Still, there was plenty of laughter and joy in the bookshop, even with the war dragging on outside their doors, and Juliette knew they’d done the right thing by welcoming Mathilde into their family. She had been there for six months now, and already, Juliette had trouble imagining life without her.
“There will be plenty of time to play after we practice, children,” Juliette said brightly. “Now come along! Pretend the sirens are going!”
“But the sirens didn’t even go last time,” Claude grumbled. He had just turned eight, and he had begun to push back against his parents, already testing boundaries. He was kind and gentle with the girls, and a best friend to Alphonse, who was six. Juliette could already see the man he was going to be one day.
“Well, that’s why we have to be ready at a second’s notice,” she said, keeping her voice cheerful. She’d tried to make a game of this monthly practice, so the children wouldn’t be frightened, and they’d know not to panic if real bombs ever fell again. “So off to the cellar, now!”
Still grumbling, Claude took Lucie’s hand, and Alphonse—the only one among them who always seemed perfectly happy to practice for potential bombings, because he thought the masks were funny—grabbed Mathilde’s. Together they dashed into the store, where Paul was already waiting for them at the basement door against the far wall.
“I’m timing you, children!” Paul singsonged, glancing at his watch. “Can you beat your record?”
This spurred Claude to action, and he grabbed his mask from the pile by the door and then picked one up for Lucie, too. Alphonse did the same, grabbing masks for himself and Mathilde before the four of them raced down the stairs, Juliette right behind them carrying a lantern. Paul was the last one in, holding masks for Juliette and himself. He pulled the door closed behind them.
“Twenty seconds if you want to win!” he called, and Juliette bit back her laughter as Claude hurriedly wrestled his sister into her mask before pulling his over his head. Alphonse did the same, a bit more awkwardly, with Mathilde, and Paul had to step forward to help, since Alphonse had put her mask on upside down, but seventeen seconds later, by Paul’s count, all six of them had their masks on.
“La famille oryctérope is victorious again!” Paul cried, his voice muffled.
The children laughed, and all of them took their masks off, their faces red where the rubber had imprinted their skin. “We do look like aardvarks!” Mathilde exclaimed with a giggle, and as Juliette removed her mask, too, she smiled at her little family. As long as they were together, they would all be safe and well.
That night, after the children were asleep, she and Paul quietly made love, and they lay in bed afterward, holding each other. Juliette knew how fortunate she was to have a husband who was still here, a husband who hadn’t been conscripted, a husband who adored her and the children so fully. She loved him so much that it sometimes hurt.
“Where do you think Mathilde’s mother is now?” he asked, breaking the easy silence between them.
“I don’t know,” Juliette said after a moment. “Do you think… Do you think she’s still alive?”
Paul seemed to be considering this. “I do.”
“Can you imagine it, Paul?” she asked after a moment. “Leaving our children like that?”
She could feel Paul tense, ever so slightly. “Juliette, she did not have a choice. You know that. We all agreed it was the only option. The war has forced us all to make choices we couldn’t imagine.”
“But our children are the very essence of us. They are our hearts. Our souls. How could we survive without them?”
“By knowing that we have done the best we could to keep them safe, Juliette, just as Elise LeClair did. Just as Ruth Levy did. I can only imagine how painful it must have been for them to walk away.”
“Well. I could not do it.” While at first she had pitied Elise, that feeling had begun to turn the longer that Mathilde was a part of their family. As Mathilde had begun to forget her parents, Juliette sometimes caught herself thinking of Mathilde as a true daughter. “So you still believe Elise will return?” Juliette asked.
“I do.” Paul didn’t elaborate, and Juliette didn’t respond. But as his breathing slowed and grew more even, she rolled away from him and lay on her back, staring at the ceiling.
