“Mrs. Abrams?” Kühn’s voice breaks through my grief, and I look up to see him regarding me with concern. “Are you all right? Do you need some water, perhaps?”

I wipe away my tears, tears I have no right to cry. “No, I’m sorry. I’m fine.” I shake my head, trying to rid myself of the ghosts that are suddenly here with me. It is 2005, not 1944, and I owe this kind man some answers. It’s the least I can do. “Now, about that code.”

He leans forward eagerly. “Yes, but take your time, ma’am. Whenever you’re ready.”

I draw a deep breath. “The stars and the dots are the lost names, the names of the children too young to remember, the names we had to erase so they could survive. I hoped that one day, when the war ended, I could help them to reclaim who they’d once been. But we aren’t defined by the names we carry or the religion we practice, or the nation whose flag flies over our heads. I know that now. We’re defined by who we are in our hearts, who we choose to be on this earth.”

He listens in silence, his eyes wide, as I tell him about how I learned to be a forger, how I met Rémy and Père Clément, how we worked so hard to help people escape from the tightening clutches of the Nazis. I explain Rémy’s idea of using the Fibonacci sequence to encode names so we could make sure that the war’s youngest victims were never forgotten.

I tell him that after the war, years after I’d moved to America, my husband told me one day about an organization called Yad Vashem that had been founded in Jerusalem, the first Israeli memorial to victims of the Holocaust. Its title, Hebrew for memorial and a name, made me think of the names I’d lost along with the book, and slowly over the next few months, while Louis slept soundly beside me, I lay awake at night and made a mental list of the ones I could remember. There were over a hundred. When I finally contacted the people at Yad Vashem in the spring of 1956 with the real and false names I had been able to pull from the depths of my memory, they promised me they would try to find the children who had made it to Switzerland, in hopes that some of them might rediscover where they’d come from.

“And did they?” Kühn asks. “Did they find any of the children?”

I sigh. “I don’t know. I refused to tell them my name or give them my contact information. They wanted to recognize me for what I had done, but I didn’t want that. I was never a hero. I was just a young woman trying to do the right thing. In the end, though, I got it all wrong.”

Kühn studies me for a minute, and when he finally speaks, his tone is gentle. “Mrs. Abrams, a very wise woman once told me that we are only responsible for the things we do—or fail to do—ourselves.” That earns him a small smile, and he smiles back before going on. “And it seems to me that you spent the war trying to help innocent people.”

“But I lost the people I loved most.” I hesitate and whisper, “I got my mother killed. And Rémy died, too, Herr Kühn. It doesn’t matter how many people I helped if I couldn’t do right by them.”

“You’re not the one who wronged them, Mrs. Abrams.”

I’m crying now, blubbering like an old fool, and then Kühn is comforting me by pulling me to his chest, and it feels just like being held—and forgiven—by Père Clément all those years ago. When I finally pull away and look up at him, he holds my gaze.

“Do you know what else this very wise person told me?” he asks. “She said that we’re defined by who we are in our hearts, who we choose to be on this earth. And I believe, Mrs. Abrams, that you chose to be a hero, even if you don’t see it that way.” He holds out the book and says, “It’s yours if you want it, ma’am, after the requisite paperwork, of course, but if you don’t mind, I’d love to keep it for a few days to make a list of the names. Maybe I can help with the ones you couldn’t remember all those years ago. Wouldn’t that be a gift, to be able to reunite some lost children with their pasts? In fact, why don’t you stay and help me?”

I look at the book and then back at Kühn. “My son is probably worrying about me. I—I left without telling him.”

“So call him. Explain that you have some unfinished business to attend to.”

“But… he knows nothing of the person I used to be.”

“Then isn’t it time you tell him? Maybe the first identity to recover should be your own.”

I stare at the book. It holds the most important message I ever sent, though I sent it too late. And isn’t that the story of my life when it comes to the people I love? I was too late when I tried to rescue my father from Drancy. Too late when I returned to Aurignon for my mother. I don’t want to be too late with my son, too.

