“But the children…”
“They would go with you.” They both knew the words he wasn’t speaking. Paul was French; he would not be able to get papers to come. They’d been over this a hundred times in the previous year.
“Not all of the children, though,” Juliette said softly.
Paul’s breathing grew heavier. “Her soul is not here anymore, my love.”
“We don’t know that.” Juliette thought of little Antoinette’s grave, the tiny casket the priest had recited prayers over, the cold earth that had been shoveled on top of it. “I cannot leave her. What kind of a mother would I be? And I will not leave you.”
“If something should happen to me one day, my love, you must go. Even if it means leaving Antoinette behind.”
“I know.” But Juliette couldn’t imagine a world without him in it, a world in which she could not visit the grave of her lost child, a world in which she was once again on American soil, her feet planted an ocean away from her destiny.
* * *
Paul’s words swirled in Juliette’s head all week, so she was glad when, on Friday, Elise bustled through the door, pushing Mathilde in her elaborate baby carriage. After they’d exchanged kisses on the cheek, Juliette gestured toward the sales counter. “There’s something I’d like to ask you.”
Claude and Alphonse were happily playing with toy soldiers in the children’s section across the store, which was otherwise empty. Their business had slowed recently as many expatriates fled home, and money tightened for those who stayed.
“What is it?” Elise asked as she settled the carriage beside the counter and reached inside to pick Mathilde up. The girls were five months old now, both of them with heads of thick, dark hair and inquisitive blue eyes. Mathilde looked around, her gaze settling on Lucie, who was sleeping in a bassinet behind the cash register. She cooed in delight and reached out for her friend, which made Juliette smile. In such a short time, she and Elise—and now Mathilde and Lucie—had become inseparable, their friendship cemented by war.
“Paul thinks I should take the children and go back to the States,” Juliette said. “Has Olivier said the same to you?”
“No. In fact, he believes the opposite—that if I left, it would be a betrayal of him, that I should stay by his side and stand ready to fight for France.” She half smiled to lighten the words, but Juliette could see the concern in her eyes. “Are you thinking of leaving, then?”
Juliette glanced over at Claude and Alphonse, who were thoroughly involved in their game of make-believe. This shop was their world, all they’d ever known. “No.”
“Because of Antoinette?” Elise guessed, bouncing Mathilde a bit to soothe her restlessness.
Juliette nodded, relieved that her friend understood her so well. “But not only that. I just have the sense that this is where I’m meant to be. Besides, it’s almost certainly dangerous to try to leave now, and Paul couldn’t come with us. If there was an opportunity to go, I fear we’ve already missed it.”
“And with Lucie and Mathilde so young, how could we take them away from their fathers? That thought has haunted me, too.”
“But have we made a mistake? What if we’re not safe here? What if something happens, and we could have made a different choice?”
Mathilde whimpered a bit, distracting them as she reached out and grabbed a clump of Elise’s hair, pulling hard. Elise gently unwrapped Mathilde’s fingers and went back to bouncing her. “I think that life is full of roads not taken. And perhaps we’re safer here anyhow. There shouldn’t be fighting in Paris now that France has fallen, but what if we try to leave and our ship is bombed?”
“There are no good answers.”
“Not in the midst of a war.” They were both quiet for a moment, and then Elise added, “I also wonder what we’d have to return to, if we went back. My whole family is gone.”
“As is mine, except for an aunt I hardly know.”
Elise smiled at her. “So we will be each other’s family, Juliette. Here we are across an ocean, facing the unknowable. But I have you, and you have me, and our children have each other.”
Juliette impulsively reached out and wrapped her arms around Elise. Mathilde, suddenly sandwiched between them, giggled with surprise and pulled Juliette’s hair, which made them both laugh. “I’ve always wanted a sister,” Juliette said as she extricated herself from Mathilde’s grasp.
“As have I.” Elise’s smile faded, her expression growing resolute. “Whatever comes, you’ll always have me to rely on.”
As they held each other’s gaze, Juliette felt a great peace settle over her. This was what was meant to be. They would all be safe here, and one day, the war would end, and the Occupation would be just a terrible memory. She put one hand on Mathilde’s little cheek, and the other on Elise’s shoulder as she looked into Elise’s eyes. “And you’ll always have me.”
CHAPTER NINE
By the following summer, it was too late. Too late to turn back, too late to leave France, too late to claim a future different from the one Elise was blinking down. And it was too late for Olivier to change his fate, too; Elise could see that clearly now. For a while, his meetings with his socialist friends had subsided as they waited for Soviet ideals to come to France, but as time had gone by, the only thing that had happened was that the Germans had pressed their thumbs harder and harder on the backs of the French people.
The previous year, Olivier had begun working with an underground communist group that opposed the Occupation, although the party’s official policy was still to support Germany. But by early 1941, the Germans were arresting communists en masse. It was no surprise, then, that when Germany invaded the Soviet Union in June and Stalin ordered all communists to take up arms against them, Olivier had eagerly followed, contacting Picasso’s friend Jean Cassou and plunging headfirst into the resistance movement that had been forming since 1940.
He often vanished for days without a word of explanation, and when he returned, always full of apologies, she did her best to forgive him, to hold on to him a little tighter, to make love to him with more passion in hopes of making him stay. But it never worked, and she knew it in her bones that one of these days, he would walk out the door and never return.
“Think of Mathilde,” Elise said one balmy August night, their blackout curtains drawn, as they lay atop the rumpled covers of their bed. “Think of the risk to her, should you be discovered. Please, Olivier.”
Olivier didn’t respond right away, but his fingers trailed absent circles up her inner thighs, under her nightgown. It was hot, the night still, and with the blackout curtains drawn, the air inside their apartment was stagnant and spiked, as always, with turpentine. Olivier had been locked in his studio all day, and he had emerged, paint streaked and buzzing with energy, after Elise had already put Mathilde to sleep. At nineteen months of age, their daughter slept soundly now, except when the night was punctuated by air raid sirens or the percussion of bombs falling in the distance.
“I think of you both,” Olivier said. “All the time. It is why I fight, Elise. How else will we reclaim the life we are owed?” His hand was moving higher up her leg now.
“Why must you be the one to reclaim it? People know you.”
“I cannot fail to stand for beliefs simply because I have had success,” Olivier said, grunting as he raised himself up on an elbow to look at her. “I must stand for my country. For my wife. For my child. If I cannot do that, how can I look myself in the mirror?”
“But how could you look yourself in the mirror if a choice you make endangers us?” Elise protested, pushing away his hand.
He didn’t answer. He shifted his weight onto her, and she could feel the length of him pressing into her thigh. He covered her mouth with his, but her body didn’t respond as it normally did, arching into him. This time, she couldn’t quiet the voices in her head saying that this was wrong, all wrong, and that his ego would be their downfall. When she didn’t kiss him back, he pulled his face away, though he kept his weight on her body, pinning her to the bed. “You worry too much,” he said, his voice an angry rumble from somewhere in his chest.
“And you do not worry enough.”