Maybe it was because she was feeling isolated and bleak, the way she'd felt that day, but she found herself remembering her lunch with Lieutenant Commander Rees.

Mrs. Bauer, it sounds to me like your husband might be looking for that strength…Looking to find the extra stuff that's gonna get him through this.

Maybe, she thought, he'll find whatever it is he's looking for here. And then we can go home.

It was late afternoon when they arrived in Düsseldorf's Old Town. A cold drizzle was falling, glazing the brick-paved streets, muting the colors of the spring flowers in upstairs windowboxes and keeping most shoppers and sightseers indoors. Jessie had noticed, however, during the taxicab ride from the train station, that the modern downtown shopping streets were crowded, and though she had seen jackets and coats few umbrellas were evident; apparently native Düsseldorfers, like New Yorkers, were stoic and accepting of such minor inconveniences as bad weather.

They'd again packed sandwiches to eat on the train, but Tristan was hungry, as usual, so their first stop in Old Town was at one of its many pubs. Jessie would have loved to sit at one of the tables outside on the street-there was no car traffic allowed in Old Town-but because of the weather they had to settle for the cozy Old World charm of brick and dark wood indoors. Seated at a tiny wooden table set on a rough plank floor, they ate German bratwurst and drank glasses of Altbier, the strong dark beer that Tristan had told her was mother's milk to Düsseldorfers, and the drink of choice for most visitors to Old Town. Jessie, never all that fond of beer and mindful of her recent wine-drinking episode, sipped her one glassful slowly. She noticed that the waitress kept replacing Tris's glass as soon as he'd emptied it, keeping track with a pencil mark on the edge of the cardboard coaster as was apparently the custom.

"When my mom was a little girl," Tris said, relaxed after the third glass of beer and a huge meal of bratwurst, sauerkraut and dark dry bread, "she told me-and that was before the war, of course, so she'd have been pretty small-she told me her grandfather used to send her to the pub every morning to fetch his mug of beer. One of those big mugs, you know, with the lid? What do they call 'em…steins? She'd carry the stein down to the pub and knock on the door-the kind that are divided in half-and the owner would open the top half and take the stein and fill it up and hand it down to her, and back she'd go."

"She grew up right here, then? In Old Town?" Jessie thought it would be a little like growing up in Disney World.

He nodded. "I don't know where, though. 'Old Town' is actually pretty new. It was mostly destroyed during the war-it's all been rebuilt. The house my mother lived in isn't here anymore." Bleak again, he signaled the waitress for their check.

Outside, they discovered the drizzle had stopped. The sky was clearing from the west, and the lowering sun painted the tiled roofs and arched and decorated facades of Old Town's buildings a warm and lovely gold, like honey. Since Tristan had retreated into his brooding isolation and Jessie was sure he wouldn't notice, anyway, she rubber-necked shamelessly as they strolled though the darkening streets, now and then making unconscious little murmuring sounds of appreciation. A sundial high on a pink-gabled facade…bells of different sizes mounted on another-was that a glockenspiel, she wondered?-a black musician seated on an upturned suitcase, playing a guitar for a circle of enchanted children…an open-air market with stalls filled with tulips and hyacinths, and fat asparagus stalks in shades of cream, yellow, purple and green.

They paused for a while to watch barges and white cruise ships churn up and down the Rhine. The sun went down in a golden blaze, promising a fair tomorrow. Lights winked on and the streets of Old Town filled with music, laughter and people. All kinds of people: frumpy tourists, families with small children, lean young people wearing black leather and spiky purple hair. With his back to the river, Tristan leaned against a rope barricade and watched them all in dark and brooding silence.

With so much happy revelry all around her, Jessie tried her best to think of a way to brighten his mood-something she couldn't recall ever having had to do much of before. The Tris she'd known hadn't been prone to the blues. Finally, bravely, knowing what must be on his mind, she gave a cheerful sigh and ventured, "This must have been a wonderful place to grow up in."

He snorted. "Before the war, maybe. Don't imagine it was much fun once the bombing started." He took her elbow and they started back toward the now-crowded streets, moving slowly, and for the first time all day he was leaning on his cane again.

