“Most of the time. I have to admit, it was a great feeling to be behind the wheel, heading someplace new.”
“I’ve loved driving since the first day Williams let me try it.”
“If I recall, my first driving lesson was under very different circumstances.”
“That’s right!” Eve said with a laugh. “I made you drive home from Dover, with Army roadblocks and no signposts or headlamps. But you did great once you got the hang of it. Want to drive now? I’ll pull over. This is your car, after all.”
“Not on your life! They drive on the wrong side of the road over here. I’ll need a bit of practice before I’m ready to give it a go.”
“Remember driving in the blackout? We would study the map to see all the possible routes, but once we started off, we could only see what was right in front of us.”
“It’s a bit like life, don’t you think? We make plans, but we really can only see a little way ahead. The thing was, we had a purpose back then. A goal to accomplish. Ever since the war ended, I’ve been fooled into thinking that life was like a voyage on an ocean liner, and the seas should always be smooth. Whenever a storm hit, I wanted to hunker down and wait until it blew over and everything was calm again. Wellingford Hall became my refuge. But ships have destinations, Eve. They’re going somewhere, and storms are part of the journey. I haven’t had a purpose since the war ended.”
“I know what you mean. We fought the war and helped save England. We accomplished something big, and now . . .”
“Let’s find a new purpose, Eve!”
The notion excited Eve. Something had been missing in her life for the past four years, in spite of how comfortable it had been. “Right, then! We’re off!” She pressed down on the accelerator and the car sped up.
“Where are we going, Mommy?” Robbie asked.
“We’re off to find the future. You boys keep an eye out for it, okay?”
“What does it look like?” Bobby asked.
Audrey laughed and leaned toward Eve. “He thinks we’re talking about an animal he can spot like a cow or a sheep. . . . I don’t know what it looks like, Bobby,” she called back to him. “We’ll have to wait and see.”
Eve grinned. “But I’m sure we’ll know it when we find it!”
Prologue
THE NETHERLANDS, MAY 1945
Every sound in the coal-black night seemed magnified as Lena lay awake in bed, waiting. She heard the quiet rustlings of the shadow people as they crept through the darkness downstairs in her farmhouse. The creak of the barn door and whisper of hay as they moved through her barn on this moonless night. The shadow people were also waiting. Did they hate it as much as she did?
The war had taught Lena DeVries to do many things. Hard, impossible things. She had learned to be courageous, propelled by adrenaline and faith. She’d even learned to face death, gripping the Savior’s hand. But waiting was the hardest lesson of all. Every minute seemed like an hour. Every hour stretched endlessly. The sun stood still in the sky during the day then took its time dawning after each endless night—a night like this one. Sometimes she would hold her breath without realizing it. Other times, she would find herself hoping against all reason that her husband, Pieter, was alive and would come home and she could hold him in her arms. Or hoping that her daughter Ans and son Wim were still alive and would return. She knew that if one of them walked through her door, her joy would swallow up the long months of waiting. If they ever did return.
The past seven days had been the longest week in all of Lena’s forty-five years. Tonight, her imagination partnered with fear, squeezing her heart dry, extinguishing hope. She released her breath with a sigh and rolled over in bed, whispering a silent prayer for Pieter and Ans and Wim. And for all the shadow people who waited in the darkness with her.
Sleep was impossible. She hadn’t slept soundly since the Nazis invaded five years ago. She rose from her bed, careful not to awaken her daughters Maaike and Bep, asleep in the bed beside her where Pieter should be. Lena kept her girls close to her side these days. She pulled a sweater over her nightgown and felt her way downstairs, familiar with every narrow step on the steep, angled stairs. She halted at the bottom. A shadow moved around her kitchen as if searching for something. Her heart leaped. “Pieter?” she whispered.
The shadow turned. It was Wolf, her contact in the Dutch Resistance. She didn’t know his real name. It was safer that way. “Did I wake you?” he whispered. “I’m sorry. I was looking for a pencil. I wanted to leave you a note.”