That fall, they received disturbing news from Germany.

"Mother had a stroke," Ulrike wrote. She'd just been released from the hospital when she fell and broke her hip. Rudi and I do what we can, but she needs around-the-clock care. We will probably hire a nurse soon. I thought you should know."

"I won't have a stranger caring for my mother," Dieter vowed. "We'll be on the next ship to Hamburg."

Once again, Jo packed up her belongings and said goodbye to her friends.

"I didn't realize that marrying you would be signing up for the life of a vagabond," she joked to her husband, and he smiled in return.

In the ship on the way to Europe, she began to experience the familiar symptoms which told her she carried a new life inside her body. She didn't even have to tell Dieter this time. He figured it out on his own.

"You must see a doctor as soon as possible." His eyes were twinkling as he laid a hand on her abdomen. "Perhaps it will be a girl this time."

"Perhaps."

Upon their return to Berlin, they found a radically changed Julia Baumgartner. The once-vibrant elderly woman now lay in bed looking pale, weak, and exhausted, a shadow of her former self. Looking at her broke Jo's heart. She went to her and embraced her gently.

"We're home, Mama," she said.

"I'm so glad to see you all again," Julia replied, her voice weak and cracking.

Paul stood quietly to the side of the bed beside his father, his face solemn, while Freddy climbed onto the bed and began to jump.

"No, no, Thomas!" said Dieter, snatching his son up into his arms.

Julia smiled, and her face lit up.

"That's all right. Seeing him makes me feel young again."

Jo returned to Dr. Neuberg the next day. The physician confirmed her suspicions.

"You've completed two healthy pregnancies with successful outcomes," he said. "I see no reason for undue concern at this point."

Jo felt a tiny prickle of anxiety at his words, but she quickly squelched it. Of course everything would be all right.

Dieter's Berlin congregation was, of course, thrilled to have him back. The first Sunday after his return, he gave a rousing sermon about his experiences in the United States.

"In the Southern states, the colored people are treated like second-class citizens," he said. "They have to eat at separate restaurants, send their children to separate schools, use separate restaurants and even drinking fountains. It isn't so terribly different from the way the Jews of Germany were treated after the Nazis came to power. First, they were excluded from establishments and not allowed to practice their professions, and later, they were rounded up and sent to concentration camps. The noose got tighter and tighter, and I can only wonder whether a similar thing might happen in America."

It won't, Jo longed to tell him. She remembered learning in school about Martin Luther King, Jr. and the civil rights movement. Perhaps she and Dieter would have become part of it themselves if they had remained in the United States.

After the sermon, several congregants approached Dieter and Jo to express their appreciation for the sermon.

"Ten years ago, you couldn't have dared to speak such words," one man remarked.

"I would have spoken them anyway, regardless of the consequences," Dieter replied.

For Paul's fifth birthday in January, Dieter and Jo organized a party at a local ice skating rink and invited all their family and friends. By now, Werner and Sybille had moved back to Germany, so little Dieter came to the party also, along with his two-year-old sister, Daniela. Renate and Konrad also came, bringing along Heinz and his little sister, Ingrid. Horst brought his wife Sanna and their tiny daughter, Lydia.

"She's beautiful!" Jo said as she held the infant close and gazed into her cherubic face.

"Thank you," said Sanna. "Heinz and I love her so much!"

Jo saw how longingly Dieter was gazing down at the infant.

"Would you like to hold her, too?" she asked.

"Absolutely!" Eagerly Dieter cradled the child, and Jo reflected on how much she knew he wanted a daughter.

Little Dieter, Heinz, and Paul became fast friends, spending the entire day ice skating together, except for breaks in between to eat or rest.

"You'd think they'd known each other their entire lives," Sybille remarked.

"I can scarcely believe Paul will start kindergarten in the fall," said Jo. "It seems only yesterday he was just a baby!"

"He'll love it," said Renate. "Heinz did."

Freddy, Daniela, and Ingrid played together in the play area for children too young to ice skate. Although he was the youngest, Freddy was the only boy and tried to boss the little girls around. His father had to intervene several times to keep small squabbles from breaking out.

Jo's pregnancy passed smoothly and uneventfully. She gained the expected amount of weight and followed Dr. Neuberg's instructions carefully.

She went into labor a hot day in early August. As soon as she felt the sharp twinge of pain, she knew something was dreadfully wrong. She felt a warm fluid running down her legs and gazed in horror at the rapidly spreading pool of blood at her feet.

"Dieter!" she screamed, dashing outside to where her husband was playing ball with their sons.

He took one look at her and his face went white as marble. Quickly he grasped first one boy, then the other, by the hands.

"I have to take Mama to the hospital right now," he told them.

He hurried them next store to a neighbor's, then sped to the hospital as fast as he could go. Jo was hemorrhaging so quickly that the towel she had bunched between her legs was soon saturated with blood. She felt herself going weak, and everything around her seemed to go fuzzy.

At the hospital, she was placed onto a stretcher and trundled into the emergency room. She heard the murmur of indistinct voices which seemed to come from far away, and through a haze of pain, she focused on Dieter's panicked face.

The blood was still pulsing out of her; she could feel it oozing between her legs, soaking the sheet beneath her, and with it went every ounce of her strength. Is this the end? she wondered. Is there anything on the other side? I won't be Martina anymore, but can I be Jo again, someday?

The doctor's voice rang out, crystal clear and grave. He was talking to Dieter. Which one of them do you want us to save?

She continued to gaze at her husband's face, the anguish reflected in the impossible decision that had been thrust upon him.

Before it was all over, she had to tell him. He had to know.

"It was me," she gasped, desperately hoping he could hear her. "The girl who was with you on the scaffold. The one who spoke to you in English. It was me..."

Everything went black.