The Nightingale

Vianne wrenched off her shawl and pressed it to the wounds.

“How is she?” Rachel asked, coming to a breathless stop beside her. “Is that blood?” Rachel crumpled to the grass beside her daughter. In the wheelbarrow, Ari started to scream.

Lights flashed at the checkpoint, soldiers gathered together. Dogs started barking.

“We have to go, Rachel,” Vianne said. “Now.” She clambered to her feet in the blood-slick grass and took Ari out of the wheelbarrow, shoving him at Rachel, who seemed not to understand. Vianne threw everything out of the wheelbarrow and, as carefully as she could, placed Sarah in the rusted metal, with Ari’s blanket behind her head. Clutching the handles in her bloody hands, she lifted the back wheels and began pushing. “Come on,” she said to Rachel. “We can save her.”

Rachel nodded numbly.

Vianne shoved the wheelbarrow forward, over the ropey roots and dirt. Her heart was pounding and fear was a sour taste in her mouth, but she didn’t stop or look back. She knew that Rachel was behind her—Ari was screaming—and if anyone else was following them, she didn’t want to know.

As they neared Le Jardin, Vianne struggled to push the heavy wheelbarrow through the gully alongside the road and up the hill to the barn. When she finally stopped, the wheelbarrow thumped down to the ground and Sarah moaned in pain.

Rachel put Ari down. Then she lifted Sarah out of the wheelbarrow and gently placed her on the grass. Ari wailed and held his arms out to be held.

Rachel knelt beside Sarah and saw the terrible devastation of Sarah’s chest. She looked up at Vianne, gave her a look of such pain and loss that Vianne couldn’t breathe. Then Rachel looked down again, and placed a hand on her daughter’s pale cheek.

Sarah lifted her head. “Did we make it across the frontier?” Blood bubbled up from her colorless lips, slid down her chin.

“We did,” Rachel said. “We did. We are all safe now.”

“I was brave,” Sarah said, “wasn’t I?”

“Oui,” Rachel said brokenly. “So brave.”

“I’m cold,” Sarah murmured. She shivered.

Sarah drew in a shuddering breath, exhaled slowly.

“We are going to go have some candy now. And a macaron. I love you, Sarah. And Papa loves you. You are our star.” Rachel’s voice broke. She was crying now. “Our heart. You know that?”

“Tell Sophie I…” Sarah’s eyelids fluttered shut. She drew a last, shuddering breath and went still. Her lips parted, but no breath slipped past them.

Vianne knelt down beside Sarah. She felt for a pulse and found none. The silence turned sour, thick; all Vianne could think about was the sound of this child’s laughter and how empty the world would be without it. She knew about death, about the grief that ripped you apart and left you broken forever. She couldn’t imagine how Rachel was still breathing. If this was any other time, Vianne would sit down beside Rachel, take her hand, and let her cry. Or hold her. Or talk. Or say nothing. Whatever Rachel needed, Vianne would have moved Heaven and Earth to provide; but she couldn’t do that now. It was another terrible blow in all of this: They couldn’t even take time to grieve.

Vianne needed to be strong for Rachel. “We need to bury her,” Vianne said as gently as she could.

“She hates the dark.”

“My maman will be with her,” Vianne said. “And yours. You and Ari need to go into the cellar. Hide. I’ll take care of Sarah.”

“How?”

Vianne knew Rachel wasn’t asking how to hide in the barn; she was asking how to live after a loss like this, how to pick up one child and let the other go, how to keep breathing after you whisper “good-bye.” “I can’t leave her.”

“You have to. For Ari.” Vianne got slowly to her feet, waiting.

Rachel drew in a breath as clattery as broken glass and leaned forward to kiss Sarah’s cheek. “I will always love you,” she whispered.

At last, Rachel rose. She reached down for Ari, took him in her arms, held him so tightly he started to cry again.

Vianne reached for Rachel’s hand and led her friend into the barn and to the cellar. “I will come get you as soon as it’s safe.”

“Safe,” Rachel said dully, staring back through the open barn door.

Vianne moved the car and opened the trapdoor. “There’s a lantern down there. And food.”

Holding Ari, Rachel climbed down the ladder and disappeared into the darkness. Vianne shut the door on them and replaced the car and then went to the lilac bush her mother had planted thirty years ago. It had spread tall and wide along the wall. Beneath it, almost lost amid the summer greenery, were three small white crosses. Two for the miscarriages she’d suffered and one for the son who’d lived less than a week.

Rachel had stood here beside her as each of her boys was buried. Now Vianne was here to bury her best friend’s daughter. Her daughter’s best friend. What kind of benevolent God would allow such a thing?





TWENTY-THREE