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Two days after they’d been released from Cherche-Midi, Papa took Colette to see Mum’s closest friends, Uncle Frédéric and Aunt Marie.

“We’ve had some news from our concierge,” Colette’s father said stiffly to Uncle Frédéric after they’d greeted each other.

Uncle Frédéric was not really Colette’s uncle, but rather the jewel broker her mother had been using in Paris since before Colette was born.

Colette had never met Mum’s brother, Leo, who lived in England, and Papa had no living relatives.

Frédéric and his wife Marie were the closest thing she had to extended family.

“Roger, I know,” Uncle Frédéric said, his voice thick with grief. “I heard the rumor but I did not believe it, so I went to the river where they were pulling the body up…” He drew a shuddering breath and glanced at Colette. “I hoped to be able to tell you that the rumors were wrong, but…”

“But what, Uncle Frédéric?” Colette prompted, her voice small.

“But,” Uncle Frédéric said, his voice cracking, “I recognized the nightgown. With the L stitched across the front. It is the one my Marie made for Liliane.” He reached out for Colette’s hand. “The nightgown that matches yours.”

“And you’re certain?” Roger asked.

Uncle Frédéric nodded. “I sat beside Marie each night as she sewed the gowns. I would recognize it anywhere.”

“And the bracelet sewn into the lining?” Roger asked. Colette couldn’t understand why that mattered, but her father’s jaw was rigid with anger.

“Gone,” Uncle Frédéric said. “The hem had been ripped open.”

Colette’s father put a hand over his mouth.

“Papa, what is it?” Colette ventured after a few seconds.

“It means that the man who took your sister knew about the jewels,” he said, his voice flat. “It means that she was likely taken by someone who knew your mother, who knew what she was up to.”

“But…” Colette said, her stomach turning. A life for a meaningless piece of gold, studded with a few sparkling gemstones? “What about my half of the bracelet?”

It wasn’t what she had intended to ask—and when the question came out, it came out all wrong.

She didn’t care about the bracelet itself.

She was asking what she was supposed to do with a piece that would never be complete again, but more than that, she wanted someone to tell her what she was supposed to do knowing that she would never again be whole.

How would she live in a world without her sister?

Her father fixed her with a look so cold that she could feel the ice inside her. “I don’t give a damn what you do with it,” he said.

“But—”

“Your sister is dead , Colette.”

As if she didn’t know. As if she didn’t feel in the very depths of her soul that it was her fault for turning her back. As if she wouldn’t blame herself for it forever. “I’m so sorry, Papa,” she said. “I’m so sorry.”

“You should be,” he spat. “You were responsible for her! You left her alone, and then when you saw someone taking her away, you weren’t even clever enough to go after her! You just stood there!”

“But the Germans—”

“Bah! You could have run from them if you wanted to!” Papa shot back. “But you were too frightened, Colette, and now your sister is dead .”

The words sliced into her like knife blades. “I know.” Her eyes welled with tears.

“Roger, it isn’t her fault,” Uncle Frédéric said, his tone suddenly clipped. “Leave the child alone!”

Papa whirled on Uncle Frédéric. “Leave her alone? She didn’t even get a good look at the man who took her sister! Perhaps we would have found her in time if we knew more about him other than the fact he was apparently wearing a uniform of some sort.”

“I’m so sorry,” Colette sobbed, but her father waved her words away.

“As far as I’m concerned, you can take that bracelet—and every other damned thing your mother stole—and throw it in the Seine,” he said. “I want nothing to do with any of it.”

“Now, Roger—” Uncle Frédéric said, a flush creeping up his neck.

“Don’t ‘Now, Roger’ me,” her father said, turning on Uncle Frédéric again. “It’s over, Frédéric. I should have put a stop to this madness long ago. I should have forbidden Annabel from doing what she did. I knew it was a mistake, and now I have to live with the fact that I did nothing about it.”

“She’s a grown woman, Roger!” Uncle Frédéric exclaimed. “She didn’t need your permission. She was doing what she felt was right. She was trying to make a difference in the world, like those who came before her.”

Colette’s father’s eyes blazed. “A difference, you say? Look where it got her. Her daughter is dead, and she soon will be, too, if she isn’t already.”

