CHAPTER ONE

Healing Waters

Well, here we are but where are we going? That is the question.—January 9, 1945

He stood at the end of the pier watching the petals drift out to sea. He leaned on his cane. No longer the young sailor he’d once been, he was an old man now, something his comrade, his friend, never got to be. The red and white petals followed an unseen path, becoming tiny specks in a vast ocean—an ocean that, during the war, held only sorrow and loss. But now those same waters were a place of healing.

“Never good-bye,” he said softly. “Never good-bye.”