The captain put out his hand. “You will show me, nonetheless.”
Lili bristled, an offended little French housewife. “Who are you—”
He glowered. “If you have passports, I want to see.”
That’s it, Eve thought, and the terror was so all-encompassing it felt almost calming. There could be no bluffing past the fact that she had no pass. They are going to take me. They are going to take me—
She raised her eyes as Lili handed her own safe-conduct pass over to the captain. As he bent his head to examine it, Lili’s and Eve’s eyes met. When they take me, walk away, Eve did her best to telegraph. Walk away.
And Lili smiled—that impish lightning flash of a smile.
“It’s her pass,” she said clearly. “I borrowed it illegally, you stupid Hun.”
CHAPTER 25
CHARLIE
May 1947
She was dead.
My best friend in all the world, dead.
It wasn’t enough that the ravenous war had reached out with greedy fingers and stolen my brother from me. The same beast had gobbled up Rose too, taken the girl I loved like a sister and riddled her with bullets.
I think I might have stood in numbed horror forever, there on that patch of tainted grass, pinioned between the church’s bullet-pocked wall and the figure of Madame Rouffanche. She might as well have been a pillar of salt like Lot’s wife, made immobile and monstrous by what she should never have seen. I could feel a scream scraping up my throat like a rusty blade, but before I could release it, Finn shook me hard. I stared up at him, dazed. Charlie, I could see him saying. Charlie lass—but I couldn’t hear him. My ears felt like they’d been shelled. All I heard was a monstrous buzzing.
Madame Rouffanche was still staring at me calmly. She deserved my thanks for bearing witness. She deserved balm for her pain and medals for her courage. But I couldn’t look at her. She’d been with Rose at the end, seen Rose fall. Why her and not me? Why hadn’t I been here, facing the Nazis with Rose? Why hadn’t I been at James’s side either, listening to him rage, telling him I loved him, drowning out the terrible cacophony of his memories? I loved them both so much, and I’d failed them so utterly. I’d let my brother go out alone on a cold night, not going for a beer as he’d mumbled to me, but for a bullet. I’d thought I might redeem that mistake by finding Rose when everyone else gave up hope—but I’d redeemed nothing. In a Proven?al café I’d told Rose I wouldn’t leave her, but I had. I’d let an ocean and a war come between us, and now she was dead too. I’d lost them all.
Failed, the harsh voice said in my head, over and over. The litany to which I’d been living. Failed.
I put my hands on Madame Rouffanche’s arm, giving a mute squeeze—all the thanks I could summon. Then I tore away and took off toward the street, stumbling as I ran. I fell over an abandoned flower pot, a broken earthenware thing that had probably been filled with scarlet geraniums on the doorstep of a French housewife who got gunned down on that June tenth. I scraped my hands, but I pushed upright and kept stumbling. I saw the shape of a car through my tear-blurred eyes and veered toward it, only to realize that it wasn’t the Lagonda but the abandoned Peugeot, rusting since the day its owner had been rounded up in a field and shot. I stumbled back from that innocent horrible car, looking wildly around me for the Lagonda, and that was when Finn caught up to me, pulling me into his arms. I buried my face in his rough shirt, squeezing my eyes shut.
“Get me out of here,” I said, or tried to say. What came out was a garble of harsh sobbing sounds, barely words at all, but Finn seemed to understand. He scooped me up off my feet and carried me to the Lagonda, lowering me into the seat without opening the door, then flung himself in behind the wheel. I shut my eyes tight and inhaled the comforting smells of leather and motor oil, curling against the seat as Finn roughly threw the car into gear. He drove as though a horde of ghosts was coming after us, and they were—oh, God, they were. In the forefront, in my mind’s eye, was a baby just old enough to toddle. She was lifting her arms toward me, wanting her Tante Charlotte, but the top of her head was blown off. Rose had named her after me, and now she was dead.
She’d been dead close to three years. I made another inarticulate sound as we bumped and rattled over the river. Everything that had driven me here had been a lie.
Once we were clear of Oradour-sur-Glane, Finn pulled up crookedly at the nearest roadside auberge and got us a room for the night. Maybe the proprietor saw the wedding ring on my hand (Mrs. Donald McGowan, Rose was never going to laugh at my Donald), or maybe he didn’t care. I stumbled into a threadbare chamber, and was stopped, swaying and tear blurred, by the sight of the bed. “I’m going to dream,” I whispered as Finn came up behind me. “As soon as I go to sleep I’m going to dream. Dream of her the way she—” I stopped, squeezing my eyes shut, clutching after my old comforting numbness, but it had shattered utterly. Tears doubled me over in great waves. I couldn’t breathe. I couldn’t see. “Don’t let me dream,” I begged, and Finn took my face between his big hands.
“You won’t dream tonight,” he said, and I saw tears in his eyes too. “I promise.”
He found a bottle of whiskey somewhere, and brought it back to the room. We didn’t bother with supper; we just kicked off our shoes, climbed onto the bed, sat our backs against the wall, and started methodically drinking our way through the bottle. Sometimes I wept and sometimes I just stared at the window, which went from daylit to twilight blue to night black and star filled. Sometimes I talked, recounting memories of Rose like rosary beads, and after that it was memories of James, and soon I was weeping again for them both. Finn let me talk and cry and talk some more, sliding my boneless body down so my head was pillowed in his lap. I looked up at some point around midnight and saw silent tears sliding down his still face. “That place,” he said softly. “Jesus Christ, that place—”
I reached up, smoothing his wet cheek. “Have you ever seen a worse one?”
He was silent for so long I didn’t think he was going to answer. Then he drank the rest of his whiskey in a sharp movement and said, “Yes.”
I wasn’t sure I wanted to know what could be worse than Oradour-sur-Glane, but he was already talking.
“Royal Artillery, 63rd Anti-Tank Regiment.” His big hand stroked my hair. “April ’45. We were in northern Germany, near Celle. You heard about the death camps?”
“Yes.”
“We liberated one. Belsen.”