“I’m so sorry, Thomas.” Ruby moved closer to him on the couch and put her arms around him, pulling him into a hug. Her touch was electric. “I know just what it feels like to lose someone you love deeply, to feel as if you failed because you couldn’t save them.”
And just like that, the moment was over. “Yes, of course, your husband.” He pulled away, hating the pang of jealousy he felt. Of course she’d loved the man she’d married; it shouldn’t bother him to hear that.
Ruby looked startled. “No, that’s not who I meant.”
Thomas thought she might elaborate, but instead, she went silent, her eyes filling with tears. She folded inward, and she suddenly looked haunted, broken. He wanted to ask who she was talking about, who had shattered her this way, but he knew better than to press. Instead, he put his arm around her and murmured, “I’m very sorry, Ruby.”
“I don’t think I’ve ever talked to anyone like this before,” she said after a while.
“Neither have I.” They looked into each other’s eyes, and for a moment, he thought he might try to kiss her, but then he lost his courage.
“I feel as if I could talk with you forever, without running out of things to say,” she said at last.
And so they stayed up hours more, talking about everything, although she never told him whose death had broken her heart. He got up just past three in the morning to get them a couple of glasses of water, and when he returned to the living room, he found her asleep on the couch, her head tilted to the left as her hair spilled over her shoulders. He gently pulled a blanket over her and settled onto the hard-backed chair across from her. Then he simply watched her sleep until he himself drifted off, just before dawn.
When he awoke, her eyes were open and she was studying him. She quickly glanced away as he came to. “You’re up,” she said.
He smiled at her. “What time is it?”
“Just past nine. I never sleep this late.”
“Me neither.”
The silence between them felt loaded.
“You covered me with the blanket last night?” she asked finally. “After I fell asleep?”
“You looked so peaceful. I didn’t want to disturb you.”
He could see her swallow hard. “Thank you. That was very kind. I haven’t slept that well in ages.” She cleared her throat. “Anyhow, I promise I’ll try again today to find Aubert. I really am very sorry about the delay. You must be eager to move on.”
“No,” Thomas said carefully. He waited until she looked up at him. “The truth is, I’m not sure I want to leave.”
He loved the way her cheeks turned pink before she replied. “I just wish I had more food to give you. But with the rations . . .”
“Ruby, I have everything I need.” He looked her in the eye and wondered if there was any chance at all that she was feeling the same way.
SHE LEFT AN HOUR LATER, over Thomas’s objections that she was putting herself in danger. “We’re all in danger all the time,” she said with a sad smile as she paused in the doorway. “The only way to change that is to fight back.”
She was gone before he could reply. Thomas spent the next hour staring at Ruby’s framed photos, feeling helpless. She was risking her life for him, and there wasn’t a damned thing he could do about it.
He hadn’t expected this. He hadn’t expected her. She was different from the girls who hung around the air bases, batting their eyes at the pilots. She was different from the girls he’d gone to school with too, and not just because she was American. There was a strength to her, a fearlessness, and the strangest thing was that she didn’t seem to see it in herself. She wasn’t tough and standoffish like one might expect from a courageous girl. Someone had made her put her defenses up, though, and he thought it might have been her husband. But that didn’t explain whom she was grieving for. Had there been someone else, another man she’d loved?
A sharp knock at the door pulled him out of his thoughts and he froze. What if it was the Germans? Should he flee via the terrace? Hide in Ruby’s wardrobe? Stand here like a man and try to fight them off? Then again, if he was caught in Ruby’s apartment, she would be on the hook for it. He couldn’t do that to her.
“Damn it,” he cursed, paralyzed by indecision, just as the knocking came again, more insistent this time. He took a careful step toward the door. Ruby had a peephole; perhaps he could assess the situation in the hall before deciding what to do. If there were only two soldiers there, he had a chance to take them.
He was just about to lean in toward the door when he heard someone crying. It sounded like a child. He peered out and realized he was looking at a dark-haired little girl, maybe twelve or thirteen.
“Please, Madame Benoit!” the girl said in French through sobs. “It’s my maman! She needs your help!”
Thomas held his breath. Could it be some sort of trap? Had the Nazis put the child up to this so that he’d open the door?
When he didn’t answer, the girl seemed to pull herself together a bit. She knocked once more, more softly this time. “Monsieur Pilot?” she said more softly, and he was so startled that he took a step back from the door. “I know you’re in there. Please, my mother has fallen. I need your help. I can be trusted. I’m Ruby’s friend.”
Thomas stood stock-still, and after a moment, the girl whispered “Please?” in such a pitiful tone that he could feel his heart breaking a little. “I don’t know what else to do,” she added, backing away from the door. He watched her through the peephole as she disappeared into the apartment in the elbow of the building.
He hesitated only a moment longer before slipping quietly out of Ruby’s apartment into the dim hall. He felt exposed, but he couldn’t go back now. It would be unconscionable to turn his back on a child who needed his help. Drawing a deep breath and hoping for the best, he knocked lightly on the door of the girl’s apartment.
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
October 1941
Charlotte was in a panic. She and Maman had been in the kitchen, chopping a few precious potatoes to make a soup, when her mother suddenly collapsed in a heap, striking the counter on her way down. Now, Charlotte couldn’t wake her, and the blood pouring from her forehead was forming a small, frightening pool. She had tried everything she could think of—shaking her mother, talking loudly to her, placing a cool cloth on her forehead—but Maman hadn’t even stirred. And her father likely wouldn’t be home for hours; he had disappeared early this morning for a meeting with a few other men Charlotte knew from the synagogue.
Charlotte had tried Ruby’s apartment, but no one had come to the door. The other neighbors, well, some of them had made clear their feelings about Jews. And she certainly didn’t want to enlist the help of anyone who hated her family. Who knew what could happen? She couldn’t call a doctor for help either; the one who had delivered Ruby’s stillborn baby had left for the Free Zone weeks ago, and she didn’t know another. Her father had spoken sternly to her several times about how there was no way to know whom to trust anymore.
Charlotte bent to her mother’s side again. “Please wake up, Maman. Please! I don’t know what to do!” But her mother still didn’t stir.
Just then, there was a light knock at the door. Heart thudding, Charlotte crept to the peephole and looked out. There was a man she didn’t know in the hallway, dressed in pants and a shirt too small for him. “I’m the pilot, mademoiselle,” he said softly in accented French. “I’m here to help.”
She recognized him now, though he was clean-shaven and looked much different than he had the day he arrived. She took a deep breath and opened the door. “Hello, monsieur.” She looked him up and down. He had broad shoulders, dark hair, and bright blue eyes, the kind that looked like they would crinkle at the corners when he smiled. “Please, come in.”