“There was a girl who played violin at the campfire. A real talent. But she left last week, to where, I don’t know. Never talked much, but she sure could play.”

Róża asks around about the campfire violinist. Everyone speaks of a quiet child around the age of eight or nine, who played like a virtuoso.

“I never heard anyone like her, and so young!” one older man tells Róża.

“There was a family with a child her age she hung around; maybe they took her with them?” the man’s wife chimes in.

“Do you know the name of that family?”

“No.”

“Or where they may have gone?”

“I’m sorry.”

Róża and Aron travel to Hamburg Port. Róża searches the boat records; she stands on the docks and stares out at the heaving sea. They may have passed within ten kilometers of each other as Róża traveled west from Celestyn and Shira traveled north from the camp to the port. They may have missed each other by a matter of days. Now there is no knowing where Shira has gone to.

Aron’s face registers Róża’s despondency. “Oh, Różyczka.”

Wherever Shira is, she won’t be traceable now. He doesn’t say it, but they both know: Shira is lost to the universe.

They circle the city on foot, directionless. The air from Róża’s lungs gets stoppered in her throat. If she could hold out hope that Shira would search for her—but would Shira even know her name?

Aron wipes tears from her eyes and brings water for her to drink. He sits beside her on a bench. A solitary goldfinch whirls overhead.

“Róża, please. Honor Shira by living a beautiful life.”

Róża blinks up at the sky as Aron takes hold of her hands.

Part 4

The girl does not need to be silent any longer, so she plays her music out loud. She plays, not for the flowers that grow in colorful clay pots on her terrace or for a distant, long-ago garden. She plays for the airwaves. Her notes travel at the speed of three hundred and thirty-two meters per second, faster even than a yellow bird.

After longest silence, she wishes for her music to reach as high as the heavens, as far as the sea.

Chapter 45

New York

Autumn 1965

Róża pulls two knit blankets from a high shelf, spreading one across the bed, the other on the couch; then she transfers her thick sweaters, individually wrapped in plastic bags, to the middle drawers of her dressing closet. Autumn’s chill has come early to Brooklyn this year, but it’s all right. Their apartment is cozy, and in the evenings, when she and Aron stroll the neighborhood and talk, vendors stand ready on street corners with her favorite roasted chestnuts nestled in paper cones.