“Excuse me,” she said as he turned and took in her presence.

He was a young man, maybe twenty-five, even if his face was much older. He wore a black hat and his hair in long curls: a Jewish DP from one of the few remaining camps.

“It’s allowed,” he said. Marianne stared at him, confused. “It’s allowed to pray here,” he clarified.

“Of course.” She stepped back, startled that he thought she would question this. “Did you know someone? Among the dead?”

The man scowled and then squinted at her as if trying to read her intent.

“I knew them all,” he said. The words hung between them.

“I also came here to pray,” Marianne said, realizing as she spoke that this was true.

Above them, the first stars of evening were suddenly visible, like holes in a thin cloth, revealing a great light behind the darkness. The river shone a pale and otherworldly violet.

The man regarded her intently, and Marianne found herself awaiting some sort of verdict.

Finally, he ducked his head.

“Well, go on then,” he said. “You can be here forever with that task.” He turned to go.

“And you?” Marianne said.

He looked back at her. “I leave tomorrow for America.”

And looking at him, this young stranger with an old face, Marianne felt the truth of his words and his weariness. But through this, she heard the word America, as if for the first time. Not as the name of an enemy nation or as an Ally. Not as the originator of bombs and oranges and chocolate or as the creator of all the paperwork she had so tirelessly filled out for so many refugees. She heard it as the name of a place where a person could begin again.

Long after the man had departed, the word blew around in her mind, like a scrap of paper, alluring and brightly colored, hinting at another life.

PART IV

CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO

DEER ISLE, MAINE, JULY 1991

The road to Marianne’s home on the coast of Maine was as winding and lovely as the name von Lingenfels, which Martin had always thought beautiful, though it lost some of its lightness on the American tongue. But Martin was not an American, even after so many years living in New England. He was a German, as this visit reminded him. A German who was more than an hour late, which was not a promising start.

His tardiness was fitting, though. As a boy he had always been late. He could feel the old pattern of behavior rising, his tendency to fulfill other people’s narratives, usually at a cost to himself. So he was to be the hapless teenager, Marianne the overbearing parent, picking up his mother’s slack. Never mind that he was now in his fifties and she was eighty-three, and he had not seen her for God knows how long. She had written him to say she had a proposal. And while he wasn’t generally up for proposals since his most recent divorce, he could not refuse Marianne. It had always been that way.