Colette gasped. “Papa, what do you mean?”

Uncle Frédéric glared at Colette’s father and put his arm around Colette, as if he could protect her from the blow that was coming.

“I mean,” Colette’s father said, his voice dripping with disdain as he turned to her, “that your mother took things too far. And they will kill her for it, Colette. Is that clear enough?”

Colette closed her eyes. “No. It can’t be.”

“Roger, to speak this way in front of your daughter—” Uncle Frédéric said, his voice cracking.

But Colette’s father interrupted. “I’m finished, Frédéric. With all of it.” He began to move toward the door, but Uncle Frédéric released Colette and stepped into his path.

“Now wait just a moment,” Uncle Frédéric said. “I know that times are difficult right now, but you have a daughter who needs you, and—”

But Colette’s father shoved him aside, barely breaking his stride.

At the door, he turned. “I’ll bring you the rest of Annabel’s jewels tomorrow, the ones that the Germans missed beneath our floorboards.

It should be enough to get Colette out of Paris.

Annabel has a brother, Leo, in England. You can send her there. ”

And then, without a look back, he was gone, taking all semblance of normalcy with him. Colette buried her head against Uncle Frédéric’s shoulder and wept.

Colette had been certain, at first, that her father would return for her. He was grieving just as she was, and he blamed her for Liliane’s death, just as she knew she would always blame herself.

It was true that at fourteen, she wasn’t a little girl anymore, and that all across Europe, children her age had lost their parents and were having to learn to fend for themselves.

But Colette was no orphan; her father was still very much alive.

Surely he would remember that he still had one child who needed him.

She knew how he felt about jewel theft, and she imagined that his feelings had only hardened after what had happened to Mum, so she did her best to ignore her urge to steal.

“He’ll come back, won’t he?” she asked one night over dinner with Uncle Frédéric and Aunt Marie.

They were kind people, people who had loved her mother, people who had known Colette and Liliane since they’d been born.

They had taken Colette in without hesitation when her father had deposited her there three weeks before.

When he answered, Uncle Frédéric looked her in the eye, which she appreciated; he treated her not as a burden or a child, but as someone intelligent he was glad to share a table with. “I fear not, my dear girl,” he said gently. “I’ve had word that he has left Paris.”

“But… where did he go?”

“North, I’ve heard. That’s all I know, I’m afraid.”

Colette glanced at Marie, whose head was bowed, then she looked back at Uncle Frédéric. “Surely my father won’t abandon me, though,” Colette said into the silence. “Surely he’ll come back.”

“Before the war, my dear, I would have thought the same. But this conflict—all the fear and death and tragedy—has changed us all.”

“It is because he blames me for Liliane,” Colette said quietly. “As well he should. If I hadn’t turned my back—”

“Nonsense, Colette,” Uncle Frédéric cut in. “You are not responsible, no matter what your papa says. Please, my dear, this burden is not yours to carry.”

But Colette knew he was wrong. How else could her own father have abandoned her so easily? No, she had done something terribly wrong, and now, she was getting what she deserved.

“I’m very sorry,” she said after a while as she picked at the food in front of her: a watery bowl of turnip soup, a piece of bread made from questionable grain.

She had lost her appetite weeks ago, and it still hadn’t returned.

“I shouldn’t be your responsibility. Another mouth to feed at a time like this… ”

This time, it was Marie who answered. “My dear girl,” she said, “you are here because you are our family. We loved your mother, and we love you, too. We will continue trying to reach your uncle in England, but in the meantime, you have a home with us as long as you need it.”

Two months after she’d come to stay with Uncle Frédéric and Aunt Marie, Colette slipped away one afternoon to make sure that her father was really gone, tracing a lifetime of familiar steps to the rue Pasteur.

But she found the door to her old apartment locked and boarded, and when she rapped on the door to the concierge’s apartment, the sullen old woman barked at her to get out.

“Your father said to tell anyone who asked that you were both dead, I suppose so that the Germans don’t come back sniffing around the place,” she said. “Do you mean to put me in danger by returning here?”

“Of course not, Madame Nadaud. I’m very sorry, but has my father really moved away?”

“Are you deaf? Of course he has. He couldn’t very well play dead in his own home, could he?”

