Elise had given up hope that Ruth Levy would ever walk through the halls of the Lutetia, but Georges and Suzanne searched the incoming faces just as carefully as ever, their eyes cataloguing each detail of the women who walked by. Was this just repeated torture for the children to be disappointed again and again? Or did they need this as a way to let go of their grief, to begin to heal? She had, at first, leaned toward the latter, but as the weeks had turned into months, she had begun to question herself, and lately she hurried them through these painful moments of disappointment, eager to return home and put distance between the children and the thoughts of what could have been.
But something felt different today; there were more family members waiting than there had been in weeks, and there was a frisson in the air. “Is something happening?” she asked a harried-looking woman jotting things down on a notepad.
“A busload of women from an American army hospital,” she said, her words staccato. “They’re in bad shape, I hear.” She was gone before Elise could ask more.
“What is it?” Georges asked.
“Women,” Elise said, keeping her tone flat so as not to spark false hope. “From an American army hospital.”
“American women?” Suzanne asked, confused.
“Women the Americans helped, I think.”
Hope lit up in Suzanne’s eyes and then in Georges’s, and Elise hated herself for playing any role in instilling it in them. Optimism felt vulgar here.
“Do you think our mother might be among them?” Suzanne asked, and Elise couldn’t muster words of denial over the sudden lump in her throat. She decided in that moment that this would be their last day here. It was damaging to the children, and she’d done them a disservice by letting them believe there was a chance.
A door opened at the end of the hall, and a woman walked out, so stooped and frail that at first glance, Elise took her for a very old woman. But as she moved closer, she scanned the faces of the waiting family members, searching for someone who belonged to her, and Elise could see that she was, in fact, quite young. Her skin was sallow and loose, but it wasn’t lined, and it still had that impossible bloom of youth. She was perhaps twenty-two or twenty-three. Elise held herself still so the woman wouldn’t see the grief shudder through her as they locked eyes.
“The Ducelliers?” she asked, the words directed at Elise.
Elise looked around her, but it was clear the woman was speaking to her.
“The Ducelliers,” she repeated. Her eyes darted around. “They are my parents, my brothers, my sister. Do you know them?”
Elise just shook her head now, too shattered to speak for a second. The woman had survived the unimaginable and had come home, hoping to find her family, and none of them were here. Elise prayed that the Ducelliers were simply elsewhere, with no idea that their daughter was coming, but the reality was that they’d probably died long ago. “There are lists,” she managed to choke out. “Down the hall. Names of family members looking for loved ones. Maybe you will find their names there.”
The woman was already moving away by the time Elise croaked out, “Good luck.”
Her eyes followed, which is perhaps why she didn’t see the next woman shuffling toward them, her pace picking up as she approached. Georges was the first to recognize her, and his grunt of surprise was enough to trigger a second look from Suzanne, who gasped and then gave a little scream.
Elise turned, expecting to see another shopkeeper from the old neighborhood, someone the children had known in their old life, someone who would ensure that their false hope would survive for a little while longer. Instead, in the shell of an unfamiliar, stooped figure, on a face transformed by hunger, Elise recognized Ruth Levy, her skin nearly translucent, both cheeks scarred, but her eyes bright with hope and brimming with tears. “Children?” she whispered, limping over. She dragged her left leg, which seemed shorter than her right now. “Are you really here, or am I dreaming?”
And then the children were in her arms, and she swayed on her feet, but she stood strong, and the three of them held each other and sobbed, rocking back and forth as a single unit, as Madame Levy repeated over and over, “Georges, Suzanne. Georges, Suzanne. Georges, Suzanne.”
The broken record should have been the most beautiful symphony Elise had heard in months, so she was ashamed when a fresh wave of grief swept over her. A reunion with their mother was all the children wanted, and Elise hadn’t believed it possible. In her mind, their future would include her in it, as a woman who loved them, who would care for them, who would belong with them. And now, underneath this joyful reunion was a renewed and sweeping sense of loss.
Madame Levy’s gaze finally met hers over the heads of the children. “Madame LeClair? Is it really you?”
Elise took a hesitant step forward. All at once, she was acutely aware that she did not belong in this moment, that this had nothing to do with her. She had only been deceiving herself when she’d imagined she wasn’t all alone. “Madame Levy,” she said. “Thank God. You are home.”
“Maman,” Suzanne said, her voice muffled. She was still crushed against her mother. “Madame LeClair took us in. She has been caring for us these past months.”
Madame Levy’s eyes met Elise’s. “This is true?”
Elise nodded.
“And your husband, Madame LeClair? Your daughter? They are alive and well, too?”
Elise looked down without a word, and in Madame Levy’s sudden inhale, she heard understanding and compassion. She was still looking down and blinking back tears when Madame Levy’s slender hand shot out and grabbed Elise’s wrist, pulling her in with a surprising amount of strength. She was pressed against Georges and Suzanne, Madame Levy’s arms encircling the three of them, squeezing them close.
“Then you are our family now,” Madame Levy said simply, and Elise felt a strange peace settle over her as she relaxed into an embrace she hadn’t known she so desperately needed. “You are our family,” Madame Levy repeated, and Elise’s tears fell for the first time in months.
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
Madame Levy, who insisted now that Elise drop the formalities after all they’d been through and address her as Ruth, moved into Elise’s apartment on the avenue Mozart, and it somehow felt just right to have all three Levys living there. The place was alive in a way it hadn’t been when it was just Elise and Olivier, and it was full in a way it hadn’t felt when it was just Ruth’s children and Elise. She understood now that in order for a place to feel like a home, it needed to be full of love, equally given and received by all within it.
It took two months before Ruth was able to tell Elise her story, and in the weeks before she spoke of what had happened to her, she writhed in bed each night, moaning, awash in nightmares. She cried out, “Stop!” and, “No!” and Elise sometimes tried to wake her, but Ruth always arose to consciousness with glassy eyes and a faraway expression, part of her still in the past. Elise knew that whatever she had gone through had been horrific, but she hadn’t imagined just how awful it had been until Ruth began to speak one night, after the children were asleep.
“I almost got away,” she said, her voice hoarse as she broke a comfortable silence between the two women. They’d been sitting in front of the fire, the first they’d lit that autumn as the weather grew cold.
Elise turned to look at Ruth, who, in the past few weeks, had begun to gain weight, the color gradually returning to her cheeks. “You did get away. You’re here now, my friend.”
Ruth didn’t look at her. She was staring into the embers as if hypnotized by their glow. “I mean, before the war ended. I never made it out of France, but I was safe. I was living in a village near Chartres, in a banker’s cellar, along with two other women, all of us from Germany. With our accents, we could not blend in, could not live in public, so we were grateful for the protection. We heard about the invasion at Normandy, and we knew it was only a matter of time before France was liberated. But in the chaos, we were betrayed by a neighbor. The banker and his wife were arrested; I don’t know what happened to them. And then they came for us.”
Elise felt bile rise in her throat. “You were so close to the end of the war. So close to being safe.”
“Yes. We were on one of the last convoys east, more than a thousand of us packed into a few train cars.”
She paused, and against her heavy silence, Elise could hear the crackling of the fire and the ticking of the grandfather clock. “I’m so sorry,” she said, knowing it was not nearly enough.
“When we arrived, they separated us, selecting some for labor.” She coughed. “I was sent with many others to work in a textile mill. I still don’t know how I survived. I suppose it was because I was not in my right mind. I dreamed every night that I was holding tight to Georges and Suzanne, and in the mornings, I woke in a daze, not fully in my body, but somehow able to go through the motions.”