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Two days after Colette’s reunion with Liliane, Lucas’s grandfather turned himself into the Weymouth Police Department. “I destroyed a family,” he told the officer on duty, who hadn’t known what to make of the old man. “I deserve to be put away for the rest of my life.”

But the evidence of his crime had long since disappeared, and Colette wondered if what he had done was really a crime at all, or merely a series of bad decisions by a weak man who had been trying to do the right thing.

Yes, his choices had shaped the course of her life, but he had saved Liliane, who may well have perished if she’d been taken into German custody that night.

Who was to say how things might have turned out if different decisions had been made?

The authorities in Paris had, unsurprisingly, declined to get involved in a seventy-six-year-old wartime kidnapping case, and with Colette’s and Liliane’s blessing, the Weymouth Police Department had released him without charge.

He had never stopped apologizing, though, and when he died two weeks later after a series of small strokes, his last words were to Liliane.

“I never meant you harm, you know,” he’d rasped as he reached for her, his hand trembling.

“I know,” she’d replied through her tears.

He had breathed his last holding the hand of the child he’d raised, who had never been his at all.

Two weeks later, Liliane was still staying at Lucas’s apartment in Boston, and she and Colette were seeing each other every day, slowly filling each other in on the yawning blanks in each other’s lives over the course of hours-long conversations that stretched well into the evenings.

To Colette’s surprise, Daniel Rosman was still there, too.

A week earlier, she had invited him to move out of his hotel into her guest room, a temporary arrangement that neither seemed to be in a hurry to upend.

“I don’t want to impose,” Daniel said after he brought her a cup of coffee on his seventh morning in her home. “Just send me packing whenever you get tired of me, Colette.”

“Daniel, if you hadn’t come into my life, I’m not certain I would have found my way back to Liliane,” she assured him now.

“You are welcome here as long as you’d like to stay.

” She hesitated, and feeling heat creep up her neck, she added, “Besides, Daniel, I can’t imagine getting tired of you. Ever.”

He held her gaze, and as they stared at each other, Colette felt her heart flutter with something warm and unfamiliar.

Perhaps it was this feeling of reuniting with a lost past—finding Liliane, slipping into a comfortable ease with Daniel, burying Guillaume Charpentier—that finally gave Colette the courage to tell Aviva about Tristan Berousek, in hopes of finding a definitive answer about what had become of him.

“I’ve spent all these years thinking he was dead, but he came back,” Colette concluded, her voice cracking, after she’d relayed the whole story.

“There was a note from him in 1952, and I just need to know how that’s possible, and what happened to him after that.

I can’t imagine he’s still alive, after what he must have undergone in Auschwitz. ”

“But Daniel survived Auschwitz,” Aviva pointed out. “And he’s still alive and well.”

Colette sighed. “I know, but certainly he’s the exception to the rule. Think of how many survivors we’re losing all the time at the center.”

“But think of all those who still remain, telling their stories and keeping the past alive,” Aviva said softly. “Don’t give up hope, Colette. Maybe he’s still out there.”

Colette glanced down at her hands. “I’ve looked at the USHMM’s records, and the only thing I can find is an entry of his death. But I thought that maybe you have some search tools at your disposal that I don’t have.”

Aviva smiled. “I can have Marilyn look into it. If he’s out there, we’ll find him.”

Colette felt a bit lighter as she straightened and said, “Really?”

“Really,” Aviva confirmed. “What does Daniel say about all of it?”

Colette bit her lip. “I haven’t told him.”

Aviva looked like she was trying not to smile. “And why not?”

“Because…” Colette paused and exhaled. “Because perhaps it feels silly to be chasing a ghost when the perfect man is right here in front of me.”

Aviva’s expression cracked into a grin. “The perfect man, huh?”

Colette could feel her cheeks getting warm. “You know me, Aviva. I don’t get sentimental. But there’s something different about him. I don’t know if it’s the connection we have through our mothers, or perhaps the fact that he’s part of the story of bringing me back to Liliane…”

“Or maybe he’s just the person you’ve been waiting for all these years,” Aviva said.

“You’ve given me so many explanations over the years about why you never married.

