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Guillaume Charpentier hadn’t intended any of it.

He had meant well, he really had. In his frazzled thoughts as he raced toward the Marceaus’ apartment on the rue Pasteur that night, he had been thinking of only one thing: he needed to warn them, for it was his fault—no matter how indirectly—that the Germans were coming for them.

He had seen Madame Marceau hurrying away from the Brasserie Roye that night a few weeks after the Vél’ d’Hiv roundups, and he had known instinctively that whatever she’d done, there had to have been a reason.

She was a good, kind woman, the wife of his former headmaster, and he’d made the snap decision to do all he could to protect her. The rest could be sorted out later.

So when his boss, Jean Seguy, came charging out of the brasserie after her, Guillaume had acted on instinct, stepping into Seguy’s path and playing dumb while the blustering older man had tried to get by him.

Guillaume had hoped to give Madame Marceau time to escape, and that night, he had, but a week later, Seguy had come to his door with a drawing prepared by a police artist.

“This is the woman who stole two valuable pieces of jewelry from a German commander,” he’d said, stabbing his meaty finger at the picture.

Madame Marceau’s face was unmistakable, and Guillaume swallowed hard.

“I know you saw her fleeing, too. Do you recognize her? Do you know who she is? Where she went?”

“No, sir,” Guillaume said, heat creeping up his neck.

“Never seen her before.” Madame Marceau, a jewel thief?

No, it was impossible. It was a misunderstanding, all of it, but it would not matter to the Germans whether Madame Marceau was guilty or innocent once she was in their custody.

And if she had no information to give them—and surely she didn’t—she would wind up dead. He had to protect her.

But then his wife, Francine, had come up behind him in the doorway and looked at the drawing.

“Why, Guillaume,” she’d said sweetly, “that’s Madame Marceau, clear as day.

” When he turned to look at her in horror, her eyes were narrowed, and he could see in her expression exactly what had just happened.

Francine, who was wildly jealous and possessive, had jumped to the conclusion that if Guillaume was trying to protect Madame Marceau, he must have amorous feelings for her.

“Is it?” he asked, trying to hedge, even as his face went red. “I’m not certain…”

“It’s obviously her,” Francine said, turning to a triumphant-looking Seguy. “Married to Guillaume’s old schoolmaster, Monsieur Marceau. They live in the neighborhood, on the rue Pasteur. I’ve queued with her at the boulangerie a few times.”

“I see,” Seguy said, turning back to Guillaume. “Interesting that you didn’t recognize her, while your wife knew her instantly.”

“The sketch isn’t clear,” Guillaume mumbled.

“And yet you must have seen her face-to-face that night, when you stepped into my path and stopped me from following her,” Seguy said, shooting a glance at Francine, who looked like she was about to blow her top.

“Come see me first thing Monday, Charpentier,” Seguy said, his voice sinking to a growl.

“It seems we have things to talk about.”

“Yes, sir,” Guillaume managed, before shutting the door.

Francine immediately began screaming at him, accusing him of stepping out on her, of carrying on a liaison with Madame Marceau while Francine was nursing the pain of yet another late-term miscarriage.

As if Guillaume’s heart wasn’t broken each time they lost another child.

He tried to protest, to insist that he had no feelings for Madame Marceau, who was at least a decade older than him.

“Then why would you risk yourself to protect her?” Francine shrieked. “You are lying to me!”

“I am trying to do the right thing!” Guillaume had shouted back, finally raising his own voice. “I am trying to be a good man!”

Francine had looked shocked by his outburst, and then her narrow lips had settled into a hard, thin line. “And yet,” she said tightly, “you fail at that, too. Look around us. We are living nearly in poverty, thanks to you. No wonder we can’t bring a child into the world, living in this hovel.”

Guillaume felt the crushing weight of failure. It was his job to provide for his family, and now, with Seguy bearing down on him, he’d probably be fired on Monday morning. How would he support Francine without a job?

He felt powerless, deflated. But as Francine stalked past him, muttering about how she couldn’t stand to look at him anymore and had to get out of the apartment, he realized there was still something he could do to redeem himself.

He could warn Madame Marceau. He could tell her that the authorities were coming to question her, and that if she wanted to save her family, they should all flee immediately.

But what would happen if Francine found out?

It would only make her more certain that Guillaume was having an affair, though for him, there had never been any other woman.

Francine had always been temperamental and possessive, but in the past two years, during which they had lost three babies to miscarriage and another at just six days of age, she had come undone, her fury enveloping them both.

One day, he was certain, the fog would lift, and they would find happiness again.

And now, as Guillaume slumped beside the front door of their apartment, paralyzed by indecision, it occurred to him that if he could save Madame Marceau and those two beautiful girls she’d been blessed with, perhaps God would look favorably upon him.

Perhaps he and Francine would finally be granted a child of their own.

He straightened, reenergized. This was the way out of the whole thing.

Before he could second-guess himself, he raced out the front door and down the stairs, spilling onto the street below and continuing at a run toward the Marceaus’ apartment a few blocks away.

He would save their lives, and that would count for something.

It wasn’t fair that he was denied the chance at redemption by the early arrival of the Germans, who were already pouring into the Marceaus’ building when he turned, panting, onto their street.

It wasn’t his fault that he didn’t have time to warn the older girl, whom he spotted opening her bedroom window as if to leap out.

He went right away to the window, intending to call to her, to tell her that she had to warn her parents about what was coming, but it was already too late.

When the German voices sounded from the other room, and when the older girl fled, he was left with no choice but to take the little girl.

Otherwise, the Germans would haul her away with the rest of them, and he couldn’t let his last chance at redemption slip right through his fingers.

He hadn’t meant to do it, but she had looked at him with wide eyes, full of fear, and he’d thought to himself, If I save this child, maybe God will give Francine the baby she so desperately wants.

He had not intended what came next. He hadn’t thought through any of it.

Once he had the girl in his arms and was hurrying away from the Marceaus’ apartment, his hand clamped firmly over her mouth to keep her from calling out, all that mattered at first was keeping her quiet.

He didn’t notice that she’d stopped struggling until her body went limp in his arms, and he realized that he’d been holding his hand over her mouth and nose too tightly, for too long.

Horror flooded through him. What had he done?

She was like a sack of flour, but he had no choice but to hurry on, tears stinging his eyes.

When Francine discovered the bracelet in the lining of the child’s nightgown later that night, she couldn’t believe their good fortune. “All our problems are solved!” she had crowed. But Guillaume saw the bracelet for just what it was: cursed.

“It isn’t ours,” he’d told her. “We will find a way to return it to the Marceaus.”

Francine’s eyes had blazed as she fastened the clasp of the bracelet, adorning her own wrist