Wilfred puts his hand to his heart. “Shattered. Will I see you again?”

She leaps back to the meadow side, which is about a half meter higher than the garden, rising upward along a soft, rounded hill. “I don’t see why we should. We occupy entirely different wings of the clinic.”

“And yet you’re here.”

“A mistake!” she says, over her shoulder, as she starts to climb the hill.

Wilfred’s voice carries after her. “There are no mistakes, Elfriede the Fair! Only fate!”

Elfriede climbs quickly, and the word fate is so thin and distant, it’s almost out of earshot. Nevertheless, she hears it. In fact, it echoes inside her head, over and over, in time to the heavy smack of her heart as she approaches the summit of the hill. She tells herself it’s only the effort of the climb, the thin air, the anticipation of the view from the top.

Lulu

July 1941

(The Bahamas)

Every town has its watering hole, where everybody gathers to share a few drinks and some human news, and in Nassau that particular place was the bar of the Prince George Hotel. You couldn’t miss it. If, newly disgorged from some steamship onto the hot, smoky docks of Nassau Harbor, you staggered with your suitcase across Bay Street to shelter from the sun, you found yourself bang under the awning of the Prince George. And since the Prince George, as a matter of tradition, offered the arriving tourist his first glass of rum punch gratis, why, you can see how the bar developed a loyal following. I should know, believe me, even though I’d arrived by air instead of by sea. That punch went down so well, I made straight for the reception desk and booked a room. Three weeks later, I had almost forgotten I’d lived anywhere else. Every evening at six sharp, I made my way downstairs and took up a stool three seats down from the left, and the bartender—we’ll call him Jack—whipped up a cocktail while I lit a cigarette from a case full of Parliaments, a brand relatively rare in New York City but nigh ubiquitous in this British Crown colony. So began my twentieth night in Nassau. Now pay attention.

Jack was the kind of bartender who sized you up first and decided for himself what kind of drink you needed. On this particular evening, with the place just loosely occupied and the afternoon sun still filling the windows, he took a bit of time and asked, “Be a double for you, Mrs. Randolph? Look like you been dropping bombs all over Germany today.”

“Nothing as exciting as that.” I rested my left hand on the thick, sleek varnish and stared at the gold band on my fourth finger. “Just a day with the ladies at the Red Cross.”

Jack made a low, slow whistle. “Since when?”