Mama, I cannot send this letter but I cannot help but write it. I’m reaching for the comfort I’ve found these months as I imagine you reading my words; that comfort is all but gone, only the faintest warm breath of it remains, and in the heat of Shanghai I’ve gone so cold! I don’t know what to do, I can’t think at all. But this, but this, Mama: we will say kaddish for Uncle Horst, I will go to a rabbi and learn what must be done and we will do it. And beyond that, I don’t know, except we will continue with all our hearts to hope and pray!

Ever, ever,

Your Rosalie

“Damn,” I breathed.

Bill didn’t answer. I slipped that sheet behind the others and took a look at the next one.

“Three years later,” I said, and read it.

25 June 1941

Dearest Mama,

I am to be married.

Oh, Mama, how different this is from the way I hoped to tell you such news! Racing breathlessly into the parlor-or tiptoeing into the garden as you prune your roses-even, Mama, asking your permission, certainly your advice-so many ways I’ve daydreamed about this moment since I was a child. And to tell you like this, in a letter from across the world, a letter I cannot even send-! My eyes fill with tears as I write. Where are you, Mama? Are you well? Are you utterly alone? Not you; no, not you. Your humor and good sense will draw people to you as they always have, however bad the circumstances. I comfort my heart with the certainty that you have found friends.

The entire world is mad. It’s only when I’m with Kai-rong that I feel again my memories are memories, not consoling fairy tales of a time that never was. It’s no small thing, in days as dark as these, to have found someone who makes me remember the light, and even believe it will return. Some around us are counseling us to wait until the madness passes. But how long will that be? And more-how will it pass, unless we refuse its hold, and defy it?

So Kai-rong and I will marry. I will pray every minute for the miracle of your arrival to share our joy, and make it complete. Please, Mama, please, wherever you are, give me your blessing.

Your Rosalie

2 October 1941

Dearest Mama,

Oh, I hope and pray that wherever you are, you are well, you are safe. As the fourth Rosh Hashanah passes without word of you, my heart aches, Mama. I did not attend services because I could not bear to hear the shofar blown, remembering what pleasure you have always taken in the sound of it. Paul did go; he regularly helps form the minyan at a shul near us, and has embraced our traditions in a way I cannot, though I admire him for his dedication. I admire him for much, Mama. What a fine young man he has become! You will be proud of him, Mama, so proud.

I’m writing now to tell you of a decision my heart has brought me to. Kai-rong has given me a gift: a carved jade disc that has been in his family many hundreds of years. He gives it with the blessing of his father; I’m to wear it on our wedding day to mark the uniting of our families, and I will do that with joy. But the union of two families cannot be marked by a precious object of one family only. I’ve determined to remove this jade from its setting and add to it the stones from the Queen Mama necklace. The jade represents many generations of Kai-rong’s ancestors, and is there fore precious to him. The necklace represents you, and is therefore extraordinarily precious to me!

My beloved Kai-rong, having heard my reasoning, is in complete accord. Tomorrow we’ll take the jade and the necklace to Herr Corens, the jeweler in Avenue Foch who bought from me the ruby ring. He’s a lovely man, Mama, and quite an artist. He will make for us a new piece, a brooch, I think. It will tell tales: of steadfast love over time and distance, of generations of ancestors revered, of the joining of two proud traditions, and the union of two devoted hearts. It will be beautiful, Mama. And when I wear it, I will have both you and Kai-rong ever with me, no matter where you are.

I pray every day for you, Mama.

Your Rosalie

“There’s Kleenex in the glove compartment,” Bill said.

“We’re going to a funeral. I brought my own.” I wasn’t exactly crying, but my vision had blurred. “You’re right. These aren’t very cheery.”

“There are just a few more.”

“I’m not sure I can take it.”

“You want me to summarize?”

“In a minute.”

I wiped my eyes, then laid the papers on my lap, gently, even though they were only Bill’s scribbled translations. “Have you ever been to an Orthodox Jewish funeral?”

“Yes.”

“What goes on?”

“Same as anyplace, but in Hebrew.”

“If they don’t bang gongs and walk around the coffin with incense, it’s not the same as the funerals I know.”

“Basically, though, it is. Prayers, songs, a eulogy. No sermon, I don’t think. You know we won’t be able to sit together? They separate men and women.”

I nodded; somewhere, I knew that, though I hadn’t thought about it. I felt a pang of anxiety, which made me mad. Boy, Lydia, first you’re not sure you ever want to talk to this guy again, and now you’re fretting because he’ll be sitting on the other side of the synagogue? “Will the coffin be open?”

Bill’s eyebrows lifted at my sharp tone, but all he said was “No.”

That was good; Chinese coffins usually are, and I find it creepy. Maybe in the old days it was okay, a chance to see your loved one looking peaceful as you said good-bye. Today funeral homes embalm and use makeup and when you see your loved one he looks like someone else. I didn’t want to see Joel looking like someone else. But when the last time I did see Joel-the office, the blood-flashed behind my eyes, I decided Bill’s distraction tactic was a good one.

“The rest of Rosalie’s letters. What are they about?”

He looked over at me. Just don’t ask if I’m all right. It worked, because he didn’t. “The next one’s about the wedding,” he said calmly, just two investigators talking over a case. “At the Café Falbaum, the way the professor’s article said. The one after that, very brief, that she’s pregnant. She imagines her mother singing to the baby. Then she writes about Kai-rong’s arrest; she’s frantic, but Mei-lin has a plan. She says the cost of getting Kai-rong out will be high, but she knows her mother will understand.”

“What does that mean?”

“I don’t know. Then she writes about his escape, and how she’s taking care of Mei-lin’s son until Mei-lin comes back. The next one tells why they have to move to Hongkew. She’s worried her mother won’t be able to find them there.”

“Oh, God, Bill.”

“I know. And then one about the birth of her son, and how she’s naming him Horst but because he’s growing up in China they’ll use his Chinese name, Lao-li, which means ‘labor is truth.’ ”

“It can also mean ‘truth is hard work,’ you know.”

He nodded. “The last letter is on Lao-li’s first birthday.”

“No more?”

“That was October ’forty-four. The Japanese surrendered in August of ’forty-five. The war in Europe was over by then, and the Red Cross lists of concentration camp confirmed dead began to reach Shanghai in the fall. By Lao-li’s second birthday, Rosalie must have known her mother was gone.”

I slid the papers back into the envelope. “Poor Rosalie.”

“She was pretty tough. Most of that time, Kai-rong was away. She was on her own with those two kids-she and Paul. Her father-in-law gave them money, so I guess they ate as well as anyone in the ghetto, but toward the end of the war no one in Shanghai had much to eat.”

“But Kai-rong kept coming back? The way the navy report said?”

“In the one about the baby, she says he held his son soon after he was born. So he must have been slipping in and out. I don’t get the idea, by the way, that she didn’t know what he was up to.”