Page 33

Twelve

Corinne hadn’t realized how much she’d missed the night.

Watching from her window wasn’t the same as walking through a warm summer evening—and these summer nights were especially beautiful, with no light from streetlamps or windows.

Stars actually twinkled down on Paris from the heavens—something rarely seen when the city was free and glowing with electric lights.

Blackouts had been in effect for a year already as they feared invasion, but not until the Nazi curfew did she realize how much she’d always loved nighttime walks.

To have one again restored some small part of her soul.

One small, unexpected blessing in a ravaged world. She’d have to learn how to count such things. How to relish them. How to thank God for them.

Beside her, Christian drew in a long breath. Neither of them had spoken yet—it seemed too dangerous. The streets were too quiet, too empty. It felt like any word they spoke would be picked up and passed from hand to hand in the shadows.

But the song of the stars, the dance of the wind had been conversation enough during the walk, and now her building loomed before her.

She didn’t ask if he wanted to come up. He didn’t ask if he could. They both knew there were still answers she needed.

And the moment they were safely in her flat, Radio Paris switched on to drown out their voices, she spun to face him. “Tell me. Tell me the real reason you sent him away.”

Had she ever even looked at him before? Really looked?

She’d noted the sandy hair, yes, that had probably once been as blond as Felix’s. The average height. The spectacles that he’d take off halfway through a debate and toss to the nearest table as punctuation for whatever point he’d been making.

But she wasn’t sure she’d ever really noticed how blue his eyes were behind the lenses. How beautiful he was with tears dried on his face. How compelling the line of his jaw was as he rubbed a tired hand along it, as if remembering the feel of tiny fingers there half an hour before.

She couldn’t recall the last time she’d seen a man cry. She never would have guessed that it would break her heart in one second, and then knit it back together in the next.

He’d shattered her tonight. Shattered every idea about him she’d had, every thought, every assumption. Shattered her and left her...free.

He shrugged out of the uniform jacket he apparently hated as much as she did and slumped into his usual chair.

He had a usual chair. What had happened in her life, that he had a usual chair—and why hadn’t she even noticed it? She perched on the arm of the couch, not quite ready to fully sit.

He had long fingers—a scholar’s fingers, perfect for flipping through books, taking notes, writing essays. He ran them through his hair and then rubbed them over his eyes. “His...features.”

She nodded, debating how to politely ask. “He was born with them?” She’d seen children with cleft palates, ones who had undergone surgery to attempt to correct it. But the eye, the ear, the strange shape of his skull...those she’d never seen before.

Christian’s nostrils flared. He nodded. “They didn’t know, when he was born, how extensive it might be—inside, I mean.

Whether he would ever walk, ever talk, whether his brain was correctly formed or not.

Whether it would affect his breathing as he grew, his balance.

..they had no answers. The surgeon didn’t even want to correct his cleft palate, he said it was useless, given the extent of the other malformations. ”

Corinne winced at the word just as he did. And melted onto the cushion. “But he seems fine—I mean...”

“He is smart as a whip, quick, strong—he is fine.” His eyes slid shut. “Just missing an eye. Missing an ear. Missing the right shape to his skull. But it makes him no less a person.”

“Of course it doesn’t!”

His gaze met hers again. He swallowed. “When he was still a baby, the letters began. His birth defects had been recorded, you see. But the government...the government wanted me to know that I didn’t have to shoulder the burden of a malformed child.

That there were institutions to help, that specialized in children like him.

” His fingers dug into the arm of his chair.

“I had just buried my wife, just nursed my son through the wounds of his first surgery, and they wanted me to hand him over.”

Corinne dug her own fingers in, to keep from reaching across for his. “What sort of institutions?”

His laugh lacked all humor. “I didn’t know, at first. I imagined them to be like schools or orphanages.

I actually said, to one of the kind-eyed women who came by when he was three, that perhaps I’d consider it when he was a little older.

