Page 105 of The Lost Husband

“And that is artwork, my sweetheart.”

“Someday, you’ll have clean lines again.” Noah laughs.

“I can wait.”

Luna climbs from my lap and toddles into the flowers, determined. She studies them carefully before choosing one, then another, and brings them back to us.

Noah scoops her up and kneels along the hem of the blanket. I crawl forward to take his hand and Luna’s as we place it down on a small flat stone with Eve’s name engraved.

Luna presses one of the tulips down just as the wind shifts. The petals wave. She presses her lips to the rock. “Muah,” she squeals.

We never brought her home.

But she brought us here.

“Your sister loves you very much,” I tell her.

“Sissy,” she babbles. Luna stretches her arms to the right, wriggling in Noah’s hold. “Uncky!”

Noah scoots to the right so Luna can place the second tulip down. “Uncle Christoph. Oh, would he have loved you, my little love,” he sighs. “He should be here.”

It’s hard living without him. A quiet guilt that sits with us and always will.

“Yeah!” she squeals.

We lie back on the quilt, and I rest my head in the crook of Noah’s arm, watching as the sun warms his face, highlighting the arc of freckles on his nose. I place my hand on his chest, feeling for his next breath and steady heartbeat. I’ll never forget how much I once needed to feel it.

A train whistle whizzes through the air and I clench my hand. Noah’s arm tightens. His heart skips a beat and his breath shudders. It’s only a train.

Noah exhales first. Then I do.

“Choo-choo,” Luna calls out, climbing over Noah.

“That’s all it is,” I whisper.

“A choo-choo,” Noah sighs.

“I told you they’d already be here,” a voice calls out from behind us.

Avi drops onto the quilt, still youthful in manner, though older now. Wiser. And no longer lonely.

“Auntie Avi is here, my little princess,” she coos, reaching for Luna as if she’s her favorite doll.

The smile on Avi’s face is something I didn’t know I needed until it appeared. Her hair is long, lips red, eyes bright as the sky, and a scar on her cheek that speaks of strength, and still the person unwilling to give up on survival. The ring on her finger says it all.

“Anything in the headlines today?” Avi prods Noah with a roll of her eyes.

“I don’t know,” he says.

“How can that be?” she teases. “Are you feeling all right?”

“Perfect, actually.”

Noah won’t say it out loud, but he walks past newspapers now without stopping. The world feels settled to him, and he has no desire to disturb that peace.

“I’m sorry I’m late,” Elias shouts from a ways off behind us. “Celina, your father held me up at work. It’s his fault. And your mother was there too, and she made me eat pastries.”

It turned out that Zurich was the safest place for my parents, though their hearts were in shambles with worry, not knowing whether Noah and I were all right for so long. They found us on a displaced-persons registration list just before we found each other when we arrived back in Amsterdam.