The Nightingale

She nodded.

“How? Can you get me back home?”

“I don’t have the answers. Just do as they tell you, and Monsieur?”

“Yes, ma’am?”

“They are risking their lives to help you. You understand that?”

He nodded.

Isabelle turned to face her new colleagues. “He understands and will do as you ask.”

“Merci, Isabelle,” Lévy said. “Where do we contact you after your return from Amboise?”

The moment she heard the question, Isabelle had an answer that surprised her. “The bookshop,” she said firmly. “I am going to reopen it.”

Lévy gave her a look. “What will your father say about that? I thought he closed it when the Nazis told him what to sell.”

“My father works for the Nazis,” she said bitterly. “His opinions don’t account for much. He asked me to get a job. This will be my job. I will be accessible to all of you at any time. It is the perfect solution.”

“It is,” Lévy said, although it sounded as if he didn’t agree. “Very well then. Anouk will bring you new papers as soon as we can get a carte d’identité made. We will need a photograph of you.” His gaze narrowed. “And Isabelle, allow me to be an old man for a moment and to remind a young girl who is used to being impulsive that there can be none of that anymore. You know I am friends with your father—or I was until he showed his true colors—and I have heard stories about you for years. It is time for you to grow up and do as you are told. Always. Without exception. It is for your safety as much as ours.”

It embarrassed Isabelle that he felt the need to say this to her, and in front of everyone. “Of course.”

“And if you get caught,” Anouk said, “it will be as a woman. You understand? They have special … unpleasantries for us.”

Isabelle swallowed hard. She had thought—briefly—of imprisonment and execution. This was something she had never even considered. Of course she should have.

“What we all demand of each other—or, hope for, at any rate—is two days.”

“Two days?”

“If you are captured and … questioned. Try to say nothing for two days. That gives us time to disappear.”

“Two days,” Isabelle said. “That’s not so long.”

“You are so young,” Anouk said, frowning.

*

In the past six days, Isabelle had left Paris four times. She’d delivered packages in Amboise, Blois, and Lyon. She’d spent more time in train stations than in her father’s apartment—an arrangement that suited them both. As long as she stood in food queues during the day and returned home before the curfew, her father didn’t care what she did. Now, though, she was back in Paris and ready to move forward with the next phase of her plan.

“You are not reopening the bookshop.”

Isabelle stared at her father. He stood near the blacked-out window. In the pale light, the apartment looked shabbily grand, decorated as it was with ornate antiques collected over the generations. Good paintings in heavy gilt frames graced the walls (some were missing, and black shadows hung on the wall in their place; probably Papa had sold them), and if the black-out shades could be lifted, a breathtaking view of the Eiffel Tower lay just beyond their balcony.

“You told me to get a job,” she said stubbornly. The paper-wrapped package in her handbag gave her a new strength with her father. Besides, he was already half drunk. In no time, he’d be sprawled in the bergère in the salon, whimpering in his sleep. When she was a girl, those sad sounds he made in his sleep had made her long to comfort him. No more.

“I meant a paid job,” he said dryly. He poured himself another snifter of brandy.

“Why don’t you just use a soup bowl?” she said.

He ignored that. “I won’t have it. That’s all. You will not open the bookshop.”

“I have already done it. Today. I was there cleaning all afternoon.”

He seemed to go still. His bushy gray eyebrows raised into his lined brow. “You cleaned?”

“I cleaned,” she said. “I know it surprises you, Papa, but I am not twelve years old.” She moved toward him. “I am doing this, Papa. I have decided. It will allow me time to queue up for food and a chance to make some small bit of money. The Germans will buy books from me. I promise you that.”

“You’ll flirt with them?” he said.

She felt the sting of his judgment. “Says the man who works for them.”

He stared at her.

She stared at him.

“Fine,” he said at last. “You’ll do what you will. But the storeroom in back. That’s mine. Mine, Isabelle. I will lock it up and take the key and you will respect my wishes by staying out of that room.”

“Why?”

“It doesn’t matter why.”

“Do you have assignations with women there? On the sofa?”

He shook his head. “You are a foolish girl. Thank God your maman did not live to see who you have become.”

Isabelle hated how deeply that hurt her. “Or you, Papa,” she said. “Or you.”