I reassured her—because I thought she actually cared —that my mother kept him during the day and loved him to pieces, that he seemed to be developing like a normal toddler, that he was no burden.

I told her to drop by again in a year. Before I knew.

Before I knew that the children they took didn’t ever go home again.

Before our family doctor told me in a whisper that a colleague of his had been called to one of these places to euthanize them. ”

“No.” She wanted to shout it, but she couldn’t. Could barely work even that breath through her throat. How could anyone look at that sweet boy, at any child, and want to kill them, just because they were different?

Christian stared straight ahead, and she wondered what he saw.

His son? Their doctor? That kind-eyed woman who’d come to his door and tried to deliver his boy to his death?

“Gradually, the messages changed. They went from we can help to we can get rid of him for you . Parents, you see—good, Aryan parents who were ashamed of their disgraceful offspring, the ones who demanded time and energy and cost them their pride—they were begging for help. Asking for the government to do the ‘kind’ thing and end their children’s ‘misery.’”

Her stomach rolled. She leaned forward, bracing her elbows on her knees and resting her head in her palms.

“I joined the Party, because they were always kinder to their own. I thought it would make it easier to get medical help. I thought they’d stop harassing me if I said I was one of them.

But it only got worse. And then—then it wasn’t optional anymore.

Children with facial deformities must be delivered to the government. ”

She sucked in a breath and looked up, because she felt his gaze return to her.

He looked haunted. Empty. Tormented. “What was I to do? What was I to do but get him out of there? They would have killed him.”

“Of course you got him out.” Her hand lifted of its own accord, reached for him. Settled over those fingers threatening to rip the upholstery on her chair. She didn’t much care if he did. “Only...why didn’t you come with him?”

His face twisted, and two more tears slipped out of his eyes.

“They were watching me. I—I was too vocal in my arguments. I tried to appeal the order, I gave a lecture about the sanctity of life— all life—that had the Ministry breathing down my neck. I tried to just take him on holiday, get out of the city for a while so I could think it through, and we were stopped by the Gestapo and turned back around. But it was me they were watching. He was just a boy—he was no threat. I was the one they kept their thumb on.”

She stroked her thumb over his knuckles. Paltry comfort, but all she knew how to give. “All right. That makes sense then, that you would send him away. To Josef. But didn’t they suspect you all the more, then? Why wouldn’t they have arrested you?”

For a long moment, he was silent, just letting the tears slip unchecked down his cheeks.

Then he drew in a long breath. “It was Dr. Schwerin’s idea.

We would fake his death—and make it a medical issue, not an accident.

He created a fake death certificate, performed a fake autopsy, and filed a report saying that a recent growth spurt had triggered the collapse of his lungs, which had indeed been underdeveloped.

That friend of mine I mentioned, who was a police officer—Reich Security, now.

He helped us sneak Felix out of Berlin during one of his holidays. Josef met him in Strasbourg.”

Her breath shook. “Those are good friends.”

“The best. The doctor had treated Ilse, had tried so much for her—he had fought so hard, so long for Felix. And Erik—” He paused, breathed a laugh.

“Erik Reinholdt is so different from me on the outside. He scorns the church, he skirts whatever rules he can, he tormented me when we were children.” He shook his head, fondness in his eyes.

“But somehow, by the time we grew up, he was my best friend. He still lives in the house he grew up in, after his parents retired to the country. Two doors down from my parents. But since I got married, we really only saw each other there in the old neighborhood. My colleagues didn’t know him.

His didn’t know me. No one ever drew the connection. ”

Another pulse of silence, his gaze dropping to their hands.

“And so...I lived out my part of the tale. Contrite, horrified that I had argued that my son was healthy when clearly he wasn’t.

I said what I was supposed to say. Taught what I was supposed to teach.

Let them think they’d won, that I’d seen the light.

Hoping, praying every day that even if I lost my soul, it would save my son’s life. ”

“Christian.” She didn’t know what else she meant to say. What could she? What words could change even a whisper of that horror. “Were you...eventually, I mean? Planning to come here?”