Nate and Sophie sit in the café, sipping their drinks as they wait. It's been a while since they've seen the other three, but the rest of their 'family' is never far from their minds.
"Do you think Eliot's told them yet?" Nate asks.
"Told them what?" Sophie says, watching the traffic on the street.
"That's he's Elof."
"If he hasn't, he will soon," Sophie says. "He's waited long enough to tell someone." She breathes in the steam from her tea. "Do you think we should tell him we know?"
"Ah, it can wait. We can tell him when we give him his Christmas present," Nate says. Sophie looks at her fiancée to see him smiling devilishly.
"I don't know that you can call people presents, Nate," she says with a smile of her own. "And we don't know that this is the real thing yet."
"We're about to find out." Nate nods at something behind Sophie. She turns to see an elderly woman being walked into the café by a girl, probably her granddaughter. Sophie recognizes the woman from the photographs.
"Ella Rosenblum?" Nate calls. The woman and the girl look towards them. Nate and Sophie stand as the two women approach them. Sophie holds out her hand as Nate comes around the table.
"I'm Sophie, we spoke on the phone," she says. The woman takes her hand with a firm grip.
"It's nice to meet you in person, Sophie. Call me Ella. This is my granddaughter, Rachel." The girl nods.
"Good to meet you both. This is Nate, my partner." Sophie gestures to Nate, who reaches his hand out as well.
"A pleasure, Ella. Have a seat." The newcomers take seats on one side of the table. Sophie slides her drink over to sit beside Nate.
"Now, Ella, you said you had a note from your mother, from the Holocaust," Sophie says. Ella nods.
"I was four months old when the Nazis came for us," she says. "My mother managed to wean me before they got us to the camp, which was fortunate. There was a woman who would come in, a nurse, and she smuggled the babies out in her bag. When she smuggled me out, my mother made sure that I was wearing this." Ella lifts a chain from the folds of her shirt. A silver locket dangles from the chain, catching the light from the windows. "It was seven years before I opened it, and no one else had thought to do that before. My mother had written a note to her cousin. Her cousin hadn't been with us when we were taken, and she begged in this note that I go to him. Of course, by the time the note got to anyone who could actually go looking for him, he was long gone. They told me he'd been killed in action."
"Do you have it with you? The note?" Nate asks. Rachel reaches into her purse.
"My mom took it to a conservation specialist several years ago," she says, pulling out a laminated sheet. Rachel holds the sheet out to Sophie, who accepts it with careful fingers. She and Nate read over the note in the laminate. It's crinkled with years of being folded and unfolded. The text is in German.
"Your cousin's name is Elof," Nate says. He looks at Sophie, who returns the glance before turning back to Ella.
"Yes. It was an unusual name then, as it is now, but the government people did seem to know who she was talking about," Ella says. "I was named for him, you know."
"Why are you interested in this note?" Rachel asks. "You didn't say on the phone."
"Well, we've been doing a lot of research into the Holocaust lately, especially those who survived," Nate says. "When we found your name, Ella, we were fairly sure we'd found who we'd been looking for."
"What do you mean?" Ella asks, voice cautious. Sophie gives the note back to Rachel, smiling.
"We'd like to tell you a story…"