Fog had formed after sunset and turned the cloudy night as black as any Emil Martel could remember. Nearing midnight, it grew dank cold, the kind that gets in your bones, but he refused to leave the foredeck of the troop transport where he stood near the bow, peering west, eager for any sign of light.

Earlier in the evening, there had been many other pilgrims on deck with Emil, all looking for that first glimmer of new life. But one by one they’d slipped off to their cabins, and now there remained only a handful still keeping watch.

Adeline came up behind him and put her arms around his waist. “You don’t want to come to bed? They say we can’t get off until morning anyway, and my stomach is at it again.”

“I want to see this,” he said. “I want you and the boys to see it, too.”

“Okay,” she said, snuggling up against him. “Then I’ll wait with you and pray my dinner stays down for the first time since we got on this ship.”

“That would be a gift.”

“Wouldn’t it?”

As far as the Martels were concerned, every day that had followed their escapes from Communism and their reunion in the West had been one more miracle, a gift from God for which they were deeply and constantly grateful. Emil and Adeline had not cared that they all lived for a short time in cramped quarters at the displaced persons camp. And they did not mind toiling out in the fields as hard as they had under Stalin while the boys attended school. The food was infinitely better, and they were together again, free to make something out of their second chance at life.

Adeline told Emil everything that had happened to her and the boys after he was dragged away by the Polish militiamen. Emil gave her an edited version of events after he was taken. He described the long march to the train that took him to Poltava. He told her about living in the basement of the museum with two thousand other men and the diseases that had ravaged his fellow prisoners. He even told Adeline a bit about Corporal Gheorghe and how he’d come to Poltava and how they’d been on the death detail and planned to escape together, only to have the Romanian transferred to another prison camp with higher security. And he described in detail how he’d escaped and rode trains west.

But Emil still felt he could not tell Adeline about the massacre in Dubossary and how he was able to confess to the Romanian corporal but not to her. He didn’t want to hurt Adeline or make her feel less about him in any way. He felt she’d been through too much already.

During the summer of 1947, the Martels were moved to more-permanent housing in Lütgenholzen, south of Hanover and about two hundred and fifty-five kilometers west of Berlin, where Emil and Adeline continued to work in the fields while the world tried to find permanent homes for them and for the millions of other people displaced by World War II and its aftermath. Many refugees were going to South America, including Argentina. Others had their sights on Canada and the United States.

The Martels wanted to go to North America, but they needed a sponsor, a relative or someone residing there and willing to give Emil a job and his family a place to live for a year while they got on their feet. They also needed to show that they were in good health. Adeline had never felt better as they settled into their new life. Walt and Will grew, put on weight, and made big strides academically in that first year. But Emil’s health was not good. He suffered abdominal pain and was often violently ill with vomiting and diarrhea. He turned jaundiced and weak.

In the summer of 1948, Emil collapsed in the fields and was rushed to a hospital where doctors discovered eggs and larvae in his stool. Whether it was from the pig manure Emil had spread in the fields or from the garbage and rancid food he’d had to eat at times during his escape from the prison camp, the doctors determined he was infected with a tapeworm that had attacked his liver, leaving him near death. They rushed Emil into surgery and went in through his back, removing two ribs to get at his liver. When they reached it, the doctors were horrified to find a baseball-sized tapeworm surrounding one lobe.

After they removed the parasite and left the wound open to drain, Emil hovered near death for days. Adeline and the boys kept vigil over him, but never once lost faith that he would survive.

When Emil finally awoke, he was weak but happy to be alive. Within a day, however, he’d turned agitated and gloomy, not like his post-escape self at all.

After a week, as he lay in bed, his torso wrapped in gauze, Adeline asked him what was bothering him. Somehow, Emil understood that he would never know peace unless he stopped hiding part of his past from her.

“I will only speak about this once,” he said, “but you deserve to know. Do you remember when we first returned to Friedenstal, and I took the wagon and horses and went to Dubossary to get roofing supplies?”

Adeline did remember and felt her stomach grow queasy. “What happened?”

Over the course of a long afternoon while the boys were in school, Emil told her everything: how he’d been stopped leaving town by then captain Haussmann; how Haussmann had forced Emil and other ethnic Germans to go to a remote ravine where members of the SS were shooting Jews; and how he’d begged God not to make him participate; how Haussmann had handed him a Luger and told him to prove his loyalty to the Reich by shooting a Jewish teenager and two younger girls; how he’d refused at first; and how Haussmann had put a gun to his head; how he’d changed his mind so he could see his own family again; and how he was preparing to shoot, when he was stopped by Haussmann’s superior who invoked Himmler’s order that no one be forced to kill Jews; and how instead he’d spent the night burying the hundreds shot there.

“But make no mistake, Adella,” Emil said. “I made the decision to kill them before I was stopped. I didn’t see God’s hand in Haussmann’s superior showing up until I was at my worst moment in Poltava and Corporal Gheorghe showed me that I had done the right thing, and even though I’d decided to shoot, I was prevented from doing it.”

Adeline had listened in growing dread of what Emil might have done until he’d described the entire sequence of events. Hearing how the Romanian who’d survived Stalingrad had saved Emil’s mind and soul in the prison camp completely erased her fears.

“Corporal Gheorghe was right,” she said, squeezing his hand. “You refused, Emil. You didn’t know about Himmler’s order, and yet you refused. That took staggering courage, my love. The kind of courage that most men lack. I’m . . . I’m proud of you, Emil, proud to be your wife.”

Emil felt his eyes mist. “I’m proud to be your husband. I have never known anyone as courageous and loving and good as you.”

“Stop.”

“It’s true. We are all together because of your courage and your refusal to quit.”

Adeline smiled and brushed away a tear. “Thank you.”

They held hands for several minutes, just loving each other before Adeline said, “Do we know what happened to Haussmann?”

Emil nodded. “I saw it in the newspaper. After we left the refugee camp outside Lodz, he was transferred to a combat unit. He survived the war, was arrested, and was going to be tried at Nuremberg as part of the Einsatzgruppen case. But he committed suicide in his jail cell before the trial began.”

“Coward.”

“Yes. But I don’t want to talk about Haussmann or that night in Dubossary ever again. Okay?”

She nodded. “And thank you for telling me.”

On the foredeck of the General R. M. Blatchford, Emil and Adeline heard a horn blare in the darkness and the fog. Within minutes, they heard a bell clanging.

“We’re close,” Emil said. “We have to be.”

“I’ll get the boys while my stomach’s still calm,” she said, kissed him, and walked away.

Emil continued to peer off the bow, sure that he’d be seeing lights by now. But like everything the past three years, events were happening much more slowly than he wished.

They’d finally found a sponsor the year before, one of Adeline’s long-lost uncles who owned a farm and needed help because his son was about to be drafted. In return for two years of Emil’s labor, the family would receive lodging, food, and a small stipend to use to get on its feet after the work obligation was fulfilled. With the sponsor in place, the Martels were moved north to yet another displaced persons camp where they studied English and their immigration application wound through the maddeningly slow process of verifying their identities and pasts.