Page 37

Christian chuckled, highly doubting that his son would have been able to say anything beyond “No, that’s not right” if he hadn’t just heard their exchange. “And she gave Felix many lessons in cookie baking, isn’t that right, m?uschen ?”

Felix grinned, though it faded a moment later. “We can’t make cookies here. Sugar and butter are rational, Tante Corinne says. And there’s no chocolate.”

“Rationed,” he corrected by instinct, then reached to those sweet curls much like she’d done.

“And she’s right. But I daresay I can find one for you at a bakery for next time, all right?

” Generally speaking, cafés and restaurants and bakeries were still granted enough to stay in business—though prices had soared to the point that few Parisians could afford the offerings.

Only Nazis sat at their tables now most days.

“And we’ll save up our sugar and butter whenever we get some,” Corinne promised as she stirred in the paprika. “Perhaps there will be enough for some Christmas treats.”

Saving up rations for three months, just in the hopes of having one or two batches of holiday sweets.

..and that was assuming she could find the supplies her coupons entitled her to.

Christian shooed Felix back to the table and stepped closer to her, pitching his voice low.

“And was there anything left by the time you got off work this week?”

She waved his concern away. “I wait in the queues on Tuesdays and Thursdays.”

Except that she had to be here to meet Josef with Felix at noon, and sometimes she hadn’t made it to the front of the lines by then. “Corinne...”

“I’m certain your good friend Gustaf would love it if I resigned so that I could wait for food with all the other housewives every day, but alas. We make do with what they have those two days.”

Her “making do” had already resulted in her cinching her belt in a notch, but he knew better than to argue it again here and now. Instead, he’d be grateful she’d taken the meat he offered her for the goulash.

He couldn’t begrudge her pride. He couldn’t begrudge her desire to share in the hardship of her neighbors and friends, colleagues and students. He couldn’t begrudge her the story she lived for them to see, that he was just a benign enemy she tolerated.

But his gaze dropped again to her notepad as he moved to help Felix clear the table so they could set it.

She knew all his secrets now—Felix, Josef, his opposition to the Nazi Party. She not only knew, she was a coconspirator, providing a place for them to meet.

Yet he knew none of hers. He hadn’t asked.

He wouldn’t. He owed her that privacy, that protection. If ever he was caught and she somehow escaped implication, he didn’t want to know anything that they could torture out of him, anything that could get her in trouble.

“Is my list really that interesting?” She’d come closer and glanced down as if expecting the list to suddenly say something more incriminating than “Return Liana’s floral scarf” and “Adoration Friday at 5.”

He shrugged. “It has been ages since I have attended Adoration. Our churches in Germany aren’t technically closed, but they were stripped of everything, including every monstrance, cross, and crucifix.

It was all melted down. For the war effort.

” Nothing left to hold the blessed sacrament, as if that meant the Nazis could rid Germany of those who adored Christ above Hitler.

As if their priests who had escaped arrest and murder weren’t still blessing the host and preaching about loving one’s neighbor, no matter the danger.

Corinne let out a long breath. “And if you were to attend such a thing here?”

He gathered the bowls and spoons from her cupboard and drawer. “I have ventured to Mass a few times, in my civilian clothes, and far from where I’m billeted. Even so, it feels like a risk. Perhaps I’m just paranoid but...”

“But for good reason.” She sent the good reason to the lavatory to wash up and then stepped closer to Christian, bringing with her the floral scent of her shampoo.

“Desirée saw him today when Josef was bringing him up—he pretended to be asleep on Josef’s shoulder, but she was so excited to see another child in the building.

..I told her a bit of the story we agreed on. ”

That Josef was her mother’s cousin from Pozières and Felix was his grandson, that they had come to Paris for Josef’s work and he needed help with the boy, who was hard of hearing—to account for the muteness they’d demanded of him.

He knew to keep his face resting against Josef’s shoulder, his missing eye and ear out of sight, and to keep from speaking lest someone detect a German accent or he slip up and say something he shouldn’t.

Christian nodded. “We knew it was only a matter of time.”

“I know, but...he’s getting too big for Josef to carry him up all those stairs. And he cannot simply remain unseen for years on end, can he?” Her eyes glimmered—clearly an idea was brewing in that clever mind of hers.

Christian leaned against the workbench. “All right, out with it. You’ve obviously thought up a better story.”

The beginnings of a smile played on her lips. “Have I ever told you of Old Jacques?”

He merely lifted his brows.

“He lived in my village, in Somme. One of the cantankerous old men that we children all avoided—and him especially because he was missing a leg from the knee down. Once, when I was ten, my friends and I were talking about how he’d run someone’s brother out of his garden, and someone asked how he lost his leg.

Another said it was the war, her mother had said so, and we all took her at her word.

In fact, most of the village told that same tale—that he’d lost his leg in the World War, like so many others who came home with missing limbs. ”

Christian nodded. “A tragedy that both sides suffered.”

“Yes, but...” She leaned in, eyes alight. “He didn’t serve in the war—he couldn’t. Because he lost his leg as a boy, jumping the tracks. He fell and was run over.”

