Page 62

BOULEVARD ARAGO, PARIS, FRANCE

Corinne swiped her cloth over the shelf, straining up on her toes to reach farther back than anyone would ever see anyway.

She didn’t know why she bothered—whoever took over this space would likely dismantle the shelves, turn it back into a house, and obliterate all evidence of what it had once been.

But she cleaned it anyway, because it helped. Helped put all the memories into their places, securing them for the years to come.

The books had all been boxed up over the years, most of them sent off long before the Americans had liberated the city.

Several loads had made their way up to her flat.

A few had been smuggled to the other board members or friends who would appreciate them.

Some had vanished into Germany with the other rare and valuable editions, and who knew what ever became of them.

Some had been destroyed. Burned. Thrown away.

She wiped the last of the dust off the last of the shelves and sighed. Another sigh echoed hers. “Is there anything more forlorn than an empty bookshelf?”

Corinne didn’t bother looking over her shoulder as her mother moved into the space beside her, her own dustrag in hand. Corinne nodded. “A whole library of them.”

“ Touché .” Maman bumped their shoulders together. “You saved what you could.”

“And what I didn’t will live on elsewhere, in other editions.

Other copies. I know.” Even so, she felt no victory as she walked into the periodicals room, where once upon a time, Germany’s exiled writers had created new works, had plotted how to get them back into their homeland, had sat around philosophizing and arguing and brainstorming.

The poster of Goebbels was the only thing left, still tacked to the wall. That fallen Minister, standing in front of a pile of burning books, the flames leaping up the side of the paper and igniting the Reichstag.

Maman strode over to it without hesitation and tore it down. “I suppose I ought to be praying for his immortal soul—and heaven knows I feel sorry for the children he and his wife murdered before they committed suicide. But all I really want to say is Good riddance .”

Corinne could only shake her head. She’d never understand how some people could embrace such evil and call it good.

But she could be grateful for the ones who changed.

Men like Kraus, who had ended up reading so many of the books in this library before he packed them up.

Who had invited her in, once a week, to help him sort the stacks and talk through the concepts he didn’t always know what to do with.

Who might have worn that Nazi uniform up until the last, but who had become something more beneath it, thanks to the books he’d guarded so long.

Yes, about that she could smile. Because that was the funny thing about books—the more you tried to ban them, the more brightly they burned in the hearts and minds that found them anyway. Books were a lot like her—always determined to do what people said they couldn’t.

A pounding came from the front, glass and wood rattling from the force of an exuberant knock.

Maman rolled her eyes. “I guess Georges made it back today after all.”

“Felix?” Corinne called. “Can you let your uncle in?” She wasn’t sure where, exactly, her son was, but his usual favorite spot was near the front door, in the same old leather chair that Corinne had curled up in as an undergrad, a novel hidden inside her textbook.

He’d no doubt have a novel too, despite the fact that he had three weeks left before the end of third term.

But he always got the highest marks, so why would she chide him for it?

“Yes, I’ll get it, Maman,” he called back.

Her own maman angled toward the hallway, a smile upon her lips as she craned out for a glimpse of her grandson.

She’d only been back in Paris for two weeks—but she and Felix had become instant friends.

“Such a good boy,” she said again now, as she’d done at least once a day since she finally met him in person.

“So much good work you did, Corinne, during the war—so much information you helped the Allies get. But that boy—he is surely your biggest achievement.”

Corinne only grinned. And then froze, when she heard the door open and a shout came from her son.

She was already moving, brain trying to identify likely threats and solutions, when she realized it was joy in his voice, not alarm.

When the word to follow hit her, just as it had the first time she’d heard him scream it.

“Vati!”

Vati: Daddy. Papa. The diminutive form of father , usually used only by small children...or by a growing child who hadn’t seen his father in four and a half years.

Vati. Christian. “Christian!” She felt as though she were moving through syrup as she ran down the hallway, toward the open door. She wondered if she was dreaming as she saw them silhouetted there, arms around each other.

Not exactly the image that had won her heart.

Felix was so much bigger now, reaching to Christian’s shoulder.

Her beloved didn’t need to fall to his knees to embrace his boy, just to pull him close.

He wasn’t sobbing, as he’d done at that first, unexpected reunion when he thought he’d never see his little mouse again.

He was laughing, they both were, and she was too as she tossed herself their way.

“Corinne. Meine liebe. ” He caught her with one arm, not letting go of Felix with the other, and pressed a long, hard kiss to her lips.

She didn’t know whether to cling to him or slap at him—well, of course she did. She slapped his chest. And then kissed him again. “You said it would be next week before you could get everything in order and help get Erik out of Berlin.”

Everything was chaos there, he’d said. So many soldiers, returning in defeat, while the city was divided up between the Soviets, the Americans, the British.

..and the French. His last letter had made it out to be a madhouse of the worst kind—which was why he and Georges had met on the outskirts and worked together to get Christian’s old friend out.

She’d known he had to do that before he returned to her—save the man who had saved him with his doctoring of Christian’s files, saved Felix.

Even so, it was one more delay, when she’d only wanted this. Him. Back in her arms.

He grinned down at her, kissing her again. “Shall I leave for another week? Come back on Monday?”

Her answer was to wrap her arms around him. “Don’t even think about it. Did you have trouble at the border?”

“No. Georges’s papers were as good as he promised.” He was looking at Felix again, and she couldn’t blame him for that. She’d sent photos, whenever she could, but they weren’t the same.

Felix grinned up at him. “And did you get Onkle Erik to safety?”

He smiled. Bright and yet tempered. “I did. I met his wife, his two children. And the twelve Jews they had harbored throughout the war. Georges and I helped them all settle in Alsace.”

“Twelve!” She knew Parisians had done the same, when “registering” turned into something far more deadly.

She would have hidden Abraham and Mathilda, if they hadn’t managed to get out of Paris, or any of her other friends, had she been able to find them.

But they’d scattered like seed in the wind. Some, she prayed, were safe.

Some she knew were not. Josef had died in that camp not long after Christian was sent to Greece, taken by pneumonia.

Seeing the reports that had been in the news, she knew now that it was a mercy.

“And then there was the work no one saw. Like what he did for me.” He kissed Felix’s head, and then hers. “It seems books aren’t the only words that can have such impact. I doubt we’ll ever know the lives he saved, just by altering files here and there.”

“I want to meet him someday.” Even as she said it, she pulled him farther inside, out of the doorway. Toward Maman, who still needed an introduction.

She did—someday. Someday they would go to Alsace to meet the Reinholdts; someday they would return to Germany, and she would apply at a university there, and she would help Christian teach a new generation how to be when the world hated them.

How to love despite it. How to thrive and think and grow.

One page at a time. One chapter. One book. Until they were strong enough to change.

But just now, today, this someday, they needed this. An old, empty library. Stories of the years apart. A too-small flat with cupboards that were still too empty, and long nights spent with their lights turned on and their curtains thrown wide to the world.

They needed freedom. Paris. Shelves teeming with books.

And all the words written in the margins. I love you, even when I can’t. I love you, as long as I am.