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she came today.” It had been an extraordinary insight into their mother, and both girls were still stunned by it as they walked to school. It was odd finding out that they had a grandmother who had been alive for all these years, and whom they had never seen. Not only a grandmother, but a grandfather, an aunt, and two uncles.

“I'm glad for Mama that she's coming,” Amadea said quietly. “But I think it was a terrible thing to do. Imagine if she did that to us,” Amadea said, filled with compassion and sorrow for her mother. What a huge, huge loss, to lose everyone she had loved for a man. Although if she hadn't done it, Amadea realized, she and Daphne would never have been born.

“I'd cry a lot,” Daphne said, looking impressed.

“So would I.” Amadea smiled, taking her hand to cross the street. “You'd better never do anything stupid like not talk to me, or I'll come and beat you up,” Amadea warned her, and Daphne laughed.

“Okay. I promise. I won't.” Thinking about their mother, and the grandmother they were about to meet, the two girls walked the rest of the way to school, hand in hand, lost in their own thoughts. Amadea had already forgotten the question in her own mind about whether her grandparents had been Jewish. It made no difference to her. She knew that her mother was Catholic, so she had to have been wrong about that. If her mother was Catholic, then obviously her parents were too.

8

WHEN THE DOORBELL RANG AT FOUR O'CLOCK, BEATA stood very still for a minute, smoothed her dress, and patted her hair. She was wearing a plain black dress and a string of pearls Antoine had given her for their tenth anniversary. Her face was startlingly pale. She looked serious and almost breathless when she opened the door and saw her mother standing there, in an elegant black coat over a purple dress. As always, she was beautifully dressed, and she was wearing black suede shoes, and a matching purse. Her black suede gloves were custom made. And she was wearing enormous pearls. Her eyes bored into her daughter's, and without a sound, they flew into each other's arms. Beata felt suddenly like a child who had lost her mother and finally found her. She just wanted to nuzzle her, feel her face, and the silk of her hair. She still wore the same perfume she had worn when Beata was a little girl. And as though it had happened yesterday, she could remember the horror of the day she left. But it was all over now. They had found each other again.

The years since melted away. She led her mother into the living room, and they sat down next to each other on the couch, as they both cried. Beata couldn't speak for a long time.

“Thank you for coming, Mama, I missed you so much.” More than she had allowed herself to feel, or could ever say. It all came rushing back to her now. The moments she wished she had been there, when she got married, when Amadea was born … and Daphne… for holidays and birthdays and every important moment in her married life … and when Antoine died. And all the ordinary moments in between. And now she was here. She felt no rage over the years they'd lost, only grief. And now, finally, relief.

“You'll never know what agony this has been,” Monika said as tears rolled relentlessly down her cheeks. “I promised him I wouldn't see you. I was afraid to disobey him. But I missed you so much, every single day.” She had never gotten over it. In the end, it was like a death.

“All my letters came back,” Beata said as she blew her nose.

“I never knew you'd written. Papa must have returned them without showing them to me.”

“I knew that,” Beata said sadly, remembering her father's handwriting returning them to her. “The ones I wrote to Brigitte came back too. I saw her on the street once, and she wouldn't talk to me. And Ulm and Horst.”

“We sat shiva for you,” her mother said sadly. It had been the worst day of her life. “He won't allow us to even speak of you. And I think Brigitte is afraid to upset me, so she doesn't say anything.”

“Is she happy?”

Her mother shook her head. “She's divorced. She wants to marry someone else. Papa doesn't approve. Are your children Jewish?” her mother