Page 36

Parisians still bustled up and down the streets, enjoying the hours before curfew.

Already, though, he noted that the familiar residents of the neighborhood were growing thinner.

Rationing had officially begun two weeks ago, and he’d overheard plenty of grumbling about how everyone had to stand in three different queues for five hours apiece to collect their different tickets, only to then stand hours more in line for bread or meat or pasta, only to be turned away when the grocers ran out—assuming they had anything to begin with.

Already he felt guilty for his full plates three times a day, and he knew well this was only the start.

That the shortages would only get worse, not better, because no matter how much food France produced, it wouldn’t go to the French anymore.

It would go to Germany. Sent back to feed Christian’s countrymen, to feed the military machine, to supply what their own farmers couldn’t because their men were fighting this wretched war.

His eyes scanned the street as he walked, searching for any German faces, any Nazi uniforms, any autos belonging to them. He half expected to see Ackermann steaming his way, fury in his eyes, ready to call his bluff and have him sent back to Berlin.

Please, Lord God. He hadn’t wanted to come here like this. Hadn’t wanted to risk his son and Josef. But now, now that he got to hold him again twice a week, he couldn’t bear the thought of leaving, any more than he could bear the thought of them being found out.

What would the Party do, if they discovered that Felix was still alive?

Even as he asked, he knew. They would kill his boy, just as they’d wanted to do in Germany.

They would kill Christian—which he wouldn’t fight, not if they’d taken Felix.

But it wouldn’t stop there, he knew it wouldn’t.

They would kill Josef for harboring him.

They would kill Schwerin for faking his death.

They would kill Erik for smuggling him out.

They would kill Corinne for offering them a safe refuge.

So many good people, caught up in protecting his family. So much blood that would be on his hands if anyone caught him with his son.

He knew he’d taken a risk by issuing the ultimatum. But better to be sent back to Berlin for insubordination than to get caught and be responsible for the loss of so many beautiful lives.

Another check over his shoulder before he knocked on her door.

Eight. This would be his eighth visit to Felix in these rooms. Eight evenings spent with Felix in his lap or climbing over him, watching him build with the blocks Corinne had unearthed from somewhere, exclaiming over his drawings, listening as he shared what Josef had been teaching him in his private schooling in their new flat whose address Christian had refused to be given.

Corinne had apparently been adding to his learning as well.

His little boy was going to be better educated than any other child in Europe, despite no Nazi-run government ever allowing him to step foot in a school.

Corinne opened the door, making a show of sighing.

“It must be Tuesday again,” she said at a volume loud enough to be heard by any neighbors who cared to listen.

“I would threaten not to be at home if I thought you’d do something other than stand here and knock incessantly and destroy the peace of the whole building. Again.”

They’d staged such a thing one night, just for show. To make certain all her neighbors knew that she didn’t want him there, and that he was relentless. He held up the three books. “I bring you gifts of newly published literature and still you’re so cool?”

She lifted her chin, eyes as cold as ice. “I could buy my own books.”

“But who’s to say you’d buy the ones I want to discuss with you? Let me in, Mademoiselle Bastien, if you please.”

She stepped aside, a growl of annoyance in her throat.

He heard a soft click of another door—perhaps her other neighbors, recently returned from the countryside? Good. Let them all see and hear.

Not until she closed her own door behind him did he let himself grin. “And here they’re the very ones you requested.”

Corinne took the books from his hand with a quiet chuckle. “I certainly hope so. Felix is in the kitchen.”

He paused, waiting for her to lock the door and slide the chain, before tossing his hat and jacket to a chair.

He wanted to shout his son’s name as he used to do, when he’d come to collect him from his parents’ house.

He wanted to hear that laugh as Felix came bounding into the room, throwing himself into Christian’s waiting arms. He wanted to roar like a lion and scoop him up, spin him around until he roared too.

He didn’t dare, of course. They did their best to keep the neighbors from realizing that Felix was even still here while Christian was.

So instead he moved softly into the kitchen, merely dropping to a knee and opening his arms as his son scurried toward him.

Felix, too, had learned the value of silence in his months of exile.

