“Merci.” Sarah beamed at her and took Noah’s hand. The little boy turned and waved until the crowd swallowed them up. Though Ava knew him well enough by then to realize he was likely still waving long after.
Ava didn’t leave until the large vessel glided from the dock amid a puff of thick, dark smoke. People stood at the railings above, calling out their farewells. Though Ava couldn’t discern any one person there from the other, she still waved and shouted her well wishes.
And then, as soon as they had come into her life, Sarah and Noah were gone. Finally on their way to America. To safety. To be reunited as a family.
A week letter, a V Mail appeared on Ava’s desk. She opened it with trembling fingers and sobbed an exhale of relief as she read the five simple words.
I’m safe. I love you.
-D
Short and sweeter than any mail she’d ever received. Daniel was safe.
After so many tense years of uncertainty and loss in her life, finally things seemed to be going right.
The foreign newspapers dwindled over the next four months as the Allied advantage became undeniable and Germany was squeezed in on all sides. It was then the notification came from Washington that the IDC’s efforts of information gathering in Lisbon were no longer needed. Mike was to be transferred to Switzerland. Ava had been offered the same but declined.
While she loved gathering information and meeting people she would always remember, she wanted to settle down in DC, preparing for Daniel’s inevitable return when the war ended. Something she hoped would happen sooner than later.
They had already spent far too long apart. She missed his brotherly advice that teetered on the edge of a lecture, meeting up for game night on Fridays and laughing until her face hurt, like they used to do before the war. Those days that had once been so common now felt a lifetime ago.
And, if truth be told, she was still licking her wounds over James.
She hadn’t seen him since the day of his confession in her apartment. At first, she had been glad for his absence, but as the days churned into weeks she regretted the sharpness of her words.
“You have mail.” Peggy slid a V Mail envelope onto Ava’s desk.
Ava beamed and picked it up.
“Did you hear about Sims’s boy?” Peggy asked in a hushed whisper.
Ava’s own excitement dimmed at the solemn tone, and she shook her head.
The corner of Peggy’s mouth turned downward. “He’s gone.”
Ava sucked in a shocked breath.
“So maybe keep your letter under wraps.” Peggy lifted a shoulder. “Just to be kind.”
“Of course.” Ava slid the letter with the unmistakable V in red off her desk and glanced toward the closed office door where Mr. Sims’s voice boomed behind it.
He was staying later at the office and scarcely took a lunch the last week. She had assumed his redoubled efforts were to wrap up loose ends before their departure. Now, she saw the assiduous efforts for the deflection they were.
She read her letter quietly, unable to help her gratitude that Daniel had remained safe. But it was Mr. Sims she thought of as she sifted through the paperwork on her desk to determine what was needed and what should be destroyed.
The last convivial lunch at the office was with Mike and the ASLIB boys to bid a final farewell. Any hopes James would be in attendance were immediately dashed at the four-person table without another chair waiting for an unassumingly debonair Englishman with the slightest hint of a limp.
She suppressed her disappointment and together with Theo and Alfie, she and Mike feasted on an assortment of Lisbon’s best foods: greasy, spiced sausage and grilled fish and briny sardines on hard bits of bread. But before a round of Super Bock could be ordered, Ava took up her purse and excused herself to return to the office.