“Is there tea?”

“Oh, good!” Alice Fairchild reached for a pot. “I always feel so lonely among coffee drinkers. Lydia, how do you take it?”

“Milk, no sugar, please.”

“I have to thank you both for making yourselves available on such short notice.” She placed a tiny spoon on the saucer and handed me my tea. “As I was just telling Joel, he was recommended by a contact in Zurich. And of course you, Lydia, were recommended by him.”

“ Alice is an attorney,” Joel said. “From Switzerland.”

“Semiretired. I only take cases of particular interest now. My bread and butter was estate planning for fellow American expats. A little boring.” She smiled. “But I have a rarefied specialty: recovery of assets for families of Holocaust victims. My office is in Switzerland for that reason: As Willie Sutton said about robbing banks, that’s where the money is. Most of it. But from time to time, something turns up somewhere else.” From a slim briefcase, she handed us each a set of papers. “If you don’t mind, I’d like you to look at these.”

On top was a Xerox of an old photograph. A teenage girl, in the knee-length skirt and round-toed pumps of thirties movies, stood with a boy a few years younger. One hand held down a hat threatening to take off in a wind that slanted his tie and stirred her curly hair; the other seemed to hold down the boy himself, who radiated affable impatience. Their conspiratorial smiles as they indulged the photographer reminded me of my brothers and me.

The next page was another Xerox, of a handwritten letter. A typed notation at the top margin said, “Jewish Museum, Holocaust archives. Rosalie Gilder to her mother, Elke Gilder, April 14, 1938.”

“This looks like German,” I said. “I don’t-”

“Oh, I’m sorry,” said Alice Fairchild. “The last page is the translation.”

I flipped the pages. From neat typing, I read:

14 April 1938

Dearest Mama,

I write from the deck of the Conte Biancamano as we are putting out to sea.