“Would it have changed anything?” he asked. “Between you and your grandmother if you had known about all of this?”

“Maybe.” Lia looked up at him. “I admit that I was a little afraid of her as a child. My parents left me with her every summer while they travelled, and she always seemed so severe. Distant. Though as I got older, she seemed less distant and just more…alone. Does that make sense?”

“Yes,” he replied.

“And maybe that was part of the reason that I still visited her every summer on my own accord as I got older.” She made a soft noise. “I’m not sure who was more surprised by that, her or me.” She sighed. “I don’t know what might have happened here or why she never came back but maybe, if she had shared some of it, I might have understood her more.”

“Maybe this is your chance. She chose you, after all, to find this part of her life.”

Lia smoothed the flyaway strands of hair back from her face. “I think I would have preferred to find it with her and not alone.”

“You’re not alone. I’m with you.” Gabriel could have bitten his tongue. That was the second time he had made that sort of declaration. He edged away a little more so he would not embarrass them both further with an uncomfortable lack of professionalism. “What’s in the envelope?” he asked, grasping for a distraction.

“Envelope?”

“At the bottom of the trunk.” He could see a thick yellowed envelope that was wedged in the bottom corner of the trunk, as if it had slid down the side amidst the contents.

Lia retrieved it and stood, emptying the contents out onto the table next to the stack of novels.

“More pictures, ration cards, and a railway pass. It seems my grandmother hid women as well,” she said on a breath.

Gabriel left his post and joined her at the table, still careful to keep a respectful space between them. On top was a twelve-month rail pass for one Sophie Beaufort, of Marseille, France, dated and stamped January 17, 1943. The black-and-white photo on the left side of the pass depicted an unsmiling woman with the cheekbones of a supermodel and the fair hair and pale eyes of a Nordic fairy-tale princess.

Lia handed it to Gabriel, who took it from her, careful to hold it at the edges. He studied the photo, frowning as a sense of familiarity nagged at the edges of his mind.

“Whoever this woman was, she was beautiful,” Lia murmured beside him.