The tables outside the pubs and taverns had gone from empty to standing room only as if by magic. They snagged the first available table they came to, a temporary slip on the shores of a slow-moving river of people. Almost immediately a waitress appeared with the customary coasters, and before Jessie could say otherwise, Tris had ordered glasses of Altbier for both of them. Once again, she sipped hers carefully and refused a second one, while the number of marks on the edges of Tris's coaster grew steadily. A jolly woman wearing a chef's hat and apron came around selling giant soft pretzels from a basket lined with a red-checked cloth. Tris bought them each one and slathered them with mustard-another Düsseldorf specialty, he told her. Though she wasn't a bit hungry, Jessie had to admit it was delicious.

Once again, mellowed by food and Altbier, Tris began to relax. After the third glass, Jessie saw him settle back and the tension visibly drain from his body, though the shadows in his face seemed no less bleak. After a while, gazing at the passing crowd and turning his glass 'round and 'round on its coaster, he quietly picked up where he'd left off beside the river.

"My mom had it tough after the war. Really…hard. Their house was destroyed in the bombing." He glanced at Jessie, his hands still busy with the glass. "You remember the scar on her face? Above her eye…down through here?" He drew a line on his own eyebrow to demonstrate, and Jessie nodded, not wanting to interrupt his reminiscence to remind him that she'd never met his mother, that she'd died the year before they'd met. She remembered the scar, though, from photographs, and Tris had told her how she'd gotten it as a child during the war. "That happened when their house was bombed. She had a brother-much younger, about six or seven, I think. Anyway, he was killed."

Jessie made a horrified sound; she'd never known this part. Tristan went on as if he hadn't heard her. "The hard part was after the war. Everything was in ruins…food was scarce. My mother remembered scavenging for scraps…fighting off dogs and rats." He looked down at the glass between his hands, and his voice sounded choked. "I don't think I understood, when she told me. I didn't know…" Jessie saw his throat move with his swallow.

She held herself still, hardly daring to breathe, hoping he'd go on, praying he'd tell her something about what had happened to him. He did go on talking after a moment, with his wry and painful smile, but it wasn't what she'd hoped to hear.

"At least my dad didn't go hungry," he said dryly. "Out in the country things weren't as bad-more food, less destruction."

He drained his glass and signaled the waitress for another, then waited in tense silence, drumming his fingers on the tabletop, until the foam-topped glass had been placed in front of him and the coaster duly marked. Jessie watched as he picked up the glass and drank, wiped foam from his lips with the back of his hand and only then began to talk again, as if, she thought, the engine that drove his speech mechanism wouldn't operate without the beer to fuel it. Unease stirred in her belly. She told herself she shouldn't worry about Tristan's ability to handle a few glasses of beer; being German, he'd always drunk beer, sometimes quite a bit. Never too much, though, and she'd never seen him drunk in her life. But she'd never seen him drink after spending eight years in a Muslim country without a drop of alcohol the whole time, either.

I shouldn't say anything, she thought. I can't let myself turn into an ol' mother hen. Tris would hate that.

He was watching the crowd again, but she knew he wasn't seeing any of the people who passed by their table in an endlessly shifting stream. His eyes were thoughtful and far away. His smile was wry, and when he spoke it was in a drawl, and so low she had to lean closer to hear him. "My mom and dad had it tough, growing up. No doubt about that. They sure never let me forget it, believe me. And I had it easy." He threw Jessie a bitter grin, one she'd never seen before. "They never let me forget that, either." He drank beer, wiped his mouth with his hand and stared moodily into his glass.

"I was an only child. I don't think they planned it that way, but…that's how it was. They both worked hard…gave me everything. I never had to work going through school. A lot of my friends did, had part time jobs to pay for the things my parents gave to me. So, yeah, I had it easy. I did. I know that. But in other ways, they were tough on me, my parents were. You've met my dad-" he looked up at Jessie and she nodded and smiled her understanding; she'd always been just a little bit afraid of Max Bauer "-okay, well, Mom was worse. They both got on me constantly, telling me I had to learn to be tough. That I was never going to make it in this life if I didn't. They always made it pretty clear to me they didn't think I was going to measure up in that department." He looked away, but not before she saw the shine of an old hurt in his eyes. "And I probably didn't-not by their standards."