“I say, darling. Don’t be low. We’ll be happy like that again, never fret.”

What possible reply? How can you, like a surgeon, untangle and extract the word happy from the contents of Elfriede’s shredded heart, in this moment?

“I’m not fretting,” she says. “I’m as happy as it’s possible to be.”

Wilfred, who always knows just how to touch Elfriede (and isn’t that really how she fell in love with him to begin with, isn’t that why she loves him so wholly) lifts her hands and kisses the backs of her fingers. “If it makes any difference, you’ve made me happy today. So happy I don’t think I can altogether bear it. Like looking at the sun.”

In her head, Elfriede says the English word husband. Two strange, intimate syllables, now attached to this plain face, these eyes, that mouth, this shock of vivid ginger, all of which now belong exclusively to her. Wilfred, hers. But not her Mann. Her husband. She’ll have to learn the word all over again. She’ll have to learn a new vocabulary for this strange, intimate, rain-washed marriage of hers.

Elfriede pulls her hands from his and burrows them into his rambunctious hair. “Take me upstairs,” she whispers.

They haven’t made love since Florida, and the result is a little too rushed, more relief than ecstasy. But it’s enough. It’s all she wants, to be held and loved. He remains inside her for some time afterward, and even when he slides out they stay clasped, unable to separate one skin from the other, unable to speak. Solid, honest bone and muscle. Damp hair and warmth, the smell of human skin, human musk, how heavenly. Against her hip, Wilfred remains stiff, plenty of life left, a young man primed for his wedding night. But leave that for later. Right now, Elfriede hears the tempo of his breath and thinks he’s probably craving a cigarette desperately, and she loves that he doesn’t rise to open the window and light a smoke, that he craves her more.

“Is it enough?” he whispers into her hair.

“Is what enough?”

“If we don’t find the girls. To have children of our own, will that help at all?”

She doesn’t answer, and Wilfred asks carefully whether she wants to have more children at all. Whether she’s afraid of what this might bring, whether children are too great a risk to bear.

“No, I’m not afraid,” she says. “Not anymore. For one thing, there’s you. I can bear anything with you.”

He reaches for her hand and kisses the new gold ring on her finger. “Yes, you’ve got me, all right. Luckiest chap in the world. And what’s the other thing?”

“Because I’ve already survived the worst,” she says. “I have already lost everything.”

In the years to come, Elfriede will remember those words.

Part IV