Except for Herr. It seemed they deserved each other. They kissed and they fought and then they kissed again. It was like hearing the bombs in the distance—she hardly registered the bombs or the yelling anymore.
Hitler’s man said he was going north. To sabotage an airfield. She didn’t know this English word—sabotage—but she doubted he was up to anything good. He and his friends might dress like the British, but they meant this country and her people great harm.
One day, when she left here, she would tell someone what the Terrells were doing. That these men knew how to find the house. That they talked about this sabotage and the Third Reich.
Most of them pretended she wasn’t there, except when they needed her voice. They laughed with Frau while Brigitte was in her room. Saying it wouldn’t be long now before Germany won the war.
Only one man really noticed her, and that’s because she stole his black fountain pen so she could write more letters. He searched the cottage for an hour but never found it under her floor. Not that stealing was right—Mama would probably have punished her for it—but she had this burning need to write. Almost as strong as her pangs of hunger when their parcels were late to arrive. Or Hitler’s men ate all their food.
On the other side of the channel, someone was listening to her, to know when to send the men. And when the men arrived. The pen, she told herself, was payment for her voice.
Frau thought Brigitte was throwing all of Lady Ricker’s letters into the fire, but she was tossing only the German translations into the flames. The English versions she hid inside her blouse before taking them to her room.
Even last summer, Frau made her build a fire for the letters. No matter how hot it was. No matter that she wouldn’t let Brigitte outside. She still insisted on burning the words.
But these days, Frau didn’t watch her as closely as she used to. Sometimes let her wander in the trees in the cold, almost as if she wanted Brigitte to run again. As if she were the source of Frau’s troubles instead of her husband. Or Lady Ricker.
Brigitte was twelve now, and when Frau let her wander, she searched for a town, for someone like the Belgian monks who could help her escape her prison cell, but it seemed the buildings she saw when they first arrived were all a mirage. Or perhaps it had been a dream. She’d ask the postman, but Frau locked her door whenever he knocked and her window to the outside was still jammed.
She was going to fix the window, so she could breathe in river and pine. And so one day she could run back to Dietmar.
Since there was no place for her to run now, she closed her eyes on these cold evenings and began to dream. Behind the veil of darkness, she could imagine anything. The taste of roast duck and potato dumplings. Gingerbread and Glühwein. The sound of singing that poured from the churches. The lights of the Christmas markets at night.
Any light at all.
Stille Nacht! Heilige Nacht!
All is calm, all is bright.
Brigitte sang the words in her head so no one could hear. Inviting the peace birthed that night to settle into her room as well.
CHAPTER 33
_____
Lucas sprayed pink soap out of the wand, covering his Range Rover with foam in the self-service bay. Thankfully, mud seemed to be the only damage done to his vehicle, and the soap and water drained that away.
The wand in hand, Lucas rounded the car a second time, holding it like he was some sort of commander blasting a machine gun. He was still fuming, it seemed, about Kyle Logan’s bravado when he helped them extricate the car. The man had embraced his role as rescuer and rural transportation expert, dispensing tip after tip about driving on back roads and how to remove oneself from the clutches of mud.
Lucas was not impressed.
Pink globs bounced off the oversoaped car, landing on Quenby’s sleeve streaked with mud from her fall. She flicked them off. “It’s already clean,” she said from behind him.
Lucas sprayed another round across the hood—or bonnet, as the British called it. “He forced us off the road just so he could talk to you.”
“Oh, please.”
“Seriously, he couldn’t stop flirting with you. Didn’t even care that I was with you—”
“Technically, you’re not with me, Lucas.”
“Of course not, but the man doesn’t know that,” he growled. “What if I was with you?”
“Then you’d have the right to be offended.”
He flicked the switch on the wall, and a stream of water sprayed from the wand. “I reserve the right to be offended either way.”
She crossed her arms. “The right to expunge records. The right to be offended. I need to become a lawyer.” When he turned, a plume of water sprayed over her shoulder, sprinkling down on her clothes. “Lucas!”
He turned back toward the SUV, but not before she saw the smirk on his face. “My apologies.”
“Not accepted,” she said, trying to shake the water off her blouse. “You were the one who asked me to drive.”