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Eighteen

The clock said eight, but Corinne couldn’t remember if it was morning or night.

The blackout curtains gave her no clue. The lamp had been burning, low and muted, forever.

She’d sat in this place for so long that her every muscle ached.

Her arms strained under the weight of the sleeping child curled up against her.

Her eyes refused to move their focus from the still form on the bed.

If she looked away, he’d stop breathing. If she looked away, that shallow life barely clinging to his body would flee. Soul, wing its way to heaven.

He deserved it. He deserved rest. Peace. All the eternal promises that she knew were waiting for him.

But she wasn’t ready to let him go. Stay with me, Christian.

In her mind, she shouted the words, over and over and over until they were a litany, set in rhythm to match the tic-a-tac of the clock.

Rest-ez a-vec moi. Rest-ez a-vec moi. Or perhaps the German, if he was too far gone to heed French?

The words were too short to fit the half-second rhythm, but she could stretch them out.

Bleib...bei...mir. Bleib...bei. ..mir.

A shadow moved, a board creaked. It could have been Death, swooping down. An angel, ready to usher his soul into heaven.

It was, of course, only Oncle Georges, setting a hand on her shoulder so lightly she barely felt it. Whispering words so softly she barely heard them. “You need to rest, mon chouchou . Eat. You’ll be no good to anyone like this.”

What good was there left to be? Rest-ez a-vec moi. Bleib... bei...mir.

Her uncle sighed. “Rinny—”

“You can go.” Her voice sounded so normal as it slid up her throat, past her lips.

She’d given him the answers he wanted. Earlier—yesterday?—while the doctor did whatever he could do in his clinic. They’d been enough to convince him that Christian was worth saving. Worth hiding. Worth risking for.

But he was still angry with her. She knew he was, even if it didn’t show in his voice or his hands or his words. It glinted still in his eyes. You should have told me, he’d accused earlier—yesterday? Why didn’t you tell me?

Because his world was so much bigger than hers had ever been, and even her efforts to join him in his had been so useless. So insignificant.

Because he would have told her a forbidden romance wasn’t worth risking it all, that the work could be significant, and demanded her complete concentration.

Because he’d never fallen in love with a supposed enemy, so how could he understand?

Because if she’d given it, shared it, it wouldn’t be hers anymore.

Rest-ez a-vec moi. Bleib...bei...mir.

He crouched down beside the chair—Maman’s chair, in Maman’s room, pulled close to the bed that Felix had slept in before.

Upon their arrival at her flat, Felix had started out there, curled up beside his father.

Little hands trying to give the comfort that big hands usually gave him .

Rubbing circles. Tracing patterns. Holding fingers that didn’t hold his back.

It had broken something, she suspected. To hold his vati ’s hand and feel no pressure in return. He’d retreated with a sob and curled up here in Corinne’s lap, and she’d held him and held him and held him and promised she’d never let go.

Oncle Georges passed a featherlight hand over Felix’s curls. Then over hers. “If you won’t rest for yourself, do it for him. He’s going to need you strong...whatever comes.”

Her left arm was numb under Felix’s head. That was all the strength she could give right now. She could hold on. She could love him. She could make sure he knew that she loved his father. “We’ll be fine.”

Georges hadn’t been fool enough to suggest they try to find someone else to take care of Felix, at least. He hadn’t suggested for a moment that he and Christian go anywhere but here.

Rest-ez a-vec moi. Bleib...bei...mir.

Her uncle sighed and levered back to standing. “I need to see what I can find out about Josef. The doctor will come by at eleven—three hours. Do you hear me?”

“Eleven.” Morning, then. The doctor whose name she didn’t know said he’d come by in the morning, with fresh IV bags and blood, too, if Christian needed more.

Oncle Georges turned but didn’t leave. “Is he Catholic? Like Josef?”

Her chest went tight. She could still hear the faint words she’d caught from Josef’s back door. Catholic! Katholisch! Claiming what he was as a denial of what he also was—part Jew.

When it becomes illegal to be what you are...

When were those words from? A century ago. A millennium.

“Corinne?”

She jerked her head in a nod. “He’s Catholic.”

“Then I’ll stop by and find Father Serres too and send him here. For the last rites.”

Her arms convulsed around Felix. “He doesn’t need last rites .” He was still alive. He would stay alive, because she wouldn’t look away. She wouldn’t move. Wouldn’t give his soul a chance to run away with the angels.