* * *
In the morning, Juliette arose before Paul and the children and let herself out into a quiet, fog-draped dawn. Boulogne was just beginning to stir, blackout curtains opening, people stepping onto balconies to water spring blooms, the sound of a baby crying from an open window. Head down, she hurried to the cemetery where Antoinette was buried. It had been nearly a month since she had visited, and the guilt of that sat heavy on her shoulders, like a funeral shawl.
As she knelt by her daughter’s grave, she began by apologizing for her absence. “I think of you each day, my darling,” she said, brushing the dirt from the headstone. It always seemed too permanent, too stark, to see her daughter’s name etched in the marble, the year of her birth and death tragically the same: 1936–1936. “I’m sorry I haven’t visited, but the other children have needed so much, and there have been days when we haven’t had enough to eat. Your father had to take a second job to help us along. He repairs furniture for Monsieur Simon, who pays him far less than he’s worth, but you remember how wonderful he was at building the bookshelves in our store, don’t you? Oh yes, he’s very good at building things, and I think this is good for him, to work with his hands.”
Juliette couldn’t remember when she’d started talking to Antoinette this way, as an older child rather than a helpless infant, but it comforted her to think of Antoinette continuing to grow up, just as her other children did. She would be seven years old now, and Juliette could imagine exactly who she would have become: kind like Claude, bright like Alphonse, inquisitive like Lucie.
The wind rustled in the trees, and a few leaves danced by. Juliette watched them go and chose to believe that it was Antoinette moving them, a sign to Juliette that she was still here.
“I’m sorry,” she repeated. As the wind picked up the leaves again, surely a response to Juliette’s words, she closed her eyes and put her hands on the cold earth. The world was not a fair place, but she was doing all she could to get by, to protect the children she had left. “I’ll return soon, my love,” she promised, and then she stood, and quickly dusting the dirt from her knees, hurried away, back to her real life, once again leaving her first daughter behind.
* * *
Three weeks later, on a warm April Sunday, Juliette awoke to all four children—Alphonse, Claude, Lucie, and Mathilde—standing at her bedside.
“Please, Maman!” Lucie begged. “May we go see the horses?”
“Please, Maman, please, oh, please!” the other children echoed, clamoring for her attention as she struggled to consciousness and pulled herself upright.
“The horses?” she asked, looking at their little faces, all bright with hope.
“At the racecourse, Maman!” Claude piped in.
“They’re running today!” Alphonse added.
“Ah.” Juliette had known this, of course. It was all anyone had talked about for the past week, the opening of the season at Longchamp. It seemed ridiculous to Juliette that something like horse racing would continue to go on in the midst of a war, but it wasn’t really for the entertainment of the conquered, was it? She knew as well as anyone that a sizable portion of the audience would be made up of German officers, oblivious to—or, more likely, unconcerned about—the fact that their very presence had decimated the racing industry. Many of the country’s prize horses had been killed in bombings during the initial invasion in 1940, and a substantial percentage of those who survived had been seized from their French owners and shipped to Germany, just like everything else France had to offer.
“My darlings, we have talked about this before. The racetrack will attract many German officers. It is simply not safe.” She glanced quickly at Mathilde, who of course made everything just a bit more dangerous for all of them.
“But there will be many French people there, too,” Mathilde said.
“But not us,” Juliette said. “We will not be there. We will be safe and sound in the store.”
By lunchtime, the streets outside were filling with spectators and horse enthusiasts coming and going from the nearby Pont de Sèvres metro station, and the children were swept up in the excitement of a busy day. For the first time in a year, their shop was bustling, and Paul happily manned the till, ringing up more sales than Juliette had imagined possible, enough that she knew they’d be comfortable for at least another month, even if Paul didn’t find much furniture repair work on the side.
“Shall we let the children go have a look at the action at the track?” Paul asked once the flow of customers had died down. The race would be starting soon. “They’ve worked so hard today. I’m certain all the German officers are inside by now. It should be safe enough to let them enjoy the festive atmosphere for a bit.”
Juliette hesitated. “You’re right. I’m being too cautious.”