Colette swallowed hard. “But what will become of the apartment?”

Madame Nadaud puffed up her chest. “He has paid me handsomely to keep it for him until the end of the war. He will pay me more upon his return.”

“I see.” He had evidently kept some of her mother’s stolen jewels for himself, using them to bribe the concierge. So much for wanting nothing to do with them. “Do you know where he’s gone?”

She jutted out her chin. “To Brittany, that’s all I know. But if I were you, I’d forget about him. Aren’t you the one who abandoned your sister? A father doesn’t forgive a thing like that.”

It felt like the woman had slapped her. “But—”

“Now get out before I call the authorities.” She slammed her door, leaving Colette frozen in the hall.

She went next to the police prefecture, summoning all her confidence before she approached the desk.

“I’m looking for Monsieur Charpentier,” she said, trying to sound casual and not as if she was terrified of the men in uniform, who she now knew were capable of destroying people’s lives. “He’s an officer here.”

The man sniffed as if he’d smelled something foul. “Guillaume Charpentier? He’s gone.”

“Gone?”

“He got a transfer to somewhere in the south. Lucky bastard.”

Colette’s heart sank. He was the last person she knew who might be able to help her find answers. “Thank you,” she whispered. She made it to the street outside before she began to cry.

Over the next few months, Uncle Frédéric wrote repeatedly to Uncle Leo, but they never received a reply.

They had no way of knowing whether Leo was still alive, whether he had received any of Frédéric’s correspondence, and whether he might find it within his heart to welcome his sister’s teenage daughter.

One night early in the new year, after Colette had been living with Uncle Frédéric and Aunt Marie for several months, they sat her down beside the fireplace for a talk.

She was nearly fifteen, and she had gone in an instant from being a child to being a woman who had no choice but to stand on her own two feet.

She still hadn’t returned to stealing, though, for what if her father came back for her?

She couldn’t give him a reason to walk away again.

But with each passing day, she began to understand that she was turning her back on those who needed her help, turning her back on her heritage, turning her back on what her mother had lived—and died—for.

It would break Mum’s heart to see what had become of her.

“There are some things we’d like to speak with you about,” Uncle Frédéric said once they were all settled, the heat from the dying embers not nearly enough to warm the bitter cold that had set in.

“It is time for me to leave, isn’t it?” Colette guessed. “I’m sorry. I have overstayed my welcome—”

“No,” Uncle Frédéric cut in swiftly. “Not at all, my dear. Your home is here for now. It is clear enough that there will be no travel to England in the midst of a war.”

“Thank you,” she said, looking from Frédéric to Marie, who looked uneasy. “But then, what is it?”

“I know we have all long suspected, but we have received definitive word about your mother,” Aunt Marie answered, her tone gentle. “We weren’t sure whether to tell you, but, well, you deserve to know what happened.”

“She’s dead, isn’t she?” Colette said, for she had felt it in her soul. Liliane’s absence had felt different, but of course that was because it was cloaked in her guilt.

“Yes,” Uncle Frédéric said without hesitation. He looked Colette squarely in the eye, addressing her once again as an adult. “I’m very sorry, Colette. As it turns out, the man she stole those bracelets from is well known for being both cruel and vindictive. She couldn’t have chosen a worse target.”

“It was very important to her to take those bracelets back, though,” Colette said. “They belonged to her friend.”

“Yes, I know,” Uncle Frédéric said. “I knew the Rosmans, too, and I was as upset about what happened to them as your mother was. Your mother was trying to do the right thing, to save a pair of pieces that meant the world to that family. But I imagine the German responsible for her death felt humiliated by the theft. He is probably furious that despite punishing her, the bracelets are not back in his possession.”

Colette thought about her half of the piece, which she’d carefully sewn into the lining of her brassiere.

She wore it over her heart each day, and she vowed that whatever happened, she would make sure that Mockel never laid eyes on it again.

She would keep it safe until Hélène Rosman returned, just as her mother had wanted.

“Do you think Liliane’s half of the bracelet will resurface? ”

“One day. If the man who took her life took the jewels, too, it was almost certainly because he intended to sell them, not because he intended to enjoy them for himself. I have inquiries out to every jeweler I know. When the bracelet appears again, we will know.”