When her mother was alive, they often read the same books together. It started with Anne of Green Gables when Ava was eight. She’d spoken of the story with such ebullience that her mother read it after her. The shared story made for many hours of lively conversation between them, smiling at Anne’s witty commentary and lamenting over the foulness of that nasty Josie Pye. Ava and her mother always read the same books after that—at least, until her mother’s death five years later.
Her mother had read Little Women first, as she often did when it came to books she feared might be too old for twelve-year-old Ava, and deemed it not only age-appropriate, but a masterpiece to be shared. Ava finished the story in her mother’s absence and was near bursting with all the things she wished to discuss. Knowing her mother was scheduled to arrive the next morning, she left it on the nightstand so she could grab it first thing.
Except the plane carrying them back from France had been caught in a terrible storm and crashed into the sea. When Ava ran out of her room that morning, it was not her mother and father who waited for her, but her nanny, red-eyed and sobbing.
The copy of Little Women by Ava’s bed did not mean her mother would come home, of course, but it was forever a reminder of her mother and their shared love of books that seemed to—even now—bring them together.
Somehow that small piece of her childhood, the familiarity of a beloved book, made these foreign surroundings feel more like home. She hadn’t realized how much she’d craved the comfort until it settled around her like an embrace and bolstered her determination.
While she was no polyglot, she knew French and German and even a bit of Spanish. Surely she could puzzle out more Portuguese than she anticipated. And she would only be on her own until noon when she was to go to the embassy. How hard could her first day be?
Ava almost left her hat behind, but at the last minute fixed a black pillbox to her victory curls and slid into her new black pumps to match her dark A-line wraparound skirt and pink sweater. When she opened the door to her apartment, the man on the other side was just leaving his.
His hair was mussed with threads of silver at his temples and a weariness slackened the skin under his eyes. He took one look at her and his heavy brows shot up. “You are American.”
Ava frowned. Was it so obvious?
“Do you have any American magazines?” he asked in accented English. “Time, perhaps?”
“Actually, I do,” she answered slowly. The magazine had been purchased on impulse at the airport before her flight in a bid to settle her nerves. It hadn’t worked and now lay on the table, still untouched.
“May I have it?” he asked.
It was such a bold question, without preamble or decorum, and she was so taken aback that she agreed before her thoughts could catch up. She slipped back into the apartment and reemerged with the magazine, its cover still crisp and glossy.
She might as well have delivered the Gutenberg Bible to him for the joy lighting his face.
“Thank you.” Then before anything else might be said, he opened his door and disappeared within once more.
The strange encounter concluded, Ava made her way down the stairs, escudos nestled safely in her purse. She exited the building and opted to go left where the bustle of people seemed to be flowing. Several paces later, her heel slipped on the slick limestone walkway.
She righted herself before the misstep could be noticed and put more focus into her gait. The stonework she had admired so ardently earlier swelled and dipped beneath its uneven paving from long ago, leaving the surface rolling like frozen waves and markedly treacherous for one in heels.
Rather than return to her apartment for more sensible footwear, she carefully navigated to a kiosk with several newspapers pinned to boards set before the small stand and along its base.
The Daily Mail occupied one section, its date two weeks behind on April 8, 1943, with a headline proclaiming, “Allies Close in as Rommel Runs.”