Her uncle didn’t sigh this time, didn’t argue. He simply said, “Then perhaps it’ll work a miracle, like it did for Bastien. Regardless, I’ll see he comes.”

She squeezed her eyes shut against the burning.

Rest-ez a-vec moi. Bleib...bei...mir.

Oncle moved off, the door opened, closed, a lock slid into place thanks to his copy of her key. When she opened her eyes, she saw Christian still. Breath, shallow and slow, still moving his chest just a bit. Just enough.

But she saw Papa too. A stranger, big and frightening, in the one little bed Maman and she had once shared.

Taking up all the space in their cottage.

The mud cleaned from his beautiful face.

Fever burning through him. She saw the village priest bending over him, saying words too low for Corinne to understand.

Forcing a single crumb of the blessed host past his lips.

She could hear Maman, praying in a combination of French and Latin for this stranger she’d taken in, whose name she didn’t know.

He wasn’t Catholic. They hadn’t known it then.

In later years, when Papa was better, he would joke that he hadn’t been much of anything, not before.

He’d say that he’d become so in that moment.

When the precious Body entered his and began a healing.

When the Lord gave him new life and new love and bade him do something worthwhile with it.

Rest-ez a-vec moi. Bleib...bei...mir.

She would give Christian hers, if she could.

He would do more with it than she would.

He would save books and raise his son and teach a generation of lost children how to forgive and love and fight for something more than supremacy.

He would protect exiles and make friends and reveal wisdom to people who thought they already knew it all.

He would love someone, secrets and all, and never ask for what he thought wasn’t their best.

He’d refuse to learn what could harm another.

He’d drop to his knees and sob over a lost lamb returned.

He’d step, time after time after time, between the innocent and the bullies trying to hurt them. Even when he knew it would hurt him instead.

Felix shifted, stirred, making fire light in her leg and arm and side as he unwittingly dug elbows and tailbone in and let blood flow where it hadn’t in too long.

His eye patch lay discarded on the too-smooth blanket beside his too-still father, so she saw how the skin around his missing eye pulled and stretched as he blinked his good one, trying to mimic the movement.

She felt him tense and then go limp as he saw his precious vati , still unmoving, still alive.

He craned his head to look up at her. “Where’s Grandpapa?”

Her fingers tingled, sparkles of pain, as she lifted her hand. She watched her fingers touch his hair but couldn’t feel them do so. “I don’t know, mon chouchou . Oncle Georges is going now to find out.”

Arrested. Not just brought in for an interview but arrested .

That much she knew. What it meant? That she didn’t.

Would they lock him up, here in Paris? Send him to one of their prison camps?

Would there be a trial, a chance for justice, or did the Nazis not grant such basic rights to those they deemed enemies?

She didn’t know, didn’t know, didn’t know.

Felix’s head sagged. “I’m hungry.”

Of course he was—they’d had no dinner last night, no bedtime snack, and it was morning now, and Oncle Georges’s words rattled through her head. Do it for him.

She didn’t want to. Didn’t want to move, didn’t want to take her eyes off Christian, because what if his soul flew away the moment they were gone? But she did want to, too, because this was his precious boy, and the only thing she could really do for Christian right now was love Felix.

She pressed a kiss to his brow, nudged him to slide off her lap, and stood on tingling legs. “Let’s get you some breakfast then.”

A new ugly truth stared back at her from her sparse kitchen shelves.

She had ration coupons only for one. Sharing her meager portions with Felix probably wouldn’t be too big a hardship, but as Christian healed and needed food—which he would —then how would she feed him ?

Thirteen hundred calories a day was all they were granted, assuming they could find food enough to fill those coupons.

Enough for one small woman, perhaps one small woman and one small boy. But a grown man too?

Her stomach cramped, sympathetic to its future self. They’d make do. She’d just have to let Liana slip her some of what the Cartier customers shared. She’d have to let Oncle Georges bring her black-market meat and cheese and pain au chocolat .

Liana— juste ciel . What was she going to tell her friend? How much?

“Tante?”

Corinne jolted and pulled some bread and cheese out, added a few raisins, and slid the plate in front of Felix, where he sat in his chair at her table. “There you go, little mouse. Sorry I don’t have more to offer.”