She walked the dozen blocks home, holding tight to Mathilde’s little hand, knowing that she had been dismissed. But she had seen it on Monsieur Bouet’s face, too, the uncertainty, the worry. And that, more than being treated like a dim little woman, gnawed at her. The world was shifting beneath her feet, and she had the terrible feeling that soon there would be nowhere to stand.
“I want to go to the woods room,” Mathilde told her once they had walked back into their apartment. It was what Elise wanted, too. Mathilde was two and a half years old now, and the star-soaked sky Elise had painted a year earlier had become their refuge, the place they went nearly every day to imagine a world without war, a Paris without swastikas snapping in the breeze.
Now, she brought Mathilde into her painted studio and cleared a space in the middle of the floor where they could both lie down and stare up at the starlit sky, imagining they were somewhere else, anywhere else.
“Tell me the thing, Maman,” Mathilde said as Elise pulled her close, both of them on their backs on the marble floor. “Tell me the thing your papa told you.”
“Under these stars,” Elise murmured, hoping that somewhere out there, wherever he was, Olivier could hear her, too, “fate will guide you home.”
“Fate will guide you home,” Mathilde echoed. Elise felt tears in her eyes as she held her daughter tightly. “Don’t cry, Maman,” Mathilde said after a moment, reaching up to touch Elise’s damp cheek. “We are safe here in the woods room.”
“We are safe,” Elise repeated, and as she stared up at the trees and the stars, she wished she could believe that Mathilde was right.
It was midday on Wednesday when there was a sharp knock on the apartment door, and Elise knew, even before she peered out the peephole, that it was the end of life as she knew it, the end of everything. She just hadn’t imagined how quickly it could all slip away, like sand through her fingers.
She paused before answering the door, walking first to Mathilde, who was sitting on the floor, coloring an old, torn canvas with crayons. “Darling,” she said, bending to her daughter. There were so many things she wanted to say in that moment, but she couldn’t pause time long enough for the words to come.
Mathilde looked up, her lips bowed into a tentative smile. “Maman,” she said, holding up her picture. “See?”
The three scribbled figures she had drawn looked a bit like swirling tornados with arms, but Elise knew just what they were meant to be, and it made her heart break a little. “This is you and me and Papa, yes?” she asked, and when Mathilde enthusiastically nodded, her grin widening, Elise had to resist the urge to grab her daughter and flee before the bad news could reach them. But the truth was, she knew both exactly who was knocking, and equally, that she could not run from what he’d come to say. She kissed Mathilde on the head and forced herself to cross the room and open the door.
“Madame LeClair.” It was Monsieur Bouet, just as Elise had known it would be, and she could see the truth on his face before he said the words. Something terrible had happened to Olivier.
“Is he in prison, then?” she asked. “Or dead?”
He looked surprised that she had gotten to the point so quickly. He cleared his throat. “I’m afraid he is not coming home, Madame LeClair.”
“In prison or dead?” she repeated, hearing her own voice rise an octave. Her hands shook, and she grasped the door to steady herself. “Monsieur Bouet, you must tell me.”
Again, he hesitated, at first looking away and then seeming to steel himself for the inevitable as he once again met her gaze. “He was arrested on Friday.” His words were slow, too slow. “They caught him at a party meeting. The men he was with were suspected of some sabotage.…” The space between his words was lengthening, as if he feared reaching the end of the story, as if he wished to hold it off as long as possible. “They took him to avenue Foch and the SD… they tortured him. Nothing you need to know about, Elise. I’m sorry. But when they realized he wasn’t going to give them any more names, they—” He stopped abruptly.
“What, Monsieur Bouet?” she demanded.
“They beat him, Elise.” The sentence came out in a cruel tumble. “He did not survive.”
A tremor moved through Elise, followed by an eerie stillness. She stared at him. “He’s dead?” The words didn’t feel real. Yet it had been so clear, from the moment he’d decided to walk down this path, how this would all end for him. “Olivier is dead?”
Monsieur Bouet cleared his throat. “He didn’t give up any of the others. He was standing for what he believed in. Most men can’t say that. You should be proud, Madame LeClair.”
