“It was, but I’ve forgiven them.” Leah wound her fingers around her purse strap. “I know you must be busy, but could you search your records for my sisters and me?”

The nun pulled out a sheet of paper. “Your names, please?”

“My name is Thalia, and my sisters are Callie and Polly—possibly short for Calliope and Polyhymnia. I think we were all named after Greek muses.”

“Oh my.” Thin dark eyebrows rose. “Last name?”

“I don’t know. I was only four, and I couldn’t pronounce it.”

“Oh dear.” The nun nodded toward an office in the back. “Our records are filed alphabetically by last name.”

Leah’s chest contracted around her shrinking heart. “It sounded like Ka-wa-los.”

“I’m so sorry, ma’am.” Her light brown eyes went round. “Our records go back to the 1890s, and we had up to eight hundred children at a time during the Depression. You can imagine how many files we have.”

Tall cabinets lined the wall in the office. If only Leah could search them, but of course, they wouldn’t let her.

“Thank you anyway.” It wasn’t the nun’s fault, so Leah worked up a smile. On the paper she wrote down all the information she had and her contact information in Chicago and Tullahoma. “If you should happen to find something . . . but I understand. I do.”

“Thank you, ma’am.” The nun’s smile looked thin but sympathetic.

Leah headed outside into the balmy afternoon, and she leaned back against the rough stone façade.

What now? She was supposed to visit two more homes before she returned to Juanita’s house to nurse Helen, but she’d have the same problem at every orphanage.

Was it even worth it? Had she come all this way for nothing?

Leah pressed her fingers to her temples. The familiar ache of longing for her family deepened, here in this city where she’d lost them.

36

OFF NORMANDY, FRANCE
TUESDAY, JUNE 6, 1944

The LCA cranked into a right turn away from the Ben-my-Chree, and Clay banged into Lt. Bill Taylor. “Sorry, sir.”

“It’s all right.” Taylor looked over his shoulder. “It’s 0430, boys. Here we go.”

Clay followed the lieutenant’s gaze. Somewhere above the overcast, the moon shone dim gray light on the other twenty Rangers and the British boat crew.

The landing craft chugged forward at six knots over bumpy waves. It would take two hours to travel the twelve miles from the transport area to Pointe du Hoc, where the Rangers were due to land at 0630.

He stood up so he could see over the side. Although he’d never be able to tell the story of what he’d done on D-day, he didn’t want to miss a single one of his last moments.