The Nightingale

Was that true? Was the war over? She didn’t know, couldn’t remember. Her mind was such a mess these days.

Isabelle limped out to the road, realizing too late that she was barefoot (she would get beaten for losing her shoes), but she kept going. Shivering, coughing, plastered by rain, she walked past the bombed-out airfield, taken over by Allied troops now.

“Isabelle!”

She turned, coughing hard, spitting blood into her hand. She was trembling now with cold, shivering. Her dress was soaking wet.

“What are you doing out here?” Vianne said. “And where are your shoes? You have typhus and pneumonia and you’re out in the rain.” Vianne took off her coat and wrapped it around Isabelle’s shoulder.

“Is the war over?”

“We talked about this last night, remember?”

Rain blurred Isabelle’s vision, fell in streaks down her back. She drew in a wet, shuddering breath and felt tears sting her eyes.

Don’t cry. She knew that was important but she didn’t remember why.

“Isabelle, you’re sick.”

“Ga?tan promised to find me after the war was over,” she whispered. “I need to get to Paris so he can find me.”

“If he came looking for you, he’d come to the house.”

Isabelle didn’t understand. She shook her head.

“He’s been here, remember? After Tours. He brought you home.”

My nightingale, I got you home.

“Oh.

“He won’t think I’m pretty anymore.” Isabelle tried to smile, but she knew it was a failure.

Vianne put an arm around Isabelle and gently turned her around. “We will go and write him a letter.”

“I don’t know where to send it,” Isabelle said, leaning against her sister, shivering with cold and fire.

How did she make it home? She wasn’t sure. She vaguely remembered Antoine carrying her up the stairs, kissing her forehead, and Sophie bringing her some hot broth, but she must have fallen asleep at some point because the next thing she knew night had fallen.

Vianne sat sleeping in a chair beneath the window.

Isabelle coughed.

Vianne was on her feet in an instant, fixing the pillows behind Isabelle, propping her up. She dunked a cloth in the water at the bedside, wrung out the excess, and pressed it to Isabelle’s forehead. “You want some marrow broth?”

“God, no.”

“You’re not eating anything.”

“I can’t keep it down.”

Vianne reached for the chair and dragged it close to the bed.

Vianne touched Isabelle’s hot, wet cheek and gazed into her sunken eyes. “I have something for you.” Vianne got up from her chair and left the room. Moments later, she was back with a yellowed envelope. She handed it to Isabelle. “This is for us. From Papa. He came by here on his way to see you in Girot.”

“He did? Did he tell you that he was going to turn himself in to save me?”

Vianne nodded and handed Isabelle the letter.

The letters of her name blurred and elongated on the page. Malnutrition had ruined her eyesight. “Can you read it to me?”

Vianne unsealed the envelope and withdrew the letter and began to read.

Isabelle and Vianne,

What I do now, I do without misgiving. My regret is not for my death, but for my life. I am sorry I was no father to you.

I could make excuses—I was ruined by the war, I drank too much, I couldn’t go on without your maman—but none of that matters.

Isabelle, I remember the first time you ran away to be with me. You made it all the way to Paris on your own. Everything about you said, Love me. And when I saw you on that platform, needing me, I turned away.

How could I not see that you and Vianne were a gift, had I only reached out?

Forgive me, my daughters, for all of it, and know that as I say good-bye, I loved you both with all of my damaged heart.

Isabelle closed her eyes and lay back into the pillows. All her life she’d waited for those words—his love—and now all she felt was loss. They hadn’t loved each other enough in the time they had, and then time ran out. “Hold Sophie and Antoine and your new baby close, Vianne. Love is such a slippery thing.”

“Don’t do that,” Vianne said.

“What?”

“Say good-bye. You’ll get strong and healthy and you’ll find Ga?tan and you’ll get married and be there when this baby of mine is born.”

Isabelle sighed and closed her eyes. “What a pretty future that would be.”

*

A week later, Isabelle sat in a chair in the backyard, wrapped in two blankets and an eiderdown comforter. The early May sun blazed down on her and still she was trembling with cold. Sophie sat in the grass at her feet, reading her a story. Her niece tried to use a different voice for each character and sometimes, even as bad as Isabelle felt, as much as her bones felt too heavy for her skin to bear, she found herself smiling, even laughing.