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Beside her, her husband stirred. “It’s nothing, Annabel,” he mumbled into his pillow. “Go back to sleep. It’s the middle of the night.”

Annabel hesitated. Perhaps he was right.

But after Le Paon’s warnings two days earlier, she had to see for herself that nothing was amiss, so she got out of bed and crept to the window.

She pulled open the corner of the blackout curtain and peered out, putting a hand over her mouth to stifle a scream when she realized what she was seeing.

On the street outside sat three large police trucks.

The building across the way teemed with French police officers, and as Annabel watched, six of them emerged dragging a family of four—two parents and two little boys—toward one of the vehicles.

The mother and father both wore jackets with yellow stars stitched on, and they were each carrying a valise.

As the mother helped the children—both of whom were around Liliane’s age—into the back of one of the big trucks, a police officer shoved her so hard that she fell to the ground.

When her husband cried out and reached down to help her, he earned himself a blow on the head from a rifle butt.

A moment later, another family wearing the yellow star—two parents, an elderly grandmother, and a toddler—were shoved from the same building and up into the truck by another batch of policemen.

“Roger,” Annabel said again, turning from the window. “There’s a roundup happening outside. They’re taking children.”

“Children?” Roger repeatedly groggily, sitting up in bed. “But that doesn’t make sense. The Germans are after able-bodied adults who can labor for the Reich.”

The vehicle filled with Annabel’s neighbors was pulling away now, and down the block, she could see another Jewish family meeting the same fate. “Roger, I don’t think this is about free labor.”

Roger got out of bed and crossed to stand behind Annabel. Together, they peered out the window in stunned silence.

“What could they want with the children?” Roger asked after a while, his voice hollow.

The only answer Annabel could think of was one she didn’t dare say aloud. “I have to warn Hélène,” she said softly, turning from the window.

“They won’t be on the deportation list,” he said confidently. “The Rosmans are French, aren’t they? Certainly they’re only taking foreigners.”

“I don’t think it matters tonight.”

“You’ll go see them first thing in the morning,” he said after a moment. “It’s too dangerous right now—you can’t be caught breaking curfew. Not with police about.”

“I know,” Annabel said, biting her lip to stop herself from crying.

Never had she felt more helpless; she had stolen at least two hundred pieces since the start of the Occupation and had funneled an enormous amount of money to the underground, but at this moment, none of that mattered at all.

It hadn’t been enough to save her neighbors, and it meant nothing if Hélène Rosman and her family had been arrested, too.

Sleep was impossible, so Roger and Annabel sat in the parlor, holding hands and listening to the sounds of distant screams, as they waited for the sun to rise on a city that would never be the same.

On the morning of July 16, Colette awoke into a nightmare.

When she made her way, yawning, out of the bedroom she shared with Liliane, she found her parents side by side on the sofa, staring at the wall and looking as if they hadn’t slept a wink.

“Mum, Papa, what is it?” she asked, her stomach suddenly knotted with fear. Had Papa discovered that Colette had been stealing? Were they waiting for her to awaken so that they could punish her and forbid her from working with the underground?

But that wasn’t it at all. “It seems there has been another Jewish roundup overnight, my darling,” Annabel said, her voice breaking. “We watched from the window as several families were taken.”

“Families?” Colette repeated blankly.

“They were taking everyone,” Papa said when her mother seemed unable to reply. “Children, too.”

“But… why?” Colette asked, her heart beginning to thud.

If they were taking whole families, did that mean Tristan was in danger?

She bit her lip before she spoke rashly.

Though she suspected her mother knew she had a beau—could she call him that?

—she was certain neither of her parents would guess the boy was Jewish.

Her Tristan was just as forbidden as Isolde’s lover had been.

“I’m going to see what I can find out in just a little while,” Mum replied. “I’m not sure the police are done with the raids, and it might not be safe yet.”

“The French police?” Colette asked.

Her mother’s eyes were watery as she focused on Colette. “I’m afraid so.”

Colette’s heart sank like a stone. “But if the French police were carrying out the raids,” she said slowly, “that would mean they were able to arrest far more people, far more quickly, than if Germans were going door-to-door.” When her mother nodded, the knots in Colette’s stomach tightened.

But suddenly, she realized that they had someone they could call to find out more.

“Papa, what about Monsieur Charpentier?”

Her father looked at her blankly. “Who?”

“The policeman who used to be your student,” she said. “He always says hello to Liliane and me, remember?” He was a relatively young man, perhaps in his twenties, and seemed pleasant enough, though his face reminded Colette of a weasel’s. “Perhaps he knows something.”

Papa’s forehead creased in concentration, and then his expression cleared. “Ah, yes, Guillaume Charpentier. ‘Charpentier, Charpentier, celui aux grandes oreilles ,’ his schoolmates used to say.”

It bothered her that her father was so casual about his students mocking the size of the young man’s ears, but that didn’t matter now. “Could you call on him, Papa? Perhaps he can tell you what has happened.”

With a grunt, her father nodded, and twenty minutes later, he had left the apartment in search of news. He returned quickly to report that Monsieur Charpentier hadn’t yet come home from the police prefecture, and that his wife knew nothing about the raids.

“I’ll go see the Rosmans,” said Mum. “And then we’ll speak with Le Paon. I’ll return with news.”

While she waited for her mother to come home, Colette slipped across the street to the hiding place she shared with Tristan, but when she moved the brick aside, she found only her own poem there, still untouched.

