It was another hour before a nurse came to lead them in. Josephine lay in bed, exhausted but smiling, holding her newborn daughter in her arms. Rose’s heart melted as she looked at the tiny girl, who was sleeping peacefully, one of her tiny hands clenched in a fist beside her cheek.
“Do you want to hold her, Mom?” Josephine asked. Tears in her eyes, Rose nodded. She came to stand beside her daughter, who handed the tiny, sleeping infant over. Rose took the baby in her arms, remembering at once how natural it felt to hold someone so little who was a piece of you, a piece of everything you loved. She felt the impulse to protect this baby surge through her, just as strongly as it had surged through her the first time she held her own baby.
Rose looked down at her granddaughter, seeing both the past and the future. When the child opened her eyes, Rose gasped. For a moment, she could have sworn she saw something wise and ancient in the newborn’s eyes. And then it was gone, and Rose knew she had only imagined it. She rocked the baby gently and knew she was already in love with her. She prayed she was strong enough to do things right this time. “I hope . . .” Rose murmured, her voice trailing off as she stared at the little girl. She didn’t know how to complete the sentence, because she didn’t know what to hope for. There were a million things she wanted for this child, a million things she’d never had herself. She hoped everything for her.
“Honey, have you decided on a name yet?” Ted asked. Rose looked up to see her daughter staring at her strangely. A slow smile spread across Josephine’s face.
“Yes,” Josephine said. “I’m going to call her Hope.”
Chapter Twenty
By Wednesday evening, Annie has called more than a hundred numbers from her list of Levys, and she still hasn’t come up with even a trace of Mamie’s Jacob Levy. I’m feeling more and more like we may be chasing a ghost. I take a dozen of the West Coast names from Annie’s list and call them after she’s gone to bed, but I don’t have any more luck than she’s had. Everyone I reach says they’ve never heard of a Jacob Levy who left France in the 1940s or 1950s. Even an online search of Ellis Island’s passenger records turns up nothing.
Annie comes into the bakery a few minutes before six the next morning, looking solemn, as I’m folding dried cranberries, chunks of white chocolate, and slivers of macadamia nuts into a batch of sugary cookie dough.
“We have to do more,” she announces, flinging her backpack onto the floor, where it lands with a thud that makes me wonder fleetingly about the damage she must be doing to her back by carrying around several heavy textbooks each day.
“About Jacob Levy?” I guess. Before she can respond, I add, “Can you start putting the defrosted pastries out, please? I’m running a little behind.”
She nods and goes to the sink to wash her hands. “Yeah, about Jacob,” she says. She shakes her hands off, dries them on the blue cupcake towel beside the sink, and turns around. “We gotta try to figure out how to find him better.”
I sigh. “Annie, you know there’s a good chance that’s going to be impossible.”
She rolls her eyes. “You’re always so negative.”
“I’m just being realistic.” I watch as she begins sliding crescent moons carefully out of their airtight container. She unwraps each of them from their wax paper and sets them on a display tray.
“I think we have to investigate more if we’re going to find him.”
I arch an eyebrow at her. “Investigate?” I ask carefully.
She nods, missing the note of skepticism in my voice. “Yeah. It’s not working to just call people. We have to, like, try to search some documents or something. Other than the Ellis Island site, because he could have arrived anywhere.”
“What documents?”
Annie glares at me. “I don’t know. You’re the adult here. I can’t do everything.” She marches into the front of the bakery with her tray full of crescent moons and comes back a moment later to begin putting defrosted slices of baklava onto slivers of wax paper.
I watch her for a moment. “I just don’t want you to wind up disappointed,” I say to Annie after she’s returned to the kitchen.
She glares at me. “That’s just your way of avoiding stuff,” she says. “You can’t just not do stuff because you might get hurt.” She glances at her watch. “It’s six. I’ll go unlock the front door.”
I nod, watching her again as she goes. I wonder whether she’s right. And if she is, how does she know so much more than I do about life?