“It’s the only way,” Monsieur Bouet said, his voice flat. He glanced at Mathilde and then back at Elise. “You know that.”
Elise could only nod. He was right, of course. Olivier had already thought this through, had already planned for it, had known there would likely be a time when he’d be dead, and Elise would have no choice but to leave her child behind to save them both. He had done this to her, to Mathilde, with his eyes open, and that made it all the worse.
“Olivier said that your friend, this Juliette, sounded like a kind woman. He felt sure she would keep Mathilde safe.” Monsieur Bouet’s tone had softened slightly, but it made little difference.
“But I’m her mother! It is my job to keep her safe, Monsieur Bouet!”
Monsieur Bouet waited until she looked back up at him. “You will return for her one day, when the war is over. But for now, there is no other choice.” He hesitated, but only for a second. “I know this is difficult, Elise. But we must pack up and go now, before the Germans get here.”
“I can’t leave Mathilde. I simply can’t. It’s out of the question.”
“You would prefer to let her die? They will kill you, Madame LeClair.” Monsieur Bouet was firm. “And then they will take your child. She will be sent away to a labor camp, which she will not survive on her own. You would prefer that fate?”
Elise’s stomach lurched. “Of course not.”
“Then come. Pack your things. I’ll look after your apartment while you are gone.”
“The apartment,” she repeated, feeling dazed. She hadn’t thought about it; it seemed not to matter at all in the face of everything else. But if she just abandoned it, it wouldn’t be here when she got back; she had already watched vultures in the building sweep in and take living spaces that were not theirs.
“I will take care of everything.” His stiff smile didn’t reach his eyes. “It’s the least I can do. Now please, Madame LeClair, hurry.”
* * *
It took Elise ten minutes to pack up clothes for both of them, the stuffed bunny Mathilde loved, and some baby pictures Elise knew she would look at every night until they disintegrated under the salt of her tears. Constant had told her not to bring anything personal, that if she was arrested, they would use whatever they could against her. But she couldn’t go south to an unknown fate without taking a piece of Mathilde with her. As they headed out the door, with Mathilde chattering excitedly about what Elise had framed as a visit to see Juliette, she grabbed one last thing—the little teddy bear Mathilde had snuggled with for the first year of her life, before the bunny had prevailed in her affections. Elise held it to her face and inhaled deeply. It smelled of her daughter—talcum, sugar, and milk.
As they hurried along the tree-lined rue Michel-Ange, Elise scooped Mathilde into her arms and carried her, holding her close. Every pair of eyes that glanced at them felt like a threat, every uniformed German a potential land mine.
“Maman? I walk?” Mathilde asked after a while, her little body hot from the energy radiating from Elise. “I’m a big girl.”
“Let me hold you for now. I want to remember this. The weight of you. And I want you to remember, too, the way it felt to be part of me. I want you to remember that I am coming back, and that I will hold you this way again.”
Mathilde didn’t protest, but the look of worried confusion on her face broke Elise’s heart.
When they reached the door of Juliette’s bookshop twenty-five minutes later, Elise scanned the street around her to make sure they hadn’t been followed, though if someone had wanted to take them, they would have been picked up already. But she couldn’t shake the sense that there were bogeymen everywhere. If she couldn’t trust her own husband not to betray her, everyone was a liability. Finally, satisfied that there was no one lurking in the shadows, they went in.
“Elise!” Juliette hurried from the back of the shop, her cheeks pink, her smile wide. “I wasn’t expecting you today. What a—” But then she abruptly stopped, her gaze traveling first to the valise Elise clutched in her right hand, then to Mathilde, still pressed against Elise like a part of her body. “What is it?” she asked, her tone changing. “What’s happened?”
“Everything,” Elise replied, and then, because she didn’t want to break down again in front of Mathilde, she gently set her daughter down, kissed her sweat-shimmering forehead beneath her brown curls, and rushed through the back door into Juliette’s apartment, where Paul was sitting at the table, eating a sandwich. He sprung to his feet instantly, a defensive reaction, and then, blinking rapidly a few times, seemed to register that it was a familiar face.
“Madame LeClair?” Paul asked, taking a step forward, his arms outstretched, as if her imminent collapse was written across her face.
She went down a second later, her knees buckling beneath her, just as Juliette burst through the door.
“Elise, what is it?” Juliette cried as Elise began to wail, an inhuman, unnatural sound.
Elise clapped one hand over her mouth, and then the other, trying to stop the grief from pouring out. She didn’t want Mathilde to hear her, didn’t want her daughter’s last memory of this day to be one in which her mother fell to pieces.
“What’s happened?” Paul asked as he helped Elise from the floor to a chair at the table, where she sat like a rag doll.
Elise managed to look up, and then, turning her gaze to Juliette, she forced the words out. “Olivier is dead, and the Germans are coming for me. I need to get away, and I can’t…” She couldn’t push the final words out, but something in Juliette’s expression shifted, from compassionate to horrified to resolved, all in the space of a few seconds.
“And you can’t take Mathilde with you,” Juliette filled in softly.
Elise nodded, her body heavy with grief. She slumped forward on the table and was hardly conscious of Juliette rubbing her back, of Paul leaving the room in a hurry, his brow furrowed. Finally, she forced herself upright and took the deepest breath she could manage. “The art dealer, the one who has always sold Olivier’s work, came to tell me. He said they’re likely already on the way. That they’ll be looking for an American woman with a little girl. That if I keep her, neither of us will survive.”
“Oh, Elise.”
“Please, Juliette, can I leave her with you? I know what an enormous thing it is to ask, and if your answer is no…”
There was silence for a second. “You’re certain there’s no other way?”
Elise looked at her in horror. How could Juliette think that she had a choice? “No.”
“Then of course we will take her,” Juliette said. “It is just what we talked about, the promise we made to each other. We are each other’s family.”
Elise pressed her eyes closed and then forced them open. “Thank you.” Grief and gratitude rolled through her in waves. “Thank you, Juliette.” She hadn’t realized until that moment that there was a piece of her that had hoped Juliette would say no, and that Elise would be left with no choice but to take Mathilde with her. But that would be for her own sake, not her daughter’s, and right now, she had to choose Mathilde’s survival. Being a parent is not about doing what is right for ourselves, is it? Ruth Levy had said the previous summer, before sending her children away. It’s about sacrificing all we can, big and small, to give our children their best chance at life. The words had moved Elise to tears then, but she hadn’t truly understood until now just how true they were, or how deeply they would hurt.
She hesitated only a second longer before pulling Mathilde’s false papers from the waist of her skirt. She thrust them at Juliette, her hand shaking so violently that the papers fanned the air like the wings of a hummingbird.
As Juliette took them from her and skimmed the page on top, her brow furrowed. “You already have identity papers that make her mine?” Her expression was unreadable as she looked up.
“Olivier had them made, Juliette. I had no idea.”
“How will I explain why she has suddenly materialized here? A daughter from nowhere?” Juliette’s tone was laced with fear.
“She is Paul’s cousin’s daughter,” Elise said slowly, flatly, the story Constant Bouet had repeated to her quickly before departing. “Her husband died at the front, and his cousin died suddenly of influenza. There was nowhere else for her child to go, so you did the charitable thing and adopted her. The last page there is a death certificate for this cousin.”
Juliette looked back at the documents in her hands. “She has kept the name Mathilde?”
“Olivier’s art dealer said it would be less confusing for her. He said he’ll have his contact forge and file the adoption paperwork this week so that if anyone comes looking, there will be a proper trail.”