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It wasn’t his home address on the card, nor his home telephone number.

She didn’t honestly know what flat or office resided at the location.

She just knew that if ever she couldn’t reach him at home, and it was an emergency, she should call him there and say, “The heel of my pump broke, some urchin stole my handbag, and I’ve a blister on my ankle after chasing him down.

Can you come and pick me up, Oncle?” and then tell him wherever the emergency was.

A year ago, when he’d made her memorize the number and the instructions, it had seemed like one more game they’d play together while Maman and Tante Minette baked and gossiped in the kitchen. Nothing serious. Nothing she’d ever actually need .

Now she found herself reciting the words three times in her mind just to make sure they remained lodged where they belonged.

Because too many of her other childhood games had already proven useful.

Too much of her uncle’s “silliness” had proven itself to be training for a world she hadn’t thought would turn this way again.

Liana tucked the card into her handbag, a new light in her eyes. “Thank you, monsieur . I daresay we would love to hear the recitation of someone of your generation. Though...” Her expression shifted, twisted. “We are hardly organized yet. I don’t know when the next reading will be.”

Her uncle gave her friend a peaceful smile. “You’ll sort it out, I have no doubt.” He stood again, setting atop Corinne’s novel another book that he must have had tucked into another pocket somewhere. “Here you are, mon chouchou . As promised. Happy reading.”

“Merci.” It was another beat-up edition that he no doubt meant her to burn when she was finished decoding whatever message he’d scribbled into the margins—probably a response to the message from Maelie that she’d slipped into his letter box. Instructions to pass along to her friend.

He could have just told her the message, but he insisted she needed the training. The habit. The process.

Because the day might come when he was sending books from somewhere other than Paris, despite his promises to her mother to keep an eye on her. Or when they would be too closely watched, listened to, to speak freely.

He left with casual farewells, and though Corinne suspected Liana had a dozen questions for her, the thought of airing any more secrets on the street outside a café where anyone could hear made her stomach churn against the coffee she’d drunk.

So she invited her to spend the night after dinner on Saturday, promising that they’d laugh and squeal like they were thirteen, and then she hurried on her way.

A few errands at the university, two stops at grocers that yielded only a can of paté and half of her monthly sugar ration, and Corinne was on the train again, bound for home.

And if she found herself studying the pockets of the Nazis she passed, wondering which of them might have chocolate inside them, she blamed Oncle Georges for planting the notion.

She could almost, almost pretend that the day wouldn’t end as poorly as it was bound to do.

Knowing she had the time—the professor’s car was absent from the curb—she took care of the code work first, burned the poor book her uncle had given her, and stashed the message she’d have to encode again into the margins of a book to send to Maelie in the safest place she could think of—her own letter box in the entryway.

By the time the knock sounded on her door, she was draped over her favorite chair, Quinzinzinzili in hand again. She only dawdled a moment before opening the door and offering Professor Bauer a nod in place of a smile. “Professor.”

“Mademoiselle.” He sidled past her, and she couldn’t help but grant that he acted like, well.

..a professor. As she closed the door, his eyes went straight to the shelves of books, to a few titles he must have noted on his previous visit.

Then his gaze dropped to the novel on her chair, and a grin split his mouth, making him look a decade younger.

“ Quinzinzinzili! How far are you? Have you got to the part where—”

“No!” Yes, she shouted it. Because spoiling what came next in a book was surely an unpardonable sin. Jesus had overlooked naming it as such, but that was only because novels hadn’t been invented yet, she was sure. “I’m only on chapter two—don’t you dare say a thing.”

He laughed, and if she squinted just right, she could almost pretend he was some other professor, wearing a gray suit, taking off his hat and setting it on the table. One of countless colleagues who had done just that, laughed just like that, in their living room over the last fifteen years.

She blinked away the image, focused on the swastika on his armband. And asked, “What does ‘interview’ mean?”

He spun to face her, his amusement morphing into question. “I assume you aren’t asking for a definition.”