Not since that first night had he shouted “Vati!” or come running.

It didn’t matter the volume. Didn’t matter the speed. He folded his son into his arms, let his eyes slide shut, and held him close. “Hello, Felix.”

“Come look what I’ve made, Vati .” Felix gave him one more squeeze and then ran back to the table, tugging him willingly along by the hand.

Dinner, such as it was, simmered on the stove.

He knew well that it would include some of the rations he’d slipped to Corinne, and which she had tried three times to refuse.

I know you don’t want Nazi food, he’d said at last, exasperated.

So don’t eat if you don’t want to. But you’re feeding my son, and I will give him whatever I can, to spite them if for no other reason. Let me feed him, Corinne.

She’d relented, but with that set to her mouth he was coming to know so well. The one that said she had many more objections she’d swallowed down, and that he hadn’t really won, even if it looked like he had.

Every time he learned one new facet of her, the light would shine on a dozen more.

Like this one—the way she squeezed past them to reach the stove and reached out to run her fingers through Felix’s golden curls.

The way his little boy smiled up at her with pure adoration and she smiled back with the same.

Eight visits he’d had with Felix—but she’d had more. She saw him nearly every day, watching him while Josef ran errands or enjoyed a rare solitary hour.

“Look, Vati .” Felix shoved aside a few drawings of stick-figure dragons and robots and pulled forward a page with careful handwriting on it, in two different hands.

The first, confident bold lines proclaiming I am the way, the truth, and the life in a feminine print, and the second the overlarge, clumsy imitation of a child.

Christian rested a hand on Felix’s shoulder and grinned down at his eager face. “Beautifully done, Felix. And can you read it?”

His boy nodded eagerly and sounded out each word.

After exclaiming over the remarkable job he was doing, Christian glanced again at the lines of instruction. They were overcareful, as his own would have been had he been writing letters for his son to trace and follow. But even so, a bit of her own personality came through in them.

He glanced at the notepad she always kept on the counter, with her errand list scrawled far less neatly across it.

Familiar script, and not just because he saw it all over her house and library. But because it was the same hand that he’d just seen in the margins of the book next door.

“Christian? Are you all right?”

He blinked, refocused on where she stood by the stove, and realized that she’d said his name three times already.

She stood with an old, stained apron tied over her neat skirt and blouse, her curls pulled back in a messy tail that he knew she wouldn’t have worn out of her flat, and a spoon held out.

He smiled an apology. “I’m afraid my mind was on Felix. What did you say?”

“I’ve never made gulaschsuppe before, but Felix wanted it. Josef tried to remember what’s in it, but he’s clearly no cook. Tell me how close I am.”

She was making his son’s favorite soup? Of course she was. He shifted closer and took the spoon from her, blowing on the steaming broth before taking a sip. It wasn’t bad, though it certainly didn’t taste like his mother’s. “I don’t suppose you have Hungarian paprika?”

“Paprika.” Her lips said she was irritated. Her eyes said she was amused. “Josef failed to mention paprika entirely.”

“Where is he, anyway?” He hadn’t seen him in the living room, but sometimes his godfather used this time for his own chores or errands.

“He isn’t feeling well. I sent him home and told him Felix could stay here tonight. I’ll drop him by on my way to the Sorbonne tomorrow.”

Christian frowned. “Sick?”

“Just a cold. I daresay a good night’s sleep and he’ll be on the mend.” She rummaged through a cupboard. “There we are—paprika. I doubt mine is Hungarian, but I have both sweet and spicy versions. Which does it take?”

“Both, actually. And lots of it—a tablespoon of the sweet, and then the spicy to taste. It’s the key ingredient of the goulash.”

She reached for two matching jars filled with red powder. “Clearly I should have asked you for the recipe.”

“Clearly. Josef’s wife did all the cooking, and since her death, he has eaten simply or with friends. I, on the other hand, decided years ago that I’d rather spend my evenings at home with Felix, and so I had better learn how to feed us.”

“Oma gave him lessons,” Felix put in as he strained up for a taste too. Christian blew on another spoonful of broth and gave it to him. “Definitely more paprika,” he said.