“Pawel made it.” Ella’s eyes fill with tears. “I had no idea.”

“Pawel returned to the sewer after he was released to check on Sadie and the others he had helped. But they weren’t there. At first, he thought they had all been caught. Then he realized they fled the sewer or at least attempted to. He didn’t know where they had gone or whether they had made it. But he knew one possibility, at least for my mother, was that she had given birth and left the sewer to hide the baby.”

I pause as a waiter appears and pours coffee. When he has gone again, I continue. “Pawel was the one who had told my mother about the hospital in the first place. So he went there to look for her. He learned that she had come to the hospital, but not with the baby. He did some more digging and found the priest who had saved me and learned where I had been placed. When I was older, I corresponded with him for many years. He told me about my family. But there were so many questions he couldn’t answer.

“So I came to find you to learn more about them, or at least about my sister. I would like to know her.” This is what I wanted, to find the last link to the sister I had never known and to capture, now while I still can, the stories that would bring her back to life. This is why I had come all of this way. My entire family had been killed before I was old enough to know them. I have had a good life, filled with a husband who had loved me, two children and now grandchildren. But this piece has always been missing, a hole where my past should be. I want to know the people I had lost.

I put the bouquet of flowers down on the table. “These are for you.”

Ella does not take the flowers, but stares at them for several seconds. “Mama was right,” she whispers to herself.

“Excuse me?”

“She said that there would be flowers someday.” Her words are confusing to me and I wonder whether the surprise of my coming has been too much. She presses her lips together, as if there is something else she wants to say but cannot. “So then how did you find out about me?” She still has more questions than answers.

“Saul,” I reply.

“Saul?” Ella smiles as she repeats the familiar name, the lines about her mouth deepening. Her eyes dance. “He’s still alive?”

“Yes, he’s a widower living in California with many children and grandchildren. He never forgot about Sadie, though.”

“He made it after all,” she says with a quiver, sounding as if she is speaking more to herself than to me.

“Before Pawel died, he told me about the other family, the Rosenbergs, who had lived in the sewer,” I explain. “Years later, I was able to find Saul. He gave me so many of the answers I was seeking about what had happened to my family. He had been separated from Sadie as they fled, and he was never able to learn what became of her. But he told me that she had a friend, a brave Polish girl, Ella Stepanek, who helped them escape. I began researching, trying to find this woman who had helped my sister. For years I hit a dead end, but then after Communism ended and I could get to the archives in Poland, I learned that there had been a young woman named Ella Stepanek who fought in the Warsaw Uprising. I thought it might be you.” She blinks, not answering. “So I came to find you.”