Page 144 of Blood Game

She glanced toward the farmhouse that had stood there since her mother's grandfather's time, and before—stone walls, the slate roof. It was almost Christmas. The house had stood through two hundred Christmases—her grandparents, their grandparents before them, and theirs before them.

It would stand a hundred more years, her father had said, proud of the farm with its abundant crops, good water, far from the city, a place he had earned through his marriage to her mother and years of hard work, often coming in from the orchards, his strong hands covered with dirt, knuckles cracked and bleeding from the cold.

He and her brothers always washed in the outside basin her mother insisted they wash in—a towel hung on a hook waiting for them at the end of the day, lights from the lanterns gleaming in misty welcome in the windows, smoke curling from the pipe on the cook stove.

“Where is your coat, ma petite?” her mother scolded, suddenly reminding her that she'd left it over a low-hanging branch before scaling the ancient oak at the edge of the orchard. A stern look, then a soft smile.

“You must find it in the morning. Come, wash. Supper is ready.” The damp fall air, ripe with the smell of roast meat, potatoes, and apples simmering in butter and sugar, her mouth watering with childhood innocence that only asks, “Is there more?”

Gone now. All of it was gone.

No lights burned in the windows, no fire in the cook stove. No welcoming smells greeted her in the shadows at the edge of the house.

It was almost Christmas. She'd forgotten that, forgotten it each of the past four years. Once there were the smells of Christmas from the kitchen—a bird roasting in the oven, the pastries from earlier in the afternoon laid out on the sideboard, the roast potatoes and squash. And apples simmering in the iron skillet on the cook top, the smell of cinnamon and brown sugar pungent in the air.

After supper her mother would pour melted butter over the apples and her father would be the first to taste them.The suspense would build as he savored the first taste, like a winemaker testing that first sip of wine. Then he would look over at her mother.

“Superb. Magnifique!” he would declare and they would all taste their own simmered apples covered with buttery sugar sauce.

They all knew it was their father's prized apples that allowed them such a feast, but he always gave the credit to her mother.

Afterward, her father would retire to his chair before the fire in the small adjacent living room and take out the Christmas book. Even though they had all heard the story since they were babies, they all gathered round—her brothers Emile and Henri, who were fifteen and sixteen that last Christmas, her younger sister who was a toddler, and herself, after helping Mama wash and put away the blue dishes.

They listened, her sister dozing off in her mother's lap, her brothers eager to be off with their friends on the neighboring farm, her father's deep voice wrapping around the words, the fire glowing in the hearth. Then he would read from the Bible with all their names entered in the first pages, right after the date her parents had married.

She squeezed her eyes shut. Those memories, the smells, the sounds, the voices of those who were now gone moved over her in the frosty air like a warm, comforting shawl wrapped around her shoulder.

She slowly opened her eyes, the memories, sounds of laughter, her brother's teasing, their mother's reminder that they must go to bed if they wanted the Christmas spirit to visit their farmhouse. Otherwise he would pass them by. But there were only the shadows and an ominous darkness that stared back at her from the windows of the farmhouse. No candles glowed, waiting. No voices were heard over the rustling of the wind through the barren branches of the trees.

Maman? Angeline? Fear sharpened. Where were they? Had something happened? Had the Germans come in that final sweep toward the north?

Only an eerie silence whispered back at her on the wind, sighing around the corners of the old house, scattering leaves against the stone walls. Not this too!

Beside the kitchen door, the wash basin stood on the shelf, as it had every day of her memory, empty now, waiting for hands that would not return home. Her hand shook on the metal latch. The kitchen door opened easily, leaves swirling across the threshold before her.

Familiar shadows loomed out of the darkness—the hulking cast-iron cook stove, the sharp angles of the kitchen table, six chairs neatly tucked at the edges, the gleam from a copper pot on top of the stove as if it waited for her mother's hand. Then, a sound behind her.

She spun around, the pistol that she'd taken off a dead German soldier in her hand, her hip bumping the edge of the table, staring at the figure in the doorway.

“Belle,” she exclaimed with relief at the gray-and-white tabby cat that sat in the opened doorway, named for the elegant and beautiful French actress her mother had seen once at the cinema on a day trip to the city before the war. It had always seemed a mistake, with little resemblance between the actress Annabelle Gadot and the cat named for her, with long hair sticking out all over as if she had been caught in a storm.

She laid the pistol on the table and scooped Madame La Belle into her arms.

“You are not starving,” she said into the soft fur over the stout body. But where were her mother and sister?

Belle provided no answers, only the loud rumble of purring, kneading her claws into the shoulder of her wool coat.

“Where have they gone, ma petite,” she rubbed her cheek against the soft fur, using the name her mother had called her as a child, taking some small comfort in the warm body that burrowed against her in greeting, in spite of the unsettling feeling in her stomach that something was wrong, very wrong. If the Germans had been there, surely they wouldn't have left everything just so—clean pots, the chairs tucked at the table.

A movement in the window caught her eye. She set Belle down and retrieved the pistol. In the shadows of the kitchen she held her breath and waited, hands wrapped around the butt of the pistol. A slender hand wrapped around the edge of the door, then pushed it farther open.

“J-J-J-Jehanne!?”

A familiar voice, the familiar stutter. Heart pounding, she lowered the pistol.

“You should not go sneaking about, Albert. It is dangerous,” she scolded. “You never know who you will run into.”

“I knew it was you. I followed you from the edge of the orchard.”