“Proud,” she repeated numbly.
Monsieur Bouet once again shifted his gaze away from her. He seemed to be looking at Mathilde when he spoke again. “There’s more, I’m afraid.” He cleared his throat. “They’re aware he’s married to an American.” This time his cough was more pronounced as he looked back at her. “They seem to think that you might have been part of Olivier’s actions, that you might know his contacts. That you’re working with the communists, too.”
“What?” The world went still. “Why would they believe such a thing?” When he didn’t answer, the puzzle pieces rearranged themselves in her mind, and she drew a sudden breath in, putting her hand over her mouth. “He told them I was involved?”
“You must understand, he was being tortured.”
She felt ill. “He protected his compatriots by giving me up?”
Monsieur Bouet couldn’t seem to meet her eye. “I’m afraid it’s very likely they will come for you soon. Time is of the essence, Madame LeClair.”
“But, Monsieur Bouet, I know nothing of his activities. I didn’t support what he was doing. It was one of the things we argued about all the time.”
“I’m aware.” His voice was tight. “But they will not believe you. Or at the very least, it won’t matter. The Germans aren’t after truth right now; they’re after blood.”
“No,” she whispered, all of it washing over her in an instant— what was coming, what it meant, what she would need to do. She turned to look at Mathilde in horror, just as Monsieur Bouet startled her by taking a step into the apartment.
“If you’ll let me in, Madame LeClair, I will tell you the plan.”
“There’s a plan?” she asked weakly, stepping aside, though the way he filled her entryway made her feel like she wanted to retch, because in with him swept grief and danger and things unknowable. Still, she closed the door behind him.
He looked once more at Mathilde and then withdrew from his back pocket a small handful of papers, which he thrust at Elise. “Here. New identity documents.”
“Identity documents?” She flipped through them. He had handed her an identity card, ration cards, a library card, and a bicycle ticket, all bearing the name Leona Denaes, though it was her own photograph attached to the identity document. “I—I don’t understand.”
“Olivier had them made several months ago. Just in case.”
“False papers for me?” Elise stared at them for a few long seconds before looking up. “And what of Mathilde? There are papers for her, too?”
This time, when Monsieur Bouet reached into his back pocket and pulled out another small stack, he wouldn’t meet her gaze. He handed a baptismal certificate and a birth announcement to Elise, who stared at them, flummoxed.
“But her name doesn’t match mine,” Elise said.
Monsieur Bouet didn’t say a thing.
“Monsieur Bouet, you’ve given her the surname of my friend Juliette.”
In the split second before Monsieur Bouet replied, Elise suddenly understood, and her whole body went stiff and cold. “No. Oh, no, no.”
“It was Olivier’s idea.” Monsieur Bouet effortlessly caught Elise as her knees buckled and she started to fall. He had known, even before her own body did, that she would collapse. He had known, she realized, far more than she did about her own life, her own future, all along. “He told me about the promise you and Madame Foulon made to each other. If he was ever caught, he knew the authorities would come looking for you. And if you fled, they would know you’d be traveling with your daughter. It would make you much easier to find.”
“No.” It was all Elise could muster, an utter rejection of all that he was trying to sell her.
“It’s for the best, Elise. It’s the only way to protect her—and yourself.”
“No.” This time, the word was a low wail, so saturated in grief that it made Mathilde look up from her drawing and stare at her mother.
“Maman?” the little girl asked, and the single word undid Elise. She came apart in huge, heaving sobs, but Monsieur Bouet didn’t reach for her or try to comfort her; he merely stood there, staring at her, waiting for the storm to pass. When she forced herself to stand again, Mathilde was beside her, looking up at her with wide eyes.
“Maman?” Mathilde asked again. “Why are you crying, Maman?”
“Oh, my baby, my baby,” Elise moaned, and Mathilde, who couldn’t possibly understand what was happening, wrapped her arms around Elise’s legs and held tight.
“It’s okay, Maman,” Mathilde whimpered, but nothing would ever, ever be okay again.