“No.”

“Do you love your sisters, Johann?” She almost shouts the words.

“Yes!” He starts to cry, actually to cry, a thing he strives never to do. “Yes, Mama!”

“Then that’s all there is, darling! That’s all there is, to love each other! Just do that, okay? That’s all your father wants. That’s all God wants.”