Purple Hearts (Front Lines 3)

After Bernard leaves, Rainy warms canned soup for herself and Philippe. It is a glum meal, interrupted twice, once when they hear a dog barking, and a second time when they hear loud engines, which turn out to be Luftwaffe planes overhead.

Rainy takes the sofa—she’s smaller than Philippe—but has a hard time sleeping.

It is the endless replays that keep her awake. Again and again she runs through the events at the café. What could she have done differently? What mistakes were made? Why had she not suspected earlier that Marie was a problem? Had she missed clues? Had it all been inevitable? Had there not been a way to avoid that small round hole?

Philippe’s voice comes from the dark. “You should sleep.”

“I know.”

After a pause, he adds, “It was necessary. You did what was necessary.”

“I know.”

Another long pause, then, “You are a soldier, as I am.”

“Soldiers do not kill unarmed girls in cold blood. I was an executioner.”

He sighs. “Tomorrow you will be a soldier again. And someday when this is all over you will be a woman. You will be married and have children.”

“And you’ll be a man with a wife and children,” Rainy says. “And neither of us will ever speak to them about this day.”

“No,” Philippe admits. “We will not.”

Bernard was true to his word . . . mostly. He reappeared early, but very definitely during what should have been the school day, unless French children went to school in midmorning. Philippe chided him, but it is clear from the way he goes about it that a young Philippe Gilles had once ditched the exact same school to run in these same woods.

Bernard brings a whole baguette broken in two for easier carrying, and a wedge of cow’s-milk cheese with a wrinkly, chalky rind. They wolf this meal down and then set out with Bernard. The boy moves through the woods like an animal born and bred in the forest, dodging brambles, leaping fallen logs and tiny streams. Even city-bred Rainy has to smile at the leggy kid in the gray smock and short shorts, who snatches berries and pops them in his mouth, chatting all the while about his friends, about a hunting trip with his uncle, about how much he despises girls—though not mademoiselle (meaning Rainy) because she is not a girl, she is a spy.

Philippe’s talk of marriage and children has Rainy watching the boy through different eyes. Her big brother, Aryeh, a Marine, has a child, not that Rainy (or Aryeh) has seen much of her. But Rainy can imagine, just barely, a world with a Manhattan version of Bernard, a smart kid who knows his way around the subway and alleyways, and looks a little like Rainy.

It’s easier than trying to picture a husband for herself. She’s only ever been on one real date, and that was with a boy named Halev, who she barely knew. And she has to laugh at the notion that the son of an Orthodox tailor would be interested in settling down with the sort of woman who kills people.

In her imagination now she is being questioned by her future, imaginary Bernard, her son or daughter.

Couldn’t you have just tied her up, Mom?

Couldn’t you have convinced her . . .

In her imagination this unformed, faceless child, her child, looks at her with a solemn expression. Rainy imagines a sense of betrayal. She imagines the pitiless eyes of a child judging her, trying to absorb the fact that Mommy shot a girl.

My life will be either lonely or a series of lies.

Someday if she finds her way back to safety she will be debriefed by Colonel Herkemeier. He will understand. He may even approve. But even he will never see Rainy the same way again.

The scarlet letter, like the book she’d read in high school. A scarlet letter A, but not for adulterer.

A for assassin.

They reach a clearing, which upon closer inspection is a firebreak, an unpaved path cut through the woods. There Bernard points triumphantly at the ground.

There is only one thing that leaves tracks like this: a tank. Many tanks, in fact, because the ground is chewed up all the way along the firebreak.

“Go home now,” Philippe tells Bernard. But Bernard is not so easily gotten rid of. So they decide to pass as a family out hunting for berries and mushrooms, father, mother, and son. Of course Rainy would have had to be a very, very young mother, but the ruse is the best they can do. And at a distance they might look innocent enough.

They follow the tracks for a mile, and it is early afternoon when they begin to see signs of more activity, stacks of jerry cans, discarded empty crates, cigarette butts. They stop and duck into the woods upon spotting a German half-track, obviously broken down, with two shirtless German soldiers working on the engine.

They take a long detour around the half-track and come to a road. They rest by the side of the road, well back in the trees, and try to ignore rumbling stomachs and the fact that they have picked up fleas along the way. Rainy scratches her legs, leaving tiny blood trails from fleabites.

Philippe says, “They must have a company based nearby. I can guess where. There’s a?