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woman who longs for children is not something he—nor any man—could fill. Besides that, she had given up a lot by choosing to marry him. Her father had been so disappointed in their union since Jakob was not only an older man, but also lacked a genuine pedigree, even though his hard and established work provided her with anything material she wanted. Surely he could set aside his own misgivings to give Catherine that one desire.
    It wasn’t that he didn’t like children. It was more that the world was too wretched a place in which to bring them up. Eleanor Louise had been conceived in 1951, and he had watched soldiers returning from two world wars now as half men, physically or psychologically or both. Details of the Holocaust had only recently been fully realized, and reports and confirmations of Stalin’s forced famines during the previous decade— Holodomor —were rippling through the Eastern European immigrant communities of Chicago. 1 Reports told of up to eleven million dead from starvation in a land more—or at least as—fertile than America. Of course, the Soviets had denied it all, as they had everything else, and anyone else who dared speak of Holodomor specifically suffered severe, if not deadly, persecution.
    But as bad a place as the world was to bring up a child then, the real reason Jakob didn’t want children was because of the shame he carried with him, an accusing shadow in his heart reminding him of events far worse than wars and starvation for him personally—events that if discovered would reveal the worst truth of all: that Jakob should never again be trusted with caring for a human being, especially one so fragile as an infant. And yet one look at Eleanor as the nurse lay her in his arms for the first time, and Jakob had pushed the shame and fear deep inside him. Her tiny mouth shaped like a rosebud and pink like rhodochrosite, or maybe a shade lighter, like rose quartz. Jakob was immediately smitten, and yet the coos and aahs that came so naturally for other fathers lodged in his throat. His eyes had stung with tears and his chest had swelled with the ferocious certainty that he would do whatever was necessary to care for his baby girl, to make sure she was safe and loved. If God gave second chances, Jakob knew Eleanor was that for him, and he would not, could not, fail again.
    â€œIt was my fault,” he mumbled as Billy Esposito’s car whirred past the homes and businesses of South Haven.
    Billy reached over and squeezed Jakob’s shoulder. “It couldn’t have been helped, a stroke that massive. You can’t blame yourself.”
    Jakob didn’t bother to tell Billy that he wasn’t talking about Catherine. Or Nel, for that matter.
    The fault he felt ran too deep for words, and only one other person in the world had ever known his secret.

1904–1906
    Rotterdam, Netherlands – New York City – Chicago

CHAPTER 4
    The Statendam chugged so slowly out of the harbor in Rotterdam that the only way Jakob knew it was even moving was because he stood at the stern and could see the milky trail of bubbles from the giant engines rumbling under the deck beneath his feet. He lifted his head and watched as the busy port grew smaller and eventually faded into the fog, along with the rest of the Netherlands and everything he and Peter had ever known.
    Jakob felt the outline of the large aquamarine in his coat against his chest as he braced himself against the harsh sea air. The stone was one of the few objects that had calmed the trembling within him ever since Peter had—against Tato’s instructions—returned to Chudniv. Peter had found Jakob, and only Jakob, left alive. Their journey since then, from that place of nightmare to the sea, had been miraculous, or so Peter said.
    â€œEverything that’s happened to us since Chudniv has been by the hand of Yahweh, by the grace of Yeshua.”
    Jakob felt a growing desire