the blood that was on their hands. Releasing it was his final act of war. What would he have done with it if Eleanor had not come to Dachau? she wondered. He might have found another way of getting the word out. Or he might have taken the secret to the grave.
But what to do with it? She had to find a way to bring the truth to light. To reach those to whom it mattered most. The truth, once out, would spell the end, for the Director and herself, for all of them.
Still, Eleanor had made a promise to her girls. There was no choice. She had to set the record straight.
Wiping the tears from her eyes, she started from the vault.
Chapter Twenty-Nine
Grace
New York, 1946
Grace poured sugar into her coffee, watching it disappear into the blackness below. She looked up, taking comfort in the sight of Frankie hunched over a file across the office and the uneven hum of the radiator.
It had been a full week since she’d left the photos at the British consulate. She’d wondered if it would be hard to go back to normal, as if the whole business with the girls had never happened. But she had slipped back into her old life like a comfortable pair of shoes. The room at the boardinghouse, now graced by her mother’s plastic hydrangeas, felt more like home than ever.
Still, she often thought about Mark and how puzzled he must have been to wake up and find her gone. She’d half expected him to call, but there had been silence. She thought about the girls, too, and about Eleanor and why she had betrayed them.
Pushing aside the questions that had sent her on the crazy quest in the first place, Grace resumed typing a letter to the housing board. Frankie crossed the room and handed her a file. “I was hoping you could fill this out for me.” She opened the file. There were papers from the Children’s Aid Society for the placement of a child with a family. Grace was surprised; usually they referred these types of matters to Simon Wise, over on Ludlow, who specialized in family law. But then Grace saw the names on the form and she understood why Frankie was handling this one. The child to be fostered was Samuel Altshuler. And he was being placed with none other than Frankie himself.
“You’re taking Sammy in?” she asked, almost not believing.
“The kid deserves a solid home, you know? And what you said about it being hard to get involved, that really stuck.” Grace’s mind reeled back to their conversation over the phone when she was in Washington. She had said it as a caution. But he had taken it the other way and jumped in with both feet. “So I’m going to take him. At least if they’ll let an old bachelor have a kid.”
She reached out and squeezed his arm, her admiration soaring. “They will, Frankie. They definitely will. He’s the luckiest kid to have you. I’ll get these typed right away and I’ll deliver them to the agency myself.”
It was nearly two o’clock that afternoon when Grace returned from the courthouse. The office was empty, but Frankie had scribbled a note: “Gone to get some things for the kid’s new room. Back soon.” His words seemed to crackle off the page with excitement and purpose.
Her stomach rumbled, reminding her that she had missed lunch. She picked up the bag containing her egg salad sandwich and started for the door. Time for a quick bite on the roof before Frankie returned.
She opened the door to the office, then stopped short. There, in the corridor, stood Mark.
“Hello...” she said uncertainly. Their encounter on the street last time had been a coincidence. Now he had come here purposefully, looking for her. Surprise and happiness and anger seemed to rush through her all at once. How had he found her? Her mother, or her landlady perhaps; it would not have been that hard.
“You left,” he said, his voice more wounded than accusing.
“I’m sorry.”
“Was it something I said? Or did?”
“Not at all.” She could see how confused he must have been. “Things between us just felt, well, complicated. And then I found this.” She reached in her bag and pulled out the wireless transmission that proved Eleanor’s guilt. She had almost destroyed it after returning to New York. But she hadn’t, and despite trying to put the whole matter behind her, she kept the paper with