That meant nothing, she reminded herself.

She had left it just two days ago; he simply hadn’t had time to claim it yet.

He would be here. But a lump of fear rose in her throat, threatening to choke her. What if something had happened to him?

Two hours later, Mum returned, her face ashen. “Thousands of Jews have been taken across the city,” she reported, her voice trembling. “They are being held in the Vél’ d’Hiv.”

Colette had been to the cycling stadium near the Eiffel Tower; the place wasn’t large at all. “Thousands? But surely they can’t fit.”

“Any word on Madame Rosman?” Papa asked, coming into the room.

Mum shook her head, her eyes filling. “There was no answer at their door, and no one I’ve spoken with has heard from them. I fear they’ve been seized.”

“Or maybe they fled,” Papa said. “Perhaps they were warned.”

“They were warned,” Mum said in a small voice. “Le Paon warned her, and I tried to persuade her, but Hélène didn’t believe they were at risk.”

A silence fell over the three of them as the truth sank in. “Mum?” Colette said a moment later, summoning her courage. “There is a boy named Tristan who lives in our neighborhood. How would I find out if something happened to him?”

Papa frowned and looked at Mum. “Who is this Tristan?”

“A boy Colette has been writing letters to,” Mum said. She turned back to Colette, concern in her eyes. “Darling, only Jews were taken last night.”

“I know,” Colette mumbled.

Papa turned to peer at her suspiciously, and when she didn’t say anything, his eyebrows slowly rose. “Colette, is this boy you’ve been writing letters to Jewish ?”

“He is.” She looked down at her toes.

“Colette!”

“You don’t understand, Papa!”

He took a step toward her. “Relationships with Jews are forbidden by the Germans! Do you know what could happen to you—to your mother, to our family—if your activities brought suspicion to our door?”

Colette cowered for a second before the boy’s words came back to her.

She is a heroine… She is brave . She took a deep breath and pulled herself up to her full height, forcing herself to look her father in the eye.

“I have only followed my heart, Papa. If we let them tell us how to feel, we’ve already lost, haven’t we?

Tristan and his family are no different than we are. We’re all humans, we’re all—”

Her father interrupted her by slapping her hard across the face, and then, muttering under his breath, he strode out of the room. Colette put her hand to her burning cheek, too shocked to feel the sting, as Mum approached with tears in her eyes and wrapped Colette in a hug.

“I will do what I can to find this boy,” Mum promised.

But as Colette cried into her mother’s shoulder, she knew it was already a lost cause. She didn’t know Tristan’s last name or where, exactly, he lived. How on earth could her mother find out a thing?

For two days after the mass roundups, Colette drifted around the apartment, aimless and bereft. She returned to the wall four times, hoping against hope that Tristan had returned to read her poem, but each day, her piece of paper still sat there, undisturbed.

“You’re sad,” Liliane said in a small voice as Colette put her to bed two nights after the arrests. “Why?”

Mum was out at a meeting of her underground organization, and Papa was so upset that Colette had been corresponding with a Jewish boy that he refused to talk with her. She was glad for the excuse to close herself away in the bedroom she shared with her sister.

“Some very bad things are happening in Paris right now,” Colette said.

“Is that why Mummy is sad, too?”

Colette sighed. “Her friends were taken away by the police. And so was the boy I write letters to, I think.”

“Why did the police take them away?” Liliane bit her lip. “Aren’t policemen supposed to help people?”

Colette didn’t know how to answer that. Of course a four-year-old should trust the police; what if she got lost and needed help?

Wasn’t that the job of the authorities, to keep them all safe?

But the fact that the French police had been complicit in the roundups changed everything, didn’t it?

That wasn’t something she could explain to Liliane, though, so she settled for saying, “If something bad happens, Liliane, it’s okay to ask a policeman for help. You can trust them.”

Liliane scrunched her face like she was considering Colette’s words, and finally she nodded, her features relaxing. “Okay,” she agreed. “Will you tell me a story, Colette?”

“I don’t feel much like stories tonight, Liliane.”

“Please?” Liliane pleaded. “At least tell me the one about Robin Hood! And his eagle!”

“You’ve heard that one a hundred times.” But Colette couldn’t help but smile slightly. As depleted and hopeless as she felt, she knew she’d find solace in the familiar tale, too.

“ S’te plait? Pretty please?”

“Very well.” Colette smoothed Liliane’s curls from her forehead and leaned in to begin the tale they both knew by heart. “Once upon a time in Wentbridge…”

“Near Mummy’s forest!” said Liliane.

“Yes, exactly,” Colette said with a smile.

And as she began to tell the familiar tale of their ancestor, she was reminded that even in the darkest of times, one could make a difference.

She could feel hope rising up within her like a zeppelin, and as she finished the story ten minutes later and tucked the sheets around her drowsy sister, she knew that she must redouble her efforts to steal for the underground, for the sooner the Germans were driven out of France, the better the chances that her Tristan—and her mother’s friends—would return.

“ Kyi-kyi-kyi ,” she finished the story, as she always did.

“ Kyi-kyi-kyi ,” Liliane replied with a yawn, already drifting off to sleep.

“ Ko-ko-ko ,” Colette concluded softly, and Liliane’s eyelids fluttered.

“I love you, Colette,” Liliane murmured, and Colette bent to place a kiss on her forehead.

“I love you, too,” she said. “Sweet dreams, little sister.”