“Just a little farther, boys!” she said, plunging into the woods.

The forest was shadowed and stark, with snow dusted across the floor and tree limbs. The path widened ahead, becoming more of a used lane again. It wound into pines and past a small millpond on their right. At the other end of the pond, there was a bench. Surely that would be far enough.

Reaching the bench, Adeline looked back once more, and saw no one running after them through the trees. Her leg and back muscles knotted and spasming, she allowed herself at last to slow, stop, and let go the rail. Only then did she collapse on the bench and take her crying, terrified sons into her arms. Only then did she break down, sobbing for joy.

“We’ve done it!” she blubbered, squeezing them close to her, and then laughing hysterically. “We believed and we’re free, boys! Free! And we will see your father before the sun goes down!”

Back down the trail, a branch snapped.

Chapter Thirty-Eight

Adeline whipped her head around and saw the man who’d chased them. He was limping toward them, his coat muddy and open, his homburg muddy and in his muddy hand, his face mud streaked, florid, and sweaty as he shook his head.

She pulled the boys even tighter as he gasped angrily, “Fr?ulein, why didn’t you stop when I yelled at you to stop? Look at me. I’ve got mud everywhere.”

“They were shooting at us,” she said coldly. “And you can’t make us go back.”

“Shooting at you?” he said, cocking his head at her. “Can’t make you go back?”

“That’s right,” she said forcefully. “You’ll have to kill us before we do that.”

To her surprise, he threw back his head and roared with laughter. “So you didn’t have permission to cross?”

Adeline said nothing.

“Of course, you didn’t,” he said, putting his muddy hat on and clapping his muddy hands in delight. “Do you know how lucky you and your boys are? Those people who were caught last night? Four of them were repeat offenders, who were shot in Oebisfelde shortly after the guards spotted you coming out of the town. You came out so close to the patrol that passed you that the guards assumed you’d already been stopped and cleared to cross.”

She stared at him in disbelief. “But they shot at us from the guardhouse. You chased us.”

He laughed again. “Those shots were the guards taking target practice. They weren’t aiming at you. They felt sorry for you having to carry the wagon. They sent me to help you.” He smiled. “I’ll still help you. Where are you trying to go?”

She broke down crying at that, then gathered herself. She swallowed hard, wiped the tears from her eyes, let the boys go, and got up on quivering legs. “A town called Alfeld?”

“I can’t help you get all the way there, but Danndorf and the train stop aren’t far.”

Adeline was suddenly trembling head to toe, more exhausted than she thought she’d ever been. When he said he’d be the fourth wheel, she nodded in gratitude and followed him and the boys on toward Danndorf.

When they arrived, they drank from a fountain and went into a café-bakery where Adeline bought bread. When the owner heard they’d just escaped the Soviet Zone, he gave the boys small sweet cakes and let her use his telephone to call the Alfeld displaced persons camp.

She was told Emil was at work in the fields and left a message to tell him that they had made it across the border, and they would be arriving at the train station there soon. The good Samaritan cleaned the mud off his clothes and helped her get the broken wagon to the local train stop.

When they finally were on the platform and she was thanking the man, Adeline realized she’d been so worked up about actually escaping, she’d never asked his name. When she did, he smiled.

“My name doesn’t matter. You and your boys are safe and where you’re supposed to be.”

She got the chills at that, and said, “May God watch over you, sir.”

“Hearing your story, I’d say he watches closely over you, ma’am, and your sons and your husband,” he replied before strolling away, chuckling to himself.

Adeline watched him go, feeling a tingling sensation as if the tips of feathers were softly brushing her entire body.

“What are you thinking about, Mama?” Walt asked.

She smiled and teared up as the Samaritan disappeared from view. “I was thinking about grace, God’s love, and how truly blessed we are to have it.”

Alfeld, British-Occupied west Germany

Emil paced up and down the train platform in the afternoon spring light, feeling as nervous as he’d been working up the courage to ask Adeline out on their first date. He kept inspecting his reflection in the station window. He’d had plenty to eat in the refugee camp, but he hadn’t gained back half the weight he’d lost during his imprisonment and escape.

Would Adeline recognize him? Would the boys?

It did not matter. He would recognize them. He would have recognized them even if they’d been separated a decade. He was certain of it.

Emil walked back to the end of the platform, looking south, trying to make another train appear. For the longest time, he saw nothing but the rails disappearing around a far bend. In years past, he would have grown more anxious, more fearful of imagined disaster with each passing minute.

But since escaping to the West, Emil had never been calmer or more self-assured. He’d survived the worst that life could throw at him, and those trials and his time with Corporal Gheorghe had changed him, made him stronger and humbler and more aware of the power of dreams and the magic of life all around him. He appreciated every sunrise and every sunset and was grateful to the Almighty for every gift he was given in between.

He’d also practiced seeing Adeline and the boys and himself together in his mind while feeling how intensely good that would be in his heart. In the displaced persons camp, he had declared to any and all who would listen that he would find his family. And when he’d found Adeline and the boys through the International Red Cross and they began communicating in code, he’d openly declared over and over again that his family was not staying in the East. They were not living under Stalin anymore.

Shifting his weight back and forth from one leg to the other, Emil summoned every bit of strength and certainty he had and uttered a vow he’d repeated ten thousand times in the past year.

“They’re coming west,” he said firmly. “They’re coming to freedom. They will not be stopped. We will never be apart. Ever again.”

A faint whistle blew, and with it his heart raced, his eyes watered, and his stomach fluttered like birds flushing. He heard the train’s rumble build before the locomotive appeared and sped toward him. He suddenly knew in his heart they were on the train, and it took everything in his power not to run right at it.

The engine slowed and rolled past Emil, followed by the first passenger car, and the second, and the third. He scanned every face looking out at him and didn’t see any of them as the train came to a stop with the baggage car in front of him. His emotions started to sink, but he was already telling himself that they would be on the next train, when the baggage car’s door slid back. The little wagon was right there, missing a wheel, but without a doubt it was the one he’d built for the boys so long ago.

“Emil!”

“Papa!”

He spun around, and the dreams and spirits of hope that had lived in him for more than two years became real and human again. Adeline was jumping down from the first car with Walt and Will right behind her. They ran at each other and fell into each other’s arms.

Emil held Adeline tight when both their legs wobbled and they sank to their knees, hugging and kissing each other. The boys came in to hold them, all of them shaking, sobbing, and bursting with a happiness so beautiful and pure, none of them would ever forget it.

“We’ll never be apart again,” Emil said. “I promise you that.”

“Never,” Adeline said.

“Never,” Walt said.

“Never ever,” Will said.

They held on to each other as if they’d all arisen from the dead, barely hearing the conductor put their little wagon beside them. Finally, when the train began to pull out of the station, Adeline drew back her head from the crook of Emil’s shoulder, blinking away her tears and smiling in awe as she gazed up into his eyes and saw they were burning with brilliant love for her, just the way she’d dreamed it.

Overwhelmed, she choked, “Our life is a miracle, Emil!”

“One miracle after another,” Emil said, and kissed Adeline like it was the very first time.

Chapter Thirty-Nine

September 23, 1951

Aboard the USS General R. M. Blatchford