NOVEMBER 1945
The war was finally over. At least in Europe.
Liz, Emma, and I were living in Brooklyn now. And two-year-old Gabrielle as well. The apartment in Yorkville was way too small for a growing family.
I was still working at the appliance store. Except that I was managing it now—and by that time it had doubled in size. The largest independent appliance store in New York City, our ads proclaimed. And we were opening a second one up on Fordham Road in the Bronx. With a million soldiers about to come home from the war and start families of their own, business was sure to boom.
Years back, Life magazine had done a spread on me. “The Hero Dad Who Saved His Family and Foiled a Nazi Plot.” That made me a celebrity for a month or so. And because of it some teaching offers actually rolled in. At Boston University. And Ohio State University in Columbus. And even Columbia. Things had changed in the department once again. Rusk was out. But with a growing family, and another on the way, I decided maybe I would just stay where I was for a while. I discovered I had a knack for managing. The owner, Sol, whose own kids were in law and medical school, showed a lot of trust in me.
So I told them all I’d just think about it and get back to them.
And never did.
That nagging voice on my shoulder told me I was a fool, of course. But I hadn’t been listening to him for years now. I had a family to support. Funny how the paths in life unfold.
There was even a reward that came with what I had done. The government actually had a fund for the successful uncovering of foreign agents in the war. $10,000. I talked it over with Liz and we decided we’d keep half. Three thousand for us, and a thousand for each of the kids’ college funds. The rest we gave anonymously to a family in New Jersey who had lost their son six years before to a drunken punch thrown outside a bar in Hell’s Kitchen.
Anonymously, in the memory of Andrew J. McHurley.
It was rare now that I even thought about what happened back then. The Bauers, Mrs. Shearer, Latimer, they were all just memories to me now. Ones I had tried to forget.
And Noelle.
I rarely thought about her either, only how different my life might have been, our crossed paths, if I hadn’t walked into that room with the Bauers and Latimer in it and seen how she betrayed me. After the incident, there was no trace of her anywhere. The investigators looked through her apartment. There was no sign of her there. Anywhere. It was like she had simply disappeared. And with that, vanished from my mind as well. I always remembered how sad she had looked that night at the Bauers’ when it came out what she had done. I had no love for any of this, Charlie … And how Fiske had said that her parents were prisoners of the Nazis. How she was trapped into doing something she did not believe in, like me.
In war we all have to make choices.…
But one day that November, as I came home from a long day at work, I threw myself on the couch. The kids both wanted a piece of me before they went to bed. “Any mail?” I asked Liz.
“Just the usual,” she said, tossing me a pile of bills and notices, which I started to sort through. “Oh, and this…”
It was an envelope addressed to me that had been forwarded from the brownstone on Ninetieth Street, where we hadn’t lived in two years.
“Who do we know in France?” she asked, looking over my shoulder.
It was postmarked Rouen. To Charles Mossman. But there was no return address.
I opened it, shaking my head at her question. “Beats me.”
There was no note inside. I dug around the envelope to be sure. Only a single black-and-white photo. I took it out and stared at it, and at first, didn’t recognize a single person in it. “Who the hell…?” A woman in a dark hat in front of a fountain, standing next to an older woman and man. Gaunt, their clothes rumpled. Only the thinnest and most inscrutable of smiles. If I could put my finger on it, the only word that came to mind was “proud.” They just seemed proud to have taken the photo. To be alive. For a moment I thought maybe it had been sent to the wrong person and I checked the envelope again.
There was something beautiful about the woman in the hat. Then it hit me precisely who she was.
My heart surged. It was Noelle. After all these years. And the two others had to be her parents. Her parents who were in a Nazi prison camp.
There was a date written: July 1945. Two months after the end of the war in Europe.
They’d made it.
That’s what the smiles said: They’d survived.
And there was an inscription on the back, in English: None of our paths were straightforward, Charles.… But in the end, some led to good places. My hope is yours did too.
Suddenly something rose up in me and I felt tears burn in my eyes.
I fixed on their smiles.
And then I noticed one more line, at the bottom. One that, as I read it, sent my mind rocketing back in time and explained so many things.
I had another American friend, Charles, Noelle had written. His name was Fiske.
Fiske.
My God, I suddenly realized, she had been his source. That’s how he knew about Latimer. And that Emma had been taken. And about Prospero. But not what it was. And not the sub. In that moment I realized the path Noelle had truly taken. And just who had helped me get our baby back.
And why she was not to be found in the end.
“Who is this?” Liz asked, leaning over my shoulder.
“No one,” I said. But my eyes welled up with emotion. I looked back at the photo, Noelle. Those proud, determined eyes.
My journey here was not straightforward either, Charles.
No, it damn well wasn’t. I started to laugh out loud. Mixed with tears.
“Charlie, are you all right?” Liz asked. She saw the emotion on my face.
“Yes, I’m perfect, honey.” I put the photo back in the envelope, slid it among the mail to be thrown out, and tossed it on the table. “I’m perfect. Hey, Emma, come here and give your dad a hug, peach.”