“Herr Sturmbannführer,” she said, smoothing her shapeless dress and worn cardigan.
He didn’t look up from the German newspaper that held his attention. “More coffee.”
She took his empty cup and went to the kitchen, returning quickly with another cup.
“The Allies are wasting their time in North Africa,” he said, taking the cup from her, putting it on the table beside him.
“Oui, Herr Sturmbannführer.”
His hand snaked out and coiled around her wrist tight enough to leave a bruise. “I am having men over for supper tonight. You will cook. And keep that boy away from me. His crying sounds like a dying pig.”
He let go.
“Oui, Herr Sturmbannführer.”
She got out of his way quickly, hurrying into the bedroom and closing the door behind her. She bent and wakened Daniel, feeling his soft breathing against the crook of her neck.
“Maman,” he mumbled around his thumb, which he was furiously sucking. “Sophie is snoring too loud.”
Vianne smiled and reached over to tousle Sophie’s hair. Amazingly, even though it was wartime and they were terrified and starving, somehow a girl her age could still manage to sleep through anything. “You sound like a water buffalo, Sophie,” Vianne teased.
“Very funny,” Sophie muttered, sitting up. She glanced at the closed door. “Is Herr Doryphore still here?”
“Sophie!” Vianne admonished, glancing worriedly at the closed door.
“He can’t hear us,” Sophie said.
“Still,” Vianne said quietly, “I cannot imagine why you would compare our guest to a bug that eats potatoes.” She tried not to smile.
Daniel hugged Vianne and gave her a sloppy kiss.
As she patted his back and held him close, nuzzling the downy softness of his cheek, she heard a car engine start up.
Thank God.
“He is leaving,” she murmured to the boy, nuzzling his cheek. “Come along, Sophie.” She carried Daniel into the living room, which still smelled of freshly brewed coffee and men’s cologne, and began her day.
* * *
People had called Isabelle impetuous for as long as she could remember. And then rash and, most lately, reckless. In the past year, she had grown up enough to see the truth of it. From earliest memory, she had acted first and thought about consequences later. Perhaps it was because she’d felt alone for so long. No one had ever been her sounding board, her best friend. She hadn’t had someone with whom to strategize or work through her problems.
Beyond that, she had never had great impulse control. Maybe because she’d never had anything to lose.
Now, she knew what it meant to be afraid, to want something—or someone—so much it made your heart ache.
The old Isabelle would simply have told Gaëtan she loved him and let the cards fall as they would.
The new Isabelle wanted to walk away without even trying. She didn’t know if she had the strength to be rejected again.
And yet.
They were at war. Time was the one luxury no one had anymore. Tomorrow felt as ephemeral as a kiss in the dark.
She stood in the small, pitched-roof cupboard they used as a water closet in the safe house. Gaëtan had carried up buckets of hot water for her bath, and she had luxuriated in the copper tub until the water cooled. The mirror on the wall was cracked and hung askew. It made her reflection appear disjointed, with one side of her face slightly lower than the other.
“How can you be afraid?” she said to her reflection. She had hiked the Pyrenees in the falling snow and swum the rushing cold waters of the Bidassoa River beneath the glare of a Spanish searchlight; she’d once asked a Gestapo agent to carry a suitcase full of false identity papers across a German checkpoint “because he looked so strong and she was so very tired from traveling,” but she had never been as nervous as she was right now. She knew suddenly that a woman could change her whole life and uproot her existence with one choice.
Taking a deep breath, she wrapped herself in a tattered towel and returned to the safe house’s main room. She paused at the door just long enough to calm her racing heart (a failed attempt) and then she opened the door.