Juliette’s eyes flashed to Mathilde before returning to Elise. “Yes, yes, of course,” she said, but Elise could hear the lie in her friend’s words. “Come. Ruth Levy and the children are here.” She glanced behind Elise, blinking a few times as she seemed to register where her friend had come from. “Was the door unlocked?”
Elise nodded, and Juliette muttered something under her breath, and then hurried past Elise and Mathilde to lock the front door of the shop, turning the sign in to the window to indicate that it was closed. When she rejoined them a moment later, she beckoned them to follow her. “What is happening, Juliette?” Elise asked, but Juliette didn’t reply.
They emerged a few seconds later into the parlor, where Madame Levy sat, holding a cup of steaming ersatz coffee in her shaking hands. Paul sat opposite, frowning, while Georges and Suzanne played quietly with Alphonse, Claude, and Lucie on the floor, their faces as somber and drawn as their mother’s.
“What is it?” Elise asked, looking from Paul to Madame Levy to Juliette as Mathilde tottered off to sit beside Lucie, who was squinting in concentration as she tried to build a tall stack of wooden blocks.
“There’s been another police action,” Paul said after a long, awkward pause. “You haven’t heard?”
Elise shook her head slowly, a knot forming in her stomach. “Where? What happened?”
Paul opened his mouth to reply, but Madame Levy spoke first, her tone flat. “The onzième arrondissement, on the other side of Paris. Early this morning. There was an arrest order. All Jewish males between eighteen and fifty, except for Americans. They closed the metros, barricaded the streets, went door-to-door before dawn. If the men weren’t home, they took another family member. Women, children.”
Elise glanced in horror at Juliette, who looked down.
“The operation isn’t done,” Paul said, his voice low. “But we’re hearing as many as three thousand Jews are on the list in the onzième alone.”
Elise struggled to catch up. “But… why?”
“They mean to do here just what they’ve done in Germany.” Madame Levy wiped a tear away.
“It’s not possible.” Elise looked at Juliette and then back at Madame Levy. “Not in France.”
“Elise,” Madame Levy said, the gentleness of her tone breaking something in Elise. “It was the French police leading this raid. This is what the Germans do. They make things terrible for everyone, and then by the time they begin removing us, no one notices. No one cares. Fewer mouths to feed.”
“Certainly no one feels that way,” Elise said, turning to Juliette for support. As Elise looked back at Madame Levy, a chill ran through her. “Madame Levy, surely you’ll be safe.”
“It is not myself I worry about. It is the children,” Madame Levy said, her voice barely audible now. “It is why I came to see Juliette today.” She glanced at Juliette. “I’ve received an offer to help Georges and Suzanne.”
“Help them?” Elise repeated. She glanced over at the Levy children, who were more subdued than usual, their voices low as they talked to Claude and Alphonse. Lucie and Mathilde were working together now on the stack of blocks.
Madame Levy cleared her throat, but it took a few seconds for the words to come. “Take them away from here. Move them somewhere safe.”
“But you…?” Elise asked.
“The offer is only for children. But it would give them a chance to live. I—I think it might be the only choice.”
Paul was nodding, Juliette staring at Madame Levy blankly, but Elise couldn’t accept it. “No, no. That can’t possibly be. They’re your children. They should be with—”
“They should be alive,” Madame Levy interrupted, her voice shaking. “That is all that matters now—that they live.”
Slowly, she explained the situation. The Oeuvre de Secours aux Enfants, the OSE, had been established before the Great War to assist Jewish children and to provide medical services in communities suffering from persecution. Since the start of the war, it had set up a network of children’s homes to take in young refugees, mostly from Central Europe and Poland, who had nowhere else to go.
“But you have a home here,” Elise said when Madame Levy paused to collect herself. “Your children aren’t refugees.”
