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Darby, here’s a letter addressed to you.”
    Darby set down the passport of Tatianna Hoffman.
    The letter wasn’t weathered by time like the other papers. Darby carefully opened the envelope, read it to herself, then aloud.
    My dearest Darby,
    I have given you a lifetime of stories and words I’m tempted to repeat, for I know these are my last words to you. The rest are already in your memory. But you don’t need a Sunday school lesson, and I’m far from perfect enough to give you a life map to follow. God has his own course for you. But my many prayers for my Darby-girl have helped with the boldness I’m about to express. I know I’m asking a lot of you. But sometimes the past cannot be buried. Sometimes the past must be put to rest for the future to be clear. I cannot tell you for certain what you must do; you must decide. There is so much right beyond my vision that I do not know. But I feel one thing so strongly, and so this I ask. Go to Austria.
    I can see your shocked expression. I can really see your mother’s. Yes, Darby, go to Austria. I send you on a mission. What I hope I was able to ask before I died was that you give my closest friend, Tatianna Hoffman, her name back. That will make no sense until you get there. Then you will know. Also, if in your search you discover our family heirlooms, guard them well. Many have died because of them. I hoped to retrieve them myself, but I cannot ask you to take up that search, for I do not know the danger behind such an endeavor. But Tatianna deserves what I ask you to return to her—her name. Yet in all of this, I know you are going for more than the quest I send you on. I feel so deeply that God has something for you there. He wants you to find him again.
    Take your time. Discover who you are. My heart goes on this journey. A journey we should all make.
    Forever,
    Celia Rachel Lange Müller
    Darby set the letter on the table.
    “Whew.” Fred was the first to speak. “Celia is full of surprises today.”
    Carole sat at the table with the coffee filter still in her hand. “It looks like I’m going to Austria,” Darby said. Her mother didn’t look her way.

Chapter Six
    We have a problem.” Richter stretched back against the chair and put his feet on the table. He exhaled a stream of cigarette smoke into the night sky.
    Ingrid wrapped her sweater tighter and half sat on the porch railing.
    “We waited too long with the old man,” Richter said.
    “There’s still Brant.” She turned toward him. “I know Gunther told him something. We need to find out exactly what that is.”
    “And how do you suppose we’ll find anything out?”
    “We’ll watch for an opportunity.”
    “Waiting gets us nowhere, and I’m not a man of patience. We need action.”
    “No, we must wait. Then we act.”
    “What if Brant doesn’t know anything?”
    “Brant may not be our last chance.”
    Richter’s feet hit the ground as he faced Ingrid. “Another person who knows something?”
    “Perhaps. Be patient. We’ll know what to do soon enough.”
    “I’m leaving, on a jet plane.”
    The tune hummed from Darby’s lips as she rolled her clothing into neat stacks and put them into her suitcase. As a child, she’d mapped her path through the Alps from Vienna to Switzerland. As an adult, she’d long since put the map away and left the dreams behind. Reality didn’t leave room for fairy tales. But the plane tickets, round-trip with three weeks between arrival and departure dates, were proof that Darby was at last going to Austria.
    She carried her luggage toward the front door, pausing by Grandma’s room. Neither she nor her mother was ready to start boxing things up—it could wait. They had made the bed with Grandma’s white embroidered bedspread and dusted the dresser with its perfume bottles and jewelry boxes. Everything appeared normal, as if Grandma Celia had simply gone to the store or was in the backyard with her flowers. Darby hated the images that told her