“Do you know what, Grandmother?” she called back over her shoulder. “Everything is about to change.”
Mémé stroked her eyebrows with both hands. “Change?”
“Yes.” Emma pulled with her head up while the horse, snorting his nostrils clear, fell into step beside her. “Everything is about to fall apart.”
Chapter 27
In early evening on the fifth of June, Odette stood working in her kitchen when the café’s front door swung open, pushed so hard it clattered against a table.
“Not open for dinner till six thirty,” she called, chopping an onion. “And go easy on that door, would you please?”
“Here she is,” a familiar voice snapped. “As I told you.”
Odette turned to find DuFour standing at her kitchen’s entry. Two soldiers hovered behind him with rifles. “Oh, you,” she said. “What are you sniveling about? Or have you finally come for that free dinner I offered you?”
“You are under arrest for spying for the Resistance.”
“Go shuffle your papers,” she replied, returning to her cutting board. “I have soup to make.”
DuFour strode into the close room, clearing a way for the soldiers. “Arrest her,” he told them. “The Kommandant will want to hear everything.”
Odette pointed the knife at him. “I’m busy, I said. Now get out of my kitchen.”
One of the soldiers lowered his rifle. He did not speak. Odette sized up the three of them, only one in stabbing distance. Oh, the pleasure it would bring, to bury that blade in DuFour’s poochy potbelly. But he was not worth the repercussions.
After wiping the knife, Odette placed it on the cutting board, raked the diced onion into her palm, and dropped it into a pot of steaming broth. Inside boiled a good-sized lobster, and Odette had intended for it to draw a high price that night.
Now it would more likely go to waste. But hadn’t this moment been coming for months? Still, as she switched off the heat under the pot, Odette was surprised to find her throat tightening. So many foods for so many mouths, customers in fact expected within the hour, regardless of the bombing of the train station. Yet interrupting that meal’s preparation felt like an act of loss and surrender. It felt final.
Odette knew what it was to relinquish something precious: throwing a handful of dirt on a casket, releasing the hope of ever marrying and having children. By placing a top on that pot, she felt as though she were taking leave of her oldest friend.
“Go ahead,” she said to the soldiers. “I’ll behave.”
Odette kept her buxom chest out and shoulders back as she followed the soldiers out into the street. Rather than the garrison, they turned toward town hall, and she understood that she would not be facing the Kommandant right away. More likely, she would be locked in the cell that had held Emma’s father. Odette cast her gaze about, wishing the sky were not so gray, nor evening coming on, while she took a last view of Vergers for what could be months. Allied planes buzzed in the distance, as they had all afternoon, and she suspected that this arrest was DuFour’s doing entirely. If she managed to survive, she would roast him on a spit.
The town clerk shouted from behind, telling Odette to hurry, and she duly picked up her pace.
“Aha!” he cried, rushing forward. “You did it.”
“What did I do, you insect?”
“You hurried.”
“Yes, and so what?”
“I said it in their language.” He pointed at the soldiers. “Not ours.” He seemed almost to skip beside her. “You know their language. You have been spying all this time, in your café.”
At that, Odette felt her first flush of doubt. DuFour might be a first-class fool, but he had put her in serious trouble. “I don’t know what you are talking about.”
“Deny all you like. You have already revealed yourself.”
They marched off together in silence toward the jail.
Chapter 28
There was unusual traffic on the dirt roads on the evening of the fifth of June as Emma pulled for the last stretch home. First she happened across the parcel that had dropped from the airplane. It sat in a field to the left, on land that had been plowed but not planted, which struck her as a perfect metaphor for the condition of her country: fertile, ready to continue the cycle of seasons, but thwarted by the endless occupation. Mémé hopped off the wagon before it had come to a complete stop.
“Gifts,” she cried, feet wide for balance. “Sky gifts.”
Emma considered ignoring the salvage opportunity, and continuing home. A reckoning with the captain was coming soon enough. She should feed Mémé, hide the fuel jug, and make other preparations.
But seeing her grandmother excited like a child made Emma hesitate. Nothing she did now would alter what lay ahead. She slid from her harnesses and wedged a block behind one of the wagon’s wheels.
Mémé paced at the edge of the field. The package lay a few steps down the embankment, but the slope was steep and the grass wet. Stepping sideways, Emma inched down. When one of her shoes slipped, she caught herself with a hand on the ground, and after a few steps more she reached the field’s roiled soil.
The parachute lay flat on the dirt like the lung of a slaughtered pig. But a parcel wrapped in canvas lay alongside, making a strange sound. There was nothing remotely bomblike about it, so Emma began untying the cords. Anytime she jostled the basket it made that odd sound, familiar though she could not quite place it. She carried the package back to the wagon, fidgeting loose the canvas until at last she could see.
A dove. The parcel was a bird cage. Inside, a small gray-and-white bird, head bobbing, skittered back and forth on his pedestal. His cooing she recognized from the belfry of St. Agnes by the Sea, where scavenging pigeons congregated more frequently than parishioners. The bird clambered about in its cage, clinging to the bars with tiny red talons.
“What in creation?” Emma asked.
Mémé did not answer, busying herself with something at the roadside.
Emma unwrapped the package more. It also held parchment paper thinner than a blade of grass, two molded tubes as long as the tip of her pinkie but as thin as a fingernail, plus a cube of seeds pressed into fat that she understood at once was bird food.
By instinct she unwrapped the cube first, sliding it between the bars. The dove immediately began pecking at his feed. Emma sat back, facing Apollo. “Why in the world would they drop a bird to us?”
“Help me,” Mémé called from the field’s edge.
Setting the basket aside, Emma peered at her grandmother. She had clumped the parachute into a ball in her arms, rendering her unable to climb back up the bank. Yet she was grinning wider than Emma had seen in years.
“Oh, dear one,” Emma said, hurrying over. “What have you gotten yourself into now?”
“Silk,” Mémé answered with a laugh, raising her arms to hold the parachute high. “For your wedding dress.”
Chapter 29