Eve finished her drink in one long swallow. “Oh, yes. Later, people called her the queen of spies. There were other intelligence networks in the first war—I learned later about the women who worked in them—but none were as fast or as precise as Lili’s. She ran nearly a hundred sources covering dozens of kilometers of front, just one woman . . . The top brass all mourned when she was arrested. They knew they wouldn’t be getting the same quality of information once she was in German hands.” A mirthless smile. “And they didn’t.”
Rose and me, Finn and his Gypsy girl, Eve and Lili. Were we all three hunting ghosts from the past, women lost in a maelstrom of war? I’d lost Rose at Oradour-sur-Glane and Finn lost his girl at Belsen, but maybe Lili was still alive and well. Would seeing her again cure what ailed Eve, the guilt and the grief? I opened my mouth to ask about Lili’s fate, but Eve was already speaking again, eyes fixed on me.
“I have spent more than th-th-thirty years picking things up after what happened in Lille. Which is why you shouldn’t take too long to mourn your cousin, Yank. Because you’d be surprised how weeks turn into years. Do your grieving—smash a room, drink a pint, screw a sailor, whatever you need to do, but get past it. Like it or not, she’s dead and you’re alive.” Eve rose. “Let me know if you decide you’re a fleur du mal after all, and I’ll tell you why you should come with me to find René Bordelon.”
“Must you always be so goddamn cryptic?” I hissed, but Eve had already risen and stalked off, leaving her empty glass. I stared after her, frustration and grief boiling in me like colliding rivers. What now, Charlie St. Clair?
“Louise de Bettignies,” Finn said, frowning. “‘Queen of spies’—I’ve heard of her, now I think on it. Probably an old headline about war heroines . . .”
He fell silent, rotating his beer between his fingers. I could see him pulling back into the tense edginess he’d had before Eve’s stories distracted him, his usual loose-limbed ease shifting to tight rigidity. “What’s wrong, Finn?”
“Nothing.” He didn’t look at me, just stared inside to where the tables had been pulled back for dancing and couples swayed to the music. “For me, this is normal.”
“No, it isn’t.”
“Coming back from the 63rd, I was like this all the time.”
My brother used to get tense and foul tempered whenever people asked him what it was really like at Tarawa. He’d get that same closed-off expression, and if they pushed too hard he’d explode into obscenities and storm out. I’d always been too afraid to follow him, afraid he’d lash out at me too, but now I wished that just once I’d followed him and taken him by the hand. Just—taken his hand so he knew that I was there, that I loved him, that I understood he was hurting. But I didn’t really understand any of that until he was gone, and it was too late.
I looked at Finn’s closed face and wanted to say, It’s not too late for you. But I knew words wouldn’t reach him in a mood like this, any more than words reached James, so I just reached out and touched his hand.
He shook me off. “I’ll get over it.”
Does anyone get over it? I looked at the chair where Eve had sat. Three of us chasing painful memories across the wreckage of two wars; no one appeared to be over much of anything. I thought of what Eve had said. Maybe you didn’t have to get over it so much as try. Or else weeks turned into months and then you looked up, as Eve had done, and saw you’d wasted thirty years.
More Edith Piaf drifted over the radio. I stood up. “Do you want to dance, Finn?”
“No.”
I didn’t either. My feet felt heavy as lead. But Rose had loved to dance. My brother too—I remembered doing a clumsy boogie-woogie with him the night before he left for the marines. They’d have been on the floor by now. For them, I could drag my heavy feet out there.
I moved to the crowd of dancers, and a laughing Frenchman pulled me in. I moved in time with his arm at my waist, then took his friend’s arm for the next song. I didn’t listen to any of their whispered French gallantries, just closed my eyes and moved my feet and tried to . . . Well, not forget my hovering cloud of grief, but at least dance under it. My feet might be heavy now, but maybe someday I could dance my way out from under the cloud.
So I kept moving to the music, song after song, and Finn nursed his single beer and watched me, and it probably would have been all right if not for the Gypsy woman.
I’d stepped away from the dancing to retie my sandal. Finn rose to throw away his half-drunk beer, and both of us saw the old woman behind a pushcart, dressed in faded colorful shawls. Maybe she wasn’t a Gypsy—she had the nut-brown face and bright skirts, but how did I know if that was what a Gypsy really looked like?—and she mumbled something as the café proprietor came flying out. She held out a palm, supplicating, and he waved his hands as though a rat had run through his kitchens. “No begging here!” He gave the old woman a push. “Move along!”
She trudged off, obviously used to it. The café proprietor turned away, scrubbing his hands down his apron. “Gypsy bitch,” he muttered. “Too bad they weren’t all shipped off and locked up.”
I saw the wave of dead flat anger that fell over Finn’s face.
I started toward him, but he’d already dropped his beer bottle in a sharp shatter of glass. He crossed the café in three strides, buried a hand in the surprised proprietor’s collar, yanked him up close, and flattened him with one brutal uppercut.
“Finn!”
My yell got lost in the shatter of china as the proprietor fell, taking a table with him. Finn shoved him over onto his back with one boot, flat fury still burning out of his eyes, then dropped a knee into the man’s chest. “You—lousy—little—shite—” he said with quiet precision, punctuating each word with his fist. The short efficient blows sounded like a meat mallet falling.
“Finn!”
My heart thudded. I elbowed my way past fluttering women and men rising with napkins about their necks, everyone flustered and openmouthed, but a waiter got there first, catching Finn’s arm. Finn hit him too, a quick explosion of fist into nose, and I saw the spray of blood, perfectly distinct, against a fallen tablecloth. The waiter reeled back and Finn went back to hitting the proprietor, who was shouting and trying to shield his face.
Six people pulled me off once I started bashing his head against a doorpost, Finn had said of the fight that landed him in prison. Thank God they got me off him before I cracked his skull.
I might not be six people, but no one was cracking a skull tonight. I grabbed Finn’s rock-tense shoulder, hauling with all my strength. “Finn, stop!”
He whirled, swinging at whoever was trying to stop him. His eyes flared the instant he recognized me, and he snatched away the force behind his blow, but it was too late to stop the momentum. His knuckles hit the corner of my mouth hard enough to sting. I fell back a step, hand flying to my face.
He went dead white, fist falling to his side. “Oh, Jesus—” He rose, ignoring the man lying groaning and bloody-nosed on the ground. “Jesus, Charlie—”