“Is he in New York, Mom?”

Her voice was softer now, less harsh. She came up behind me, put her lovely head on my shoulder.

I nodded. I could not face telling her how excited I’d been when I found out he was here, too. How thrilled, how amazed I’d felt about ending up in the same city as him, two years after our last meeting. His father was a New Yorker, I recalled. He had probably lived here as a little boy.

He was listed in the phone book. In the West Village. A mere fifteen-minute subway ride from here. And for days, for weeks, I had agonizingly asked myself whether I should call him, or not. He had never tried to contact me since Paris. I had never heard from him since then.

The excitement had petered out after a while. I did not have the courage to call him. But I went on thinking about him, night after night. Day after day. In secret, in silence. I wondered if I’d ever run into him one day, in the park, in some department store, bar, restaurant. Was he here with his wife and girls? Why had he come back to the States, like I had? What had happened?

“Have you contacted him?” Zoë asked.

“No.”

“Will you?”

“I don’t know, Zoë.”

I started to cry, silently.

“Oh, Mom, please,” she sighed.

I wiped the tears away, angrily, feeling foolish.

“Mom, he knows you live here now. I’m sure he knows. He’s looked you up as well. He knows what you do here, he knows where you live.”

That thought had never occurred to me. William Googling me. William checking out my address. Was Zoë right? Did he know I lived in New York City, too, on the Upper West Side? Did he ever think of me? What did he feel, exactly, when he did?

“You have to let go, Mom. You have to put it behind you. Call Neil, see him more often, just get on with your life.”

I turned to her, my voice ringing out loud and harsh.

“I can’t, Zoë. I need to know if what I did helped him. I need to know that. Is that too much to ask? Is that such an impossible thing?”

The baby wailed from the next room. I’d disturbed her nap. Zoë went to get her and came back with her plump, hiccupping sister.

Zoë stroked my hair gently over the toddler’s curls.

“I don’t think you’ll ever know, Mom. I don’t think he’ll ever be ready to tell you. You changed his life. You turned it upside down, remember. He probably never wants to see you again.”

I plucked the child from her arms and pressed her fiercely against me, relishing her warmth, her plumpness. Zoë was right. I needed to turn the page, to get on with my life.

How, was another matter.

I KEPT MYSELF BUSY. I did not have a minute to myself, what with Zoë, her sister, Neil, my parents, my nephews, my job, and the never-ending string of parties Charla and her husband Barry invited me to, and to which I relentlessly went. I met more new people in two years than I had in my entire Parisian stay, a cosmopolitan melting pot that I reveled in.

Yes, I had left Paris for good, but whenever I returned for my work or to see my friends or Edouard, I always found myself in the Marais, drawn back again and again, as if my footsteps could not help bringing me there. Rue des Rosiers, rue du Roi-de-Sicile, rue des Ecouffes, rue de Saintonge, rue de Bretagne, I saw them file past with new eyes, eyes that remembered what had happened here, in 1942, even if it had been long before my time.

I wondered who lived in the rue de Saintonge apartment now, who stood by the window overlooking the leafy courtyard, who ran their palm along the smooth marble mantelpiece. I wondered if the new tenants had any inkling that a little boy had died within their home, and that a young girl’s life had been changed that day, forever.

In my dreams, I went back to the Marais, too. In my dreams, sometimes the horrors of the past that I had not witnessed appeared to me with such starkness that I had to turn on the light, in order to drive the nightmare away.

It was during those sleepless, empty nights, when I lay in bed, jaded by the social talk, dry-mouthed after the extra glass of wine I should not have given in to, that the old ache came back and haunted me.

His eyes. His face when I had read Sarah’s letter out loud. It all came back and drove sleep away, delving into me.

Zoë’s voice dragged me back to Central Park, the beautiful spring day, and Neil’s hand on my thigh.

“Mom, this monster wants a Popsicle.”

“No way,” I said. “No Popsicle.”

The baby threw herself face forward on the grass and bawled.

“Quite something, isn’t she?” mused Neil.

JANUARY 2005 ALSO BROUGHT me back, again and again, to Sarah, to William. The importance of the sixtieth commemoration of Auschwitz ’s liberation made every headline around the world. It seemed that never before had the word “Shoah” been pronounced so often.

And every time I heard it, my thoughts leaped painfully to him, to her. And I wondered, as I watched the Auschwitz memorial ceremony on TV, if William ever thought of me when he, too, heard the word, when he, too, saw the monstrous black-and-white images of the past flicker across the screen, the lifeless skeletal bodies piled high, the crematoriums, the ashes, the horror of it all.

His family had died in that hideous place. His mother’s parents. How could he not think of it, I mused. On the screen, with Zoë and Charla at my side, I watched the snowflakes fall on the camp, the barbed wire, the squat watchtower. The crowd, the speeches, the prayers, the candles. The Russian soldiers and their particular dancing gait.

And the final, unforgettable vision of nightfall, and the railway tracks aflame, glowing through the darkness with a poignant, sharp mixture of grief and remembrance.

THE CALL CAME ONE May afternoon, when I was least expecting it. I was at my desk, struggling with a new computer’s whims. I picked up the phone, my “yes” sounding curt even to me.

“Hi. This is William Rainsferd.”

I sat up straight, heart aflutter, trying to remain calm.

William Rainsferd.

I said nothing, dumbstruck, clutching the receiver to my ear.

“You there, Julia?”

I swallowed.

“Yes, just having some computer problems. How are you, William?”

“Fine,” he said.

A little silence. But it did not feel tense, or strived.

“It’s been a while,” I said lamely.

“Yes, it has,” he said.

Another silence.

“I see you’re a New Yorker now,” he said, at last. “Looked you up.”

So Zoë had been right, after all.

“Well, how about getting together?” he asked.

“Today?” I said.

“If you can make it.”

I thought of the sleeping child in the next room. She had been to day care this morning, but I could take her along. She wasn’t going to like having her nap interrupted, though.

“I can make it,” I said.

“Great. I’ll ride up to your part of town. Got any ideas where we could meet?”

“Do you know Café Mozart? On West 70th Street and Broadway?”

“I know it, fine. See you there in half an hour?”

I hung up. My heart was beating so fast I could hardly breathe. I went to wake the baby, ignored her protests, bundled her up, unfolded the stroller, and took off.

HE WAS ALREADY THERE when we arrived. I saw his back first, the powerful shoulders, and his hair, silver and thick, no longer bearing any trace of blond. He was reading a newspaper, but he swivelled around as I approached, as if he could feel my eyes upon him. Then he was up on his feet, and there was an awkward, amusing moment when we didn’t know whether to shake hands or kiss. He laughed, I did, too, and he finally hugged me, a great big bear hug, slamming my chin against his collarbone and patting the small of my back, and then he bent down to admire my daughter.