If you are reading this letter, then you did what I could not and found your way home. As I write this I do not know where you are or what you may be enduring, but I know with all my heart that you will survive whatever comes your way. You’ve always lived without fear of failure.

I didn’t live like that, not often enough and not soon enough. It may seem like I was daring and dauntless but I wasn’t, not really, not like you. I kept myself safely insulated by my strengths, hidden behind my books and lessons because those were easy. It took falling in love to make me understand that the things worth most in life are hard. I was married, Will, to a man you won’t ever get to meet, but whom you would have loved because Piotr was smart and funny and kind and he lived with the same courage you did.

I’ve tried to keep living like that. For you. And for him. To never give up, to keep fighting, to do hard things, and to refuse to fear failure. I hope, by the time you read this, I’ve made you both proud.

Good-bye, Will. Make every day count.

Your loving sister,

Sophie

Gabriel folded the copy of the letter and slid it back into the pocket of his jacket. He’d taken the letter out more from habit than anything else. From the number of times he had read it, Gabriel had it memorized. It was a strange feeling, knowing that the letter had been written to his grandfather yet feeling as though each word spoke directly to him.

His grandfather, surrounded by the rest of their family, had wept openly when Gabriel had read it to him. He’d had questions after that, most of which Gabriel had had answers for, because while Sophie Seymour had seemingly vanished into history, Sophie Kowalski, code name Celine, had not.

Her work at Bletchley had been carefully documented, commendations and notes on her extraordinary linguistic talents recorded by her superiors. Her training and service with the Inter-Services Research Bureau had been likewise documented, her mission linked to Operation Overlord. The revelation that William’s sister had not perished in Warsaw but had, instead, become an agent revered for her cleverness and courage had been bittersweet.

It had taken time, but with help, Gabriel had managed to piece together the objective of the mission that had taken Sophie into France. Her fate had been dictated on a single sheet of typed paper, an illegible signature on the bottom of the page. Arrested, Paris, August 27, 1943. Gabriel could find no further records beyond that.