The Nightingale

“In the back. The pergola.”

He led her around the house to the backyard. In the lush, jasmine-perfumed shadows of the arbor, she collapsed to her knees. She hardly noticed that he was gone, and then he was back with some tepid water, which she gulped from his cupped hands. It wasn’t enough. Her stomach gnarled with hunger, sent an ache deep, deep inside of her. Still, when he started to leave again, she reached out for him, mumbled something, a plea not to be left alone, and he sank down beside her, putting out his arm for her to rest her head upon. They lay side by side in the warm dirt, staring up through the black thicket of vines that looped around the timbers and cascaded to the ground. The heady aromas of jasmine and blooming roses and rich earth created a beautiful bower. And yet, even here, in this quiet, it was impossible to forget what they’d just been through … and the changes that were close on their heels.

She had seen a change in Ga?tan, watched anger and impotent rage erase the compassion in his eyes and the smile from his lips. He had hardly spoken since the bombing, and when he did his voice was clipped and curt. They both knew more about war now, about what was coming.

“You could be safe here, with your sister,” he said.

“I don’t want to be safe. And my sister will not want me.”

She twisted around to look at him. Moonlight came through in lacy patterns, illuminating his eyes, his mouth, leaving his nose and chin in darkness. He looked different again, older already, in just these few days; careworn, angry. He smelled of sweat and blood and mud and death, but she knew she smelled the same.

“Have you heard of Edith Cavell?” she asked.

“Do I strike you as an educated man?”

She thought about that for a moment and then said, “Yes.”

He was quiet long enough that she knew she’d surprised him. “I know who she is. She saved the lives of hundreds of Allied airmen in the Great War. She is famous for saying that ‘patriotism is not enough.’ And this is your hero, a woman executed by the enemy.”

“A woman who made a difference,” Isabelle said, studying him. “I am relying on you—a criminal and a communist—to help me make a difference. Perhaps I am as mad and impetuous as they say.”

“Who are ‘they’?”

“Everyone.” She paused, felt her expectation gather close. She had made a point of never trusting anyone, and yet she believed Ga?tan. He looked at her as if she mattered. “You will take me. As you promised.”

“You know how such bargains are sealed?”

“How?”

“With a kiss.”

“Quit teasing. This is serious.”

“What’s more serious than a kiss on the brink of war?” He was smiling, but not quite. That banked anger was in his eyes again, and it frightened her, reminded her that she really didn’t know him at all.

“I would kiss a man who was brave enough to take me into battle with him.”

“I think you know nothing of kissing,” he said with a sigh.

“Shows what you know.” She rolled away from him and immediately missed his touch. Trying to be nonchalant, she rolled back to face him and felt his breath on her eyelashes. “You may kiss me then. To seal our deal.”

He reached out slowly, put a hand around the back of her neck, and pulled her toward him.

“Are you sure?” he asked, his lips almost touching hers. She didn’t know if he was asking about going off to war or granting permission for a kiss, but right now, in this moment, it didn’t matter. Isabelle had traded kisses with boys as if they were pennies to be left on park benches and lost in chair cushions—meaningless. Never before, not once, had she really yearned for a kiss.

“Oui,” she whispered, leaning toward him.

At his kiss, something opened up inside the scraped, empty interior of her heart, unfurled. For the first time, her romantic novels made sense; she realized that the landscape of a woman’s soul could change as quickly as a world at war.

“I love you,” she whispered. She hadn’t said these words since she was four years old; then, it had been to her mother. At her declaration, Ga?tan’s expression changed, hardened. The smile he gave her was so tight and false she couldn’t make sense of it. “What? Did I do something wrong?”

“No. Of course not,” he said.

“We are lucky to have found each other,” she said.

“We are not lucky, Isabelle. Trust me on this.” As he said it, he drew her in for another kiss.

She gave herself over to the sensations of the kiss, let it become the whole of her universe, and knew finally how it felt to be enough for someone.

*

When Vianne awoke, she noticed the quiet first. Somewhere a bird sang. She lay perfectly still in bed, listening. Beside her Sophie snored and grumbled in her sleep.