“Abraham Cohen.” She folded her arms over her chest, as if he were nothing but an unruly undergraduate. “You said you ‘interviewed’ him yesterday. What does that mean? An interrogation? Was he harmed?”

Bauer’s face softened. Indecision flittered through his eyes. And he sighed. “He is well. I promise you. He asked me to assure you of that fact, actually. When I mentioned that we had his name because of the library, he said I ought to assure his neighbor that he is unharmed.”

Her mouth dropped open at the audacity. Abraham had always had a mischievous streak, yes, but to ask one’s interrogator to deliver a message to one’s friend? Papa would have called it cheeky and laughed until he was red in the face.

Corinne let her arms fall to her sides. “And you...did?”

He shrugged. “He is not a criminal—not yet. His books have been seized, and he will not be allowed to publish anymore. But he is still a person. Such common courtesies cost me nothing and clearly mean much to him. And to you.” He lifted a brow. “You are...close?”

Her lips quirked before she could stop them. “The men of the library...as you know, my mother was there a lot—for her research as she was writing her thesis.”

“So she is a doctor?”

Corinne paused. Why would he have wondered about that?

“No, actually—she never defended it. She fell ill, and then she reconsidered the paper and...” Why was she telling him all this?

She waved a hand and moved to the shelf farthest from him.

“She got distracted with teaching, basically. Her plans were to revise it during her sabbatical and resubmit when she returns from her holiday.” Whenever that would be—and as if her travels were only a holiday.

“But at any rate, she spent many hours at the library next door, largely because of its proximity. I went with her, because what else was I to do? And so the other regulars, the directors—they became family, in a way. Abraham is like an uncle to me.”

He nodded and turned his back to her, moving whole rows of books out, then back—checking behind them, she realized. “Did you know that those men were smuggling banned books back into Germany?”

“What?” She’d been trying to mimic him, but she’d clearly reached for too many books at once—they all went tumbling, an avalanche of winces.

The rhythmic shick-thump, shick-thump of his own investigation paused, and she could feel the burn of his gaze on her as she stooped to pick up her fallen tomes.

“One of the rooms at the library—it had a few copies remaining, and one underway. Banned material, rebound under innocuous, approved titles. I found an address book too, of places in Germany where these mockingbirds were shipped.”

Juste ciel. Why hadn’t they removed all such evidence?

Because they were rushed and harried and couldn’t see to every detail, and too afraid of implicating her by association to let her help, that was why.

She stood again and slid the books back into their places. “I imagine whatever Ministry you work for will be glad for that information. Though...you do have to admit, don’t you? It’s rather clever.” She chanced a quick glance over her shoulder.

Because even if he knew that, he’d never know she’d been the one to inspire the charade, when Maman had caught her reading a novel in the library one night, disguised behind the textbook she ought to have been studying. The others had all laughed.

And then grown sober. And then schemed.

Bauer didn’t look away from his work. Shick-thump.

Shick-thump. “I rather think the Ministry will be furious that such an operation went on for years and was only discovered after it had already, by necessity, halted.” He’d already gone through the top two shelves of that first case.

To better reach the third, he stepped back, bumping into one of the twin sofas.

Shick ...pause. “What have we here?”

Nothing that could possibly incriminate her—she wasn’t fool enough to hide anything on her bookshelves when she knew he’d be coming to investigate them.

But the soft smile that overtook his mouth made her wonder what it was and had her all but running around the furniture to see.

“Oh—please no. That’s just one of my horrid attempts at art.” What was that old sketch even doing there? It was ancient, unskilled...and when she reached for it, he held it up, away, out of her range.

“I’m looking at this, thank you.” He continued to do so, tilting his head back to continue studying the portrait.

Well, a candid portrait anyway. Of Maman, tucked into Papa’s side on one of those very sofas.

She vaguely remembered the day—one of their first here in this flat, after Papa had found it for them.

After they’d moved everything they owned from the cottage in Pozières to this neighborhood in the City of Lights that felt so foreign, so strange, so hostile.