“I’m a foreign-born Jewish widow, Madame LeClair. If I’m not on a list already, I will be soon—and then my children will be alone.” Tears pooled in Madame Levy’s eyes. “This isn’t a decision I make lightly, but being a parent is not about doing what is right for ourselves, is it? It’s about sacrificing all we can, big and small, to give our children their best chance at life.”
“But there must be another way, a place for all three of you to go together.” Elise thought fleetingly of suggesting they come stay with her, but with Olivier’s activities and his increasing carelessness about the expression of his political views, she would only be moving the Levys from the frying pan to the fire. She glanced desperately at Juliette, who pressed her lips together and shook her head. “Perhaps at my apartment…” Elise said, despite her misgivings. Surely they could figure something out.
“Juliette suggested this, too, and it’s very kind,” Madame Levy said. “But it is impossible. Your husband is well-known, and there are many people in and out of this bookstore. One of the things the Germans excel at is turning man against man, you see. When people are hungry, they will betray their neighbors for the price of a few meals. We would be too conspicuous at your apartment, Madame LeClair, or here above the bookstore. It is a risk I cannot take for my children, though it means very much to me that you offered.”
Elise looked helplessly at Juliette, who appeared just as lost as she felt. “There must be something we can do.”
“There is,” Madame Levy said. “You can pray for my children. And you can talk to yours about never turning their back on their fellow man. Maybe one day, we’ll all live in a better world.”
CHAPTER TEN
On the day the following week that the woman from the OSE came to take Georges and Suzanne away, Juliette left Paul in charge of the store and the children and went to spend the afternoon with Ruth, who was inconsolable. There was nothing Juliette could say to make it better. Her grief over losing Antoinette existed always at a low hum in the core of her heart, allowing her to empathize with the devastating losses of others, but this was something different. And though Juliette understood that Ruth had done what she thought was best, she couldn’t imagine sending her own children off to the unknown. How could Ruth live with it?
“It’s not fair,” Juliette whispered, settling for the most obvious thing she could say while she rubbed Ruth’s back. The older woman was bent over in grief, a cup of tea, now cold, before her on her small table. She hadn’t spoken in more than an hour, had hardly moved a muscle.
“The war will be over soon,” Juliette tried again after a while. “You’ll see. The children will return home safe and sound.”
Finally, Ruth looked up. It was almost as if she was registering for the first time that Juliette was even there. “You can’t possibly believe that.”
Juliette’s smile of comfort froze on her face. “That the children will be safe? Of course I do. You must, too.”
“No. That it will be over soon. This is just the beginning, Juliette. Don’t you see? By the time it’s all over, there will be no home for them to return to.”
Juliette looked around her. This was the first time she had seen Ruth’s apartment, which made her feel ashamed. Yes, Ruth had started out as a customer, but over time, she had become a friend. Why hadn’t they shared coffee in each other’s home? Why hadn’t she asked the obvious when Ruth had stopped making purchases at her bookstore, when it had become clear that her children were still wearing clothes they had outgrown? She’d been so buried in her own concerns about the future that she had neglected to see what was happening right in front of her. “You can’t afford the apartment anymore, can you?”
“No.” Ruth didn’t meet her eye, and in the silence, Juliette studied the small room, where it appeared all three of the Levys had slept. She had imagined something different, especially since she knew Monsieur Levy had been reasonably successful, but he’d been gone for years, and this apartment was hardly bigger than Juliette’s kitchen. Life, it seemed, had been letting Ruth down for longer than Juliette had realized. And so, too, had she, by failing to notice.
“We can help you,” Juliette found herself saying, though she couldn’t imagine where she would find the money. No one was buying books anymore, and she was already worried about how she and Paul would feed the children and keep them warm this winter. But she could talk to Paul about it. They would find a way. “Let us help.”
Ruth blinked at her, her eyes bloodshot, her gaze unfocused. “I’ve already made my decision, Juliette. I need to leave Paris.”
Suddenly, though the summer heat was oppressive, Juliette felt very cold. “But where will you go?”