And in the background, above their heads, the Degas ballerinas danced across the wall.

“That’s me. And that was my aunt Rachel,” Alina said. “The paintings, as you can see, are in that picture. But that’s not where I remembered them. I remember them hanging someplace else.”

Lia couldn’t breathe. “Where?” she whispered.

“A little room. One where I had to be silent all the time. Looking back now, I know that I was hidden. That room saved my life.” She looked up at Lia. “Your grandmère, Estelle Allard, saved my life.”

“You’re Aviva,” Gabriel breathed.

“Yes,” the woman agreed.

“What else do you remember?” Lia asked.

“I remember that the apartment where I was hidden had crystal chandeliers that made little rainbows across the floor and walls when the sun came in the windows. I remember that your grandmother would read to me, and often she would sing. She sang all the time.”

Lia looked down at the photograph again and the laughing child. “La Chanteuse,” she whispered to herself.

“You never went back after the war? To Paris?” Gabriel asked.

The doctor shook her head. “My parents told me that I didn’t speak a word for fourteen months after I was placed with them,” the woman continued. “That when I arrived at their house, I didn’t laugh, I didn’t cry. I couldn’t even tell them my name. So they picked one for me. Alina.”

“But that wasn’t your name.”

“It became my name. And I became their daughter. I became a sister. I became a dancer, a doctor, a wife, and a mother. My heart was full, and I tried to leave the past where it lay because I thought it was best to look only forward.” She smiled sadly. “After the birth of my son, I tried to find your grandmother because, for the first time, I understood how hard it might have been for her to let me go. But I didn’t know her last name or even the address where we had once lived. But I know she loved me. And I know she gave me this.” She put a hand to the pendant.

“She looked for you too,” Lia said, swallowing against the lump in her throat. The constant trips to Switzerland finally made sense. “She looked for a long time.”

“You should know that your grandmother saved a lot of people.” Alina smiled. “I shared that little room more than once.”

“We think she helped smuggle Allied airmen out of France,” Lia replied.

“And women,” Alina added.

“Women?”

“Well, one. I remember that she looked like a princess. I remember that she knew how to speak Hebrew. And French. And English. She knew how to open the trunk that your grandmother always kept locked. And she was a terrible artist.”