Guilt over your sister, not wanting to have a child, not believing that you deserved happiness…

But what if it was just that you hadn’t met the right person? Until now?”

“You know I don’t believe in that one-person-for-everyone nonsense,” Colette said, her cheeks fully flaming now.

But what if Aviva was right? What if it wasn’t that there had been something wrong with her?

What if it was just as simple as the fact that, sometimes, the people who are meant to be in your life don’t always arrive when you expect them to?

What if she had been waiting for something like this, the feeling of finding a family again, for nearly eighty years?

“You don’t have to believe in it for it to be true,” Aviva said. “But what will you do if we find Tristan Berousek alive?”

Colette had thought about this. “I would write to him, I think. I would tell him how much he’d meant to me, and how much losing him shaped my life.

I would tell him how sorry I am that so many years had passed, and I would explain that I hadn’t known until recently that he had lived.

But Aviva, we knew each other when we were just children.

I think perhaps I’ve been carrying a flame all these years for someone I’ve idealized in my mind.

And maybe knowing he survived, and letting him know that I did, too, should be enough.

Maybe it’s time to put the past to rest once and for all, and to think instead about the future. ”

“And would that future include Daniel Rosman?” Aviva asked, a twinkle in her eye.

“Maybe,” Colette said, her eyes sliding away. When she looked back at Aviva, the expression on the younger woman’s face was so warm and happy that it lit Colette from the inside out. “Let’s just take it one day at a time, okay?”

“If you say so,” Aviva said. “But life is short, Colette. You and I both know that. And if the future is standing right in front of you…”

“Then maybe I should have the courage to follow my heart,” Colette said with a smile. “Fine, point taken. But let’s cross one bridge at a time, shall we? Let’s find out what became of Tristan, and then, maybe I can put the past to rest.”

Two evenings later, Aviva arrived early for the dinner Colette had offered to host, wearing a grim expression.

“I’m sorry,” she said, following Colette into the kitchen. “But the only Tristan Berousek from Paris that Marilyn could find in any public records is confirmed dead in 1942, along with the rest of his family.”

Colette felt tears stinging the backs of her eyes, and she busied herself with whisking Dijon mustard into olive oil and champagne vinegar for the green salad she’d already tossed.

“Then who wrote that note?” she asked softly.

“Could I have been wrong about his surname, Aviva? Could there be another Tristan who was deported but who came home?”

“I thought of that. But there’s no record of any other Tristan in the correct age group deported from France during the Holocaust. It wasn’t a common name. Could it have been a nickname?”

Colette frowned. The thought had occurred to her, too, but the name Tristan wasn’t short for anything. “And if it was? Where would I even begin to look for him?”

Aviva shook her head and was about to reply when Daniel strode into the kitchen, wearing one of Colette’s old aprons.

“Coming through, ladies,” he said cheerfully. “That beef bourguignon isn’t going to take itself out of the oven.”

Colette forced a smile and turned to open the oven for Daniel.

It had been his idea to host a meal for Aviva, Lucas, Millie, and Liliane, and the others were due to arrive at any moment.

As Daniel lifted the Dutch oven out, and the scents of wine-roasted beef and onions filled the kitchen, Colette shook off thoughts of the boy she’d lost long ago and vowed to spend the evening focusing on the man at her stove, and the family she’d just found.

It was enough. Her life was beautiful. Mum would be proud.

Liliane, Lucas, and Millie arrived together, three generations of a family Colette still couldn’t believe belonged to her.

Liliane held Colette tightly for a long moment; Lucas kissed her on the cheek; Millie called her “Aunt Colette”; and a moment later, when everyone was seated and Daniel came bustling in from the kitchen carrying the beef bourguignon, Colette felt as if her heart might burst from joy.

Aviva chose a seat next to Lucas, and as Colette walked around filling wineglasses, she noticed that the two were holding hands beneath the table, clearly the start of something they weren’t ready to talk about yet.

When Aviva looked up and saw Colette watching her, she smiled sheepishly and shrugged, raising her eyebrows.

Colette’s eyes filled with tears as she nodded.

Aviva had always been her family in all the ways that mattered, but what if she had a future with Lucas, who was Colette’s own flesh and blood?

Colette couldn’t imagine anything more perfect.