The Nightingale

Now it would never happen; she would never get to know her father, never feel the warmth of his hand in hers, never fall asleep on the divan beside him, never be able to say all that needed to be said between them. Those words were lost, turned into ghosts that would drift away, unsaid. They would never be the family maman had promised. “Papa,” she said; it was such a big word suddenly, a dream in its entirety.

He turned and faced the firing squad. She watched him stand taller and square his shoulders. He pushed the white strands of hair from his dry eyes. Across the square, their gazes met. She clutched the bars harder, clinging to them for support.

“I love you,” he mouthed.

Shots rang out.

*

Vianne hurt all over.

She lay in bed, bracketed by her sleeping children, trying not to remember last night’s rape in excruciating detail.

Moving slowly, she went to the pump and washed up in cold water, wincing every time she touched an area that was bruised.

She dressed in what was easy—a wrinkled linen button-up dress with a fitted bodice and flared skirt.

All night, she’d lain awake in bed, holding her children close, alternately weeping for what he’d done to her—what he’d taken from her—and fuming that she couldn’t stop it.

She wanted to kill him.

She wanted to kill herself.

What would Antoine think of her now?

Truthfully, the biggest part of her wanted to curl up in a ball in some dark corner and never show her face again.

But even that—shame—was a luxury these days. How could she worry about herself when Isabelle was in prison and their father was going to try to save her?

“Sophie,” she said when they’d finished their breakfast of dry toast and a poached egg. “I have an errand to run today. You will stay home with Daniel. Lock the door.”

“Von Richter—”

“Is gone until tomorrow.” She felt her face grow hot. This was the kind of intimacy she shouldn’t know. “He told me so last … night.” Her voice broke on the last word.

Sophie rose. “Maman?”

Vianne dashed tears away. “I’m fine. But I must go. Be good.” She kissed both of them good-bye and rushed out before she could start thinking of reasons to stay.

Like Sophie and Daniel.

And Von Richter. He said he was leaving for the night, but who knew? He could always have her followed. But if she worried too much about “what ifs” she would never get anything done. In the time she’d been hiding Jewish children, she had learned to go on despite her fear.

She had to help Isabelle—

(Don’t come back.)

(I’ll turn you in myself.)

—and Papa if she could.

She boarded the train and sat on a wooden bench in the third-class carriage. Several of the other passengers—mostly women—sat with their heads down, hands clasped in their laps. A tall Hauptsturmführer stood guard by the door, his gun at the ready. A squad of narrow-eyed Milice—the brutal Vichy police—sat in another part of the carriage.

Vianne didn’t look at either of the women in the compartment with her. One of them stank of garlic and onions. The smell made Vianne faintly sick in the hot, airless compartment. Fortunately, her destination was not far away, and just after ten o’clock in the morning, she disembarked at the small train station on the outskirts of Girot.

Now what?

The sun rode high overhead, baking the small town into a stupor. Vianne clutched her handbag close, felt perspiration crawl down her back and drip from her temples. Many of the sand-colored buildings had been bombed; piles of rubble were everywhere. A blue Cross of Lorraine had been painted onto the stone sides of an abandoned school.

She encountered few people on the crooked, cobblestoned streets. Now and then a girl on a bicycle or a boy with a wheelbarrow would thump and rattle past her, but for the most part, what she noticed was the silence, an air of desertion.

Then a woman screamed.

Vianne came around the last crooked corner and saw the town square. A dead body was lashed to the fountain in the square. Blood reddened the water that lapped around his ankles. His head had been strapped back with an army belt so that he seemed almost relaxed there, with his mouth slack, his eyes open, sightless. Bullet holes chewed up his chest, left his sweater in tatters; blood darkened his chest and pant legs.

Her father.

*

Isabelle had spent last night huddled in the damp, black corner of her cell. The horror of her father’s death replayed itself over and over.

She would be killed soon. Of that she had no doubt.

As the hours passed—time measured in breaths taken and released, in heartbeats—she wrote imaginary letters of good-bye to her father, to Ga?tan, to Vianne. She strung her memories into sentences that she memorized, or tried to, but they all ended with “I’m sorry.” When the soldiers came for her, iron keys rattling in ancient locks, worm-eaten doors scraping open across the uneven floor, she wanted to scream and protest, yell NO, but she had no voice left.

She was yanked to her feet. A woman built like a panzer tank thrust shoes and socks at her and said something in German. Obviously she didn’t speak French.