I look up at Kühn. “Might I borrow your phone?”

He beams at me. “I thought you’d never ask, Mrs. Abrams. Just hit two for an outside line, then zero-zero-one to call America.”

I pick up the receiver, punch in the numbers, and then dial my son’s cell phone number. I listen to it ring once, twice, and then he answers.

“Ben?” I begin.

“Mom? Where are you? I’ve been so worried.”

“There’s no need to worry about me.” I exchange smiles with Kühn once more and then close my eyes, trying to see Rémy’s face in my mind. “Ben, sweetheart, it’s time I tell you who I really am.”

Chapter Thirty-Two

Night has fallen by the time Kühn and I make it through the first six dozen coded names in the book. After getting off the phone with an incredulous Ben, I had offered to stay, for after all, I erased these names years ago; it’s only fair that I be the one to help restore them.

“Do you have a place to stay, Mrs. Abrams?” Kühn asks, leaning back in his chair. “I think we should have a bit of a rest and start fresh tomorrow. There’s a hotel just down the street that sometimes hosts the library’s guests; I can make a call to arrange a room for you, if you’d like.”

I want to keep going, but these names have already waited more than sixty years, and I suppose they can wait another day. Frankly, I’m exhausted. “That sounds lovely, Herr Kühn. Thank you.”

As he picks up the phone to call the hotel, I flip to page 308, the last page on which I drew a star. This page belongs to the girl we called Jacqueline, the little one Rémy and I helped across the Swiss border on that cold winter night so long ago, the night we made love, the night he offered me forever, the night I said no. Her real name was Eliane Meisel. I wonder what happened to her, whether her parents lived, whether she found her way home.

I’ve just closed my eyes, trying to see her sweet little face in my mind through the fog of time, when suddenly, Kühn and I are interrupted by a voice in the doorway. “Entschuldigung,” says a woman’s voice, and my eyes snap open. A middle-aged security guard hovers there uncertainly.

“Guten Abend, Mila.” Kühn sets the phone down and turns to the guard. “Wie kann ich dir behilflich sein?”

She glances at me and then rattles off a few sentences in rapid German to Kühn, nodding once to the Book of Lost Names. I try to decipher what she’s saying, but I can’t follow it. Kühn replies to her quickly, then stands and turns to me as she leaves.

“What is it?” I ask.

“That was our night security guard, Mila. She says that there’s a man outside the library saying the book is his, that he just flew in from the States and can’t wait another minute to see it.”

“My book?” I pick it up and clutch it to my chest defensively. “Well, that’s impossible.”

“We’ve had a few of these, I’m afraid,” Kühn says, shaking his head. “Collectors, trying to claim books for their collections. It figures that this one would come at night, when he thinks he can strong-arm us.”

“Should we call the police?”

Kühn smiles. “Mila is tougher than she looks, and so am I. For that matter, I suspect you are, too. I think we will be just fine. Let me go get rid of him. I’ll be back in a moment.”

“I’ll come with you. If there’s someone trying to steal my book, I want to look him in the eye.”

He hesitates, then nods. “Let’s lock the book away, shall we?”

I wait while he secures it inside his desk drawer, and as I follow him out into the darkened main room of the library, I realize I already miss it, miss the warmth of it in my hands. It still feels like a part of me, even all these years later.

Mila is standing by the front door. “He’s just out there,” she says as we walk up beside her. “Come on.”

Kühn and I follow her outside, where a white-haired man in a light trench coat stands several steps away, his back to us as he looks out over the city.

“Herr?” Mila asks, her tone firm and steely, and the man turns slowly, the hint of a polite smile on his face.

But then his smile falls and his jaw goes slack as his eyes meet mine, and I’m as frozen as he is. I’m aware of Kühn saying something beside me, but his words sound very distant, because suddenly, the years are falling away, and I’m walking toward the man, my head spinning. I’m seeing a ghost, and though my brain tells me it’s impossible, my heart knows it isn’t.