The town-hall stairway survived the explosion, but Odette had a difficult time climbing them with no railing and a wide opening on one side. Parts of the building dropped randomly from above, keeping her snug against the wall.
The hallway to DuFour’s office remained intact, and the door closed. He had always made such a show of locking and unlocking, probably he was cowering in there right now. Out the window he would go, that was her thought. For all he had done to her, to Guillaume, to all the people of the village, DuFour must go out the window. But when she touched the door it swung back on its hinges, and there was no office on the other side. Just open air, and a smashed desk amid the rubble below.
She held the doorframe, scanning the debris. Was DuFour buried in there? One could hope. Odette spat with satisfaction and began to make her way back down. She considered her good fortune at surviving a bomb so near, at being free.
The contentment did not last. As she reached the street Odette could see, despite the litter of downed trees and broken buildings, that the blue bicycle was gone. The scoundrel had run before the bombs fell. Frustration redoubled her anger.
She straightened her clothes and decided: next stop would be the cottage of that whore Michelle. The day before, Odette had listened on her illicit radio to reports from Rome, where the occupying army fell, the Allies gained control, and the people took it upon themselves to punish some of their neighbors’ conduct. Yes, Odette hurried across the square to the concealment of the hedgerows. She knew exactly what to do with a collaborator.
Chapter 34
Emma stood before town hall, stunned. The right half of the building was gone, flattened, a jumble of rock with pipes and wires protruding like some industrial monster was buried beneath. The left half was intact, but with a gray coating of dust. It was an odd joke, that the building’s damage mirrored her own, but she slipped out of the wagon straps and, leading with her open eye, ascended the rubble. From above, she could peer unimpeded into the basement, and see for herself that no prisoner remained in the cell below. Nor, Emma was reassured to note, was there any bloodstain on the floor or walls.
She returned to street level with care, holding her splinted arm out for balance, and pulled her wagon toward the village green, and Odette’s café.
When Emma wheeled onto that street, however, she noticed something else first: Uncle Ezra’s bakery. A continent of time had passed since she’d last stepped inside. Now the door was broken open, all the windows smashed, and as she saw the shelves tipped against one another, the walls stained with mold, the giant mixer on its side, Emma felt a thousand years old. Her body hurt, Thalheim would shoot her at the first opportunity, the invasion had come too late. An armored truck rattled down the side road, its gun pointed ahead, its smokestack billowing black. Emma considered sitting down right there, accepting whatever might come, inviting the eternal rest that she suspected was not a great distance away.
But then she heard singing. Not a graceful melody or fine voice, but a high piping, somewhere between infant and bird. It was the most innocent sound to enter Emma’s ears in as long as she could remember, so she slipped out of her straps and followed it. The singsong came from Odette’s café.
Finding the front door open a crack, Emma pushed it wider with her splint. There, at a table for two, doodling with her finger on the tablecloth, sat Fleur.
“I went for water,” she sang, almost in a whisper. “I only went for water.”
“Is Odette here?” Emma asked.
The girl needed a moment to answer, bringing herself out of reverie and squinting at Emma as if she did not recognize her.
“She told me to come here if something went wrong.” Fleur spoke as if she were still singing.
Emma came to the table and sat across from the girl. “Did something go wrong?”
“Only the last part. The last little part.”
Emma looked the girl over. “Are you all right? What happened?”
“I went for water,” Fleur answered. “That was when the bomb fell into the house. All I did was go for water.”
“Oh my dear. And your mother—”
“It’s not my fault. She asked me to.”
Emma nodded. “I see. I’m very sorry. But truly it’s not your fault at all. You had no way of knowing—”
“This was only the last little part anyway.”
“What do you mean?”
Fleur made a face. “My mother died halfway when they shot my father. Then almost halfway more, after what the soldiers did to her. Today was the last little part. I have been waiting for it.”
The girl rose and went to the door, which opened onto the village green. Once, this had been a place old men played boules at noon, young men sang during a night of drink, Odette both served and ruled, and now it was deserted. Fleur stuffed her hands into her frock’s deep pockets.
Emma sat there, ruminating that the girl might be the most beautiful creature she had ever seen. And now another orphan of the war. She came and stood beside Fleur. “What do you have in your pockets, that you must be fiddling with it all the time?”
The girl shrugged and lifted one hand. It held gardening shears, metal ones with yellow rubber grips on the handles.
Emma took the thick scissors in her good hand. “You’ve been cutting flowers? How sweet.” But then she opened the shears, and saw that the blades were rutted and gouged. “Or what have you been cutting?”
The girl grinned, but it was a naughty smile. “Wires.”
“What do you mean, wires?”
“Any wires. My father showed me how.”
Emma ran her thumb along the blades. They were ruined. “I don’t understand.”
“We villagers have no use for wires. But the soldiers, they need wires for everything. Whenever there is no one around, I snip them. My father said it was good to do this, so I cut some wires almost every day. And now I have no family, which is when Odette said I should come here.”
“Don’t cry,” Emma said. “It will be all right.”
Fleur drew her head back, as if from a bad smell. “I am not crying. My father and mother are together. And anyway, do you know how hard it is to feed a ghost?”
Lost for an answer, Emma gaped a moment at the shears, then held them out to Fleur. The girl tucked them in her pocket, sidled to the table, and began doodling with her finger again.
“I went for water,” she sang, as if no one else were there. “I only went for water.”