Christian sucked in a breath, shocked. “That’s horrible.”

“Of course it is, but that’s not my point.

My point is that the people who knew the truth had died or moved away, and the few remaining who did know it never paused to think about it, so the expected story was given about him.

No one asked him, no one said it in his hearing, it’s just what was assumed by an entire generation.

I would probably still think to this day that he’d lost his leg in war if Maman hadn’t heard us one day and corrected us. ”

He was beginning to see the direction she was going, though what particular door she meant to take him through he could only guess. “So you recommend a different story for Felix?”

She reached into a drawer and pulled out a small something, black and soft looking.

When she unfolded the elastic band, he realized it was an eye patch.

“Haven’t you seen some of the families come in from the countryside that was bombarded?

From Dunkerque? Plenty of civilians were caught in the melee, even children.

Plenty are entering the city now with missing limbs.

It is sad and horrible, yes—but it’s also camouflage for Felix. ”

He took the miniature eye patch from her. “So we cover his missing eye and let everyone think it was caused by an accident.”

“Let his hair grow—it’s getting long anyway—to cover his ear, and the curls themselves will cover the shape of his skull. Any other abnormalities will be attributed to whatever accident people think befell him.”

The fabric was soft, but something stiffer rested inside it—cardboard? No, more flexible. Perhaps leather. The elastic would all but vanish beneath the mass of golden curls.

Hide it. He’d never wanted to make his son so conscious of his differences that he felt the need to hide them. He wanted him to be like Helen Keller, to embrace what God had given him and be stronger for it. To write himself a life story worth telling to others.

He didn’t want Felix to ever feel ashamed of what the world perceived as missing . Not when he had so much, so many gifts of spirit and heart.

But at the same time, they had to fight for his right to live.

And if they could do that better by using a disguise as long as the Nazis were in power, by making Felix look more like a French boy caught in crossfire and not like a German boy running from the authorities, then he’d be a fool to refuse on principle.

He nodded, his swallow feeling hard in his throat. “We can ask him. I will not force him to wear this, but—”

Little steps ran their way, and, ever curious, Felix’s gaze went straight to the eye patch. “What’s that, Vati ?”

Well, no point in wasting time. Christian held it up. “It’s an eye patch that Tante Corinne made for you, if you’d like it.”

Felix’s mouth dropped open. “Like a pirate ?” He snatched the fabric from Christian’s hand and immediately tried to put it on.

Corinne laughed and reached to help him arrange it. “Josef has been reading him Treasure Island .”

Of course he had. Christian smiled as Corinne settled the elastic under Felix’s curls.

She was right—his hair was longer than Christian had ever let it get.

..lest he be mistaken for a girl, which had always made him furious when he was four and five.

But Josef had clearly not prioritized finding a barber.

Or braved cutting it himself, given Felix’s inability to sit still for more than ten seconds at a clip.

It could work. And per Corinne’s story, they wouldn’t even have to lie. Just to let people assume whatever they wanted.

Christian bent to a knee and made a show of surveying Felix from left and right. “Why, I do believe it’s Long John Goldenhair himself! The most dreaded pirate of the Seine!”

Felix giggled and thrust forward an invisible sword. “Yo ho ho!” He went dashing off, no doubt to christen one of Corinne’s sofas or chairs as his pirate vessel and set sail on the high seas.

“Dinner will be ready in just a minute, Felix,” she called after him.

She sounded so... normal . Looked it, as she’d stood there with his boy, their blond curls matching every bit as much as their blue eyes. In some ways, she looked more like his mother than Ilse had with her dark hair.

He squeezed his eyes shut and braced a hand on the table after he stood again.

He knew it wasn’t fair of him to let her help them like this.

To not only trust her with knowledge of Felix, but to weave her into their lives.

To watch her smile with affection at his son and wish, wish, wish things were different.

For the first time in six years, he wanted to wrap his arms around a woman.

He wanted to press his lips to hers and just be with her.

He wanted to know he wasn’t alone, that someone else loved Felix like he did.

He wanted to come to this flat every day and find her here with his son and slip into that world and rest there.

He was a fool. Worse. He was selfish and cruel to even want such things. Such impossibilities. Such temptations.

“Christian.” Her fingers brushed his cheek, as they’d done the night she learned of Felix—as they hadn’t done since.

His eyes opened, and he found her standing close, too close, concern making her frown and teasing out the tiniest of lines around her eyes, proving the age that seldom showed. “What’s wrong? If it’s the eye patch—”

“No, that’s brilliant. It’s just...” What?

He couldn’t tell her that he wanted to love her but didn’t dare.

He couldn’t tell her that he wanted a life that would be her ruin.

He had to find another truth to offer her.

One that wouldn’t ask her to risk anything more than she already had for him, for them.

“I...may have issued my superior an ultimatum, via Kraus.”

Her hand dropped, eyes going wide. “You what ?”

He told her as they dished up bowls of soup and set them out to cool, and by the end of his tale, she was nodding. “Smart, I think. Men like that only respond to shows of strength.”

He sighed and turned to call Felix in for supper. “Let’s hope so.”