Ava stepped toward him, cupped his face in her hands, and kissed him. His lips were warm, his chin smooth against hers. He drew his arms around her, holding her to him as his pleasant, clean soap scent enveloped her.
A car pulled up alongside them and they drew apart abruptly, each with a shared, private grin. Ava touched her mouth where her lips still tingled from the brush of his.
Her ride to the airport was ready to whisk her away. The driver busied himself in the car a moment, clearly giving them time.
“I’d love to write to you,” she said.
James withdrew a scrap of paper with an address in London printed on it in familiar messy, bold letters, then remained with her in the short time it took for her driver to fetch her things. When she rode away, James gave her one last lopsided smile that sealed itself in her mind and left not a modicum of space to even worry about the plane ride.
Life in DC was not the welcome embrace she had assumed it would be. After the easy, languid existence in Lisbon, the American capital seemed to sweep by too quickly and left Ava feeling as though she were standing still amid a torrent of activity.
Her position at the Rare Book Room had been filled, of course. Such an important job could not remain open for long. Instead, she was placed among the polyglots who categorized the countless boxes of microfilm sent by herself and the other members of the IDC. It was quite often she came across a box labeled carefully in her own looping writing and even the jagged script of Mike’s quick hand.
The ration was still in place in America and took some adjusting to, especially as she’d grown to taking her coffee sweet. More than anything, though, was the great wanderlust that had been awoken in her and now would not be quieted, leaving her humming with restless energy. This was further fueled by the letters from James as he returned to London and shared pieces of his life with her.
It was through their correspondence that she learned he had spoken the truth of himself when he was with her, that his stories and his family were not simply fictional details of a spy on the job. His brother had also thankfully survived the war and they celebrated with grateful, joyous letters to one another that both their siblings had emerged from such dangers unscathed.
Eventually, 1944 gave way to 1945 when the horror of the concentration camps was discovered in April. In those shocking images of skeletal men, women and even children plastered on the front of every newspaper, she saw the fear the Lisbon refugees realized. However bad anyone thought the situation was for the Jews, the truth was far, far worse.
It had been a devastating blow to know the many hopes she heard whispered among the refugees for their families would be crushed by such a heavy reality. And it made her burn with rage for the many who had brushed aside the truth for so long, casting it benignly into the category of simple war rumors.
Hitler put a cyanide capsule in his mouth and a gun to his temple not long after. Many saw his suicide as a coward’s way out. For Ava, there was some justice in knowing that Hitler had died with the same scrabbling fear as so many of his victims.
When at last the war ended on September 2, 1945, with the formal surrender of Japan, DC kicked off its war-rationed shoes and celebrated with great jubilance. Ava had not joined in the ebullient throngs crowding the streets. There was no win without loss, and the tolls exacted through those bitter years of war had been enumerable.
Instead, she took the day to honor the memories of those she had personally known as well as those she was acquainted with through what she read. Those letters and journals, written in a frantic script, stained after being shoved from view in clandestine hiding places, were all that remained of so many.
Several months later, Ava found herself on the platform at Union Station with a crowd of others, all dressed in their finest clothes. Women scraped the hollowed-out tubes for the vestiges of their lipstick, pressed their least worn dresses, and tucked ribbons and flowers in freshly curled hair.
Their men were coming home.
The doors to the train swept open and the crowd surged forward, Ava with it, drawing the lot of them toward the uniformed men with freshly shaved, eager faces. And that’s when she saw Daniel for the first time in five years.