I tried deep breathing, Advil, counting sheep, and everything else I could think of, but I couldn’t get any closer to sleep than a stone skimming the surface. Around two I gave up. I switched on the light and looked for something to do.

The image of the skimming stone brought to mind a vast ocean, and that brought a ship. I went to my desk and looked at the photos: the jewelry, Rosalie and Paul Gilder, Wong Pan. I reread the letter. I wondered if there were others at the Jewish Museum. I wondered what had become of Rosalie, of her brother. It wasn’t relevant to the job I’d been hired to do, but I wondered.

Ah, the magic of what my mother refers to as the Interweb. A search for “Rosalie Gilder” on the Jewish Museum Web site brought me to Holocaust/Survivors/Documents/Shanghai/Gilder.

Rosalie Ruchl Gilder. Salzburg to Shanghai via the Conte Biancamano, April 1938, age 18. Accompanied by brother Paul Chaim Gilder, 14. Letters to Elke Chana Gilder, mother, 1938-1941. Acquired 1967. In German. English translation available.

There were fifteen more. I clicked on “English,” then hesitated. Read someone else’s letters? That wasn’t right. But these are historical documents, I told myself. In a museum collection. Yes, but they weren’t written that way. A young girl wrote them to her mother, who she never saw again.

In the end my curiosity overcame my scruples. It’s one of the things Bill always liked about me. Though why I should care what Bill liked now that we didn’t seem to be speaking, I had no idea.

I printed out the translations of the first half-dozen letters and curled up with them in bed.

18 April 1938

Dearest Mama,