She and Phillip stood watching them leave the next day. Phillip clung to him as though to a life raft, but Joachim explained to him that he had to leave them. And Sarah kept wondering if Phillip felt he was losing another link to Lizzie. It was difficult for all of them, and painful and confusing. Only Emanuelle looked pleased as he prepared to leave. The soldiers went first, the trucks half full of their few remaining medical supplies, the supplies that hadn’t been plentiful enough to save Lizzie. And then the ambulances with the patients.

Joachim had gone to her grave with Sarah before he left He had knelt for a moment, and left a small bunch of yellow flowers, and they had both cried, and he had held Sarah for the last time, far from the eyes of his men, who knew anyway. They knew how much he loved her, but they knew, too, as soldiers do in close quarters, that nothing had ever happened between them. And they respected her for it too. She was the spirit of hope and love, and decency, to them. She was always polite and kind, no matter what she thought of their war, or what side they fought on. And they hoped, in their heart of hearts, that their own wives were being as strong as she was. Most of the men who had come to know her would have died to protect her, as would Joachim.

He stood looking down at her, as the last jeep waited for him, and his driver turned the other way discreetly. Joachim pulled Sarah close to him. “I have loved you more than anyone or anything in my life,” he said, lest by the hand of Fate he never saw her again, he wanted her to know that, “more even than my children.” He kissed her gently then, and she clung to him for an instant, wanting to tell him everything she had felt for him, but it was too late now. She couldn’t do it.

She looked into his eyes, and he saw it all there anyway. “Godspeed …” she whispered. “Take care … I do love you ….” She choked on the words, and then he stooped to Phillip, still holding tightly to Sarah’s hand, wanting to say something to him. They all had been through so much together.

“Good-bye, little man.” Joachim choked on the words. “Take good care of your mother.” He kissed the top of his head, and then ruffled his hair, as Phillip held him and then finally let go. And Joachim stood up and looked at Sarah for a long moment. Then he let go of her hand, and got into the jeep, and he stood and waved until they reached the front gate. She saw him as he left in a swirl of dust on the road, and then he was gone, as she stood there sobbing.

“Why did you let him go?” Phillip looked up at her angrily as she cried

“We had no choice, Phillip.” The politics of the situation were far too complicated to explain to a child his age. “He’s a fine man, even if he is a German, and he has to go home now.”

“Do you love him?”

She hesitated, but only for a moment. “Yes, I do. He’s been a good friend to us, Phillip.”

“Do you love him better than my daddy?”

This time she did not hesitate, even for an instant. “Of course not.”

“I do.”

“No, you do not,” she said firmly. “You don’t remember your daddy anymore, but he’s a wonderful man.” Her voice drifted off then as she thought of William.

“Is he dead?”

“I don’t think he is,” she said carefully, not wanting to mislead him, but wanting to share her own faith with him that one day they might find William. “If we’re very lucky, he’ll come home to us one day.”

“Will Joachim?” he asked sadly.

“I don’t know,” she said honestly, as they walked back to the house, hand in hand, in silence.






Chapter 16





HEN the Americans arrived on August seventeenth, Sarah and Phillip and Emanuelle were watching when they came. They had heard news of their coming for weeks, and Sarah was eager to see them. They drove up the road to the château in a convoy of jeeps, just as the Germans had four years before. It was a crazy sense of déjà vu, but they didn’t point guns at her, and she understood everything they said, and they gave a cheer when they discovered she was American. She still thought of Joachim every day, but she could only assume that he had reached Berlin safely. And Phillip still talked about him constantly. Only Emanuelle never mentioned the Germans.