They offered us candy too.

The man acts just like every other soldier.

How can I be sure he's my father?

The man begins to tell me stories.

He tells me the Red Army liberated his prison camp.

What is the Red Army?

Did the soldiers wear red uniforms?

The man ran away through vast forests with other Jewish prisoners.

The war was over, but they were far from France.

They had to walk most of the way back, through empty bombed-out villages and farms.

All along the way, they heard gunshots and the sound of unmilked cows, mooing in pain.

His journey home took eight months.

As the man speaks, I begin to remember my father, the man who read stories to me so long ago.

I'm hungry for more details, for richer stories.

"How did you survive?" I ask.

"We'd find food," he said, "chickens and vegetables on abandoned farms.

We'd make ourselves a feast and rest ...

then move on."

I nod, asking for more.

"And I had poetry,"

he says, "reading poems helped me survive."

Poetry?

So the beauty of words kept him alive, just as it comforted Leon, and just as it gave me my voice back!

"I have a present for you," the man says, opening his knapsack.

"In one empty house, I found a jewelry box.

In it was a necklace, a single strand of small pearls, just right for a young girl.

I hadn't seen anything so beautiful for so long that I decided to put it in my knapsack for you."

For me?

So this man brought home a pearl necklace for me?

He must be my real father or why would he do that?

No one else I know has a real pearl necklace.

How will I feel when I wear it?

Proud?

Embarrassed?

"But the next morning I changed my mind,"

the man says.

"I thought about the girl who owned it.

What if she came back?"

My heart sinks.

My fingers have already touched the smooth pearls.

I've already seen them shining around my neck.

And now they're gone.

The man reads my face.

"Never mind," he says.

"Later on, I found something even better."

Even better?

What could that be? I wonder.

My eyes travel to the man's brown knapsack.

Is it the one Madame Marie made for my papa?

I just can't remember.

The man begins to take things out.

Clothing, food ... a worn-out dictionary!

The dictionary has lost its cover, so I can't tell if it's the blue one.

But maybe this really is my papa after all!

Who else would carry a dictionary for five long years?

At last the man finds the package he's looking for.

He hands it to me.

The package is small, but too big for jewelry, I think.

I can barely breathe.

Slowly, I unwrap it.

Inside is a fine leather notebook.

It looks like a diary but with no lock or key, so it's not a place for keeping secrets.

I run my fingers across the paper, smooth as the skin of a newborn baby.

I smell the leather, rich and spicy.

"What's this for?" I ask.

"For you to write in,"

the man replies.

For me to write in?

I lean over and kiss him on the cheek.

"Thank you, Papa," I say.

Yes, telling my story is what I must do.

I'll write it down here in the most beautiful words I can find.

The story of bombs and broom closets, of stars and soldiers, of cats and cousins, of family and friends, of heaven and hell.

The story of all the secrets I kept ...

and the story of my lost-and-found heart.

Timeline.

January 1933.

Adolf Hitler and his Nazi Party come to power in Germany. Jews in that country begin to be excluded from public life.

November 1934 Odette Melspajz (later, Meyers) is born in Paris to Jewish parents of Polish origin, Berthe and George Melspajz.

September 1939.

Hitler invades Poland as a first step toward conquering all of Europe. France and England declare war on Germany.

November 1939 George Melspajz joins the French army.

June/July 1940.

France is defeated, and the German occupation begins. Marshal Phillippe Petain is named head of the Vichy government in France, which collaborates with the Nazis.

May, August, December 1941 The first large-scale roundups of Jews take place. Only men are arrested. They are kept in camps in France.

March 1942.

The first foreign-born Jews in France are deported to death camps in Poland.

May/June 1942 French Jews over the age of six are required to wear yellow stars on their clothing. They are forbidden to go to parks, restaurants, libraries, and other public places.

July 1942 Nearly thirteen thousand foreign-born Jews are arrested in Paris and deported to death camps. Odette escapes to the Vendee.

January 1943 The first roundups of French-born Jews begin.

March 1943 Berthe Melspajz joins Odette in hiding in the Vendee.

June 1944 After many sea and air battles, Allied forces invade France in a final, successful effort to defeat the Nazis.

August 1944 Paris is liberated.

October 1944 Berthe Melspajz and Odette return to Paris.

April 1945 Hitler commits suicide.

May 1945 Germany surrenders. The war in Europe is over. The death camps in Poland are liberated, and surviving Jews begin to try to return to their homes.

July 1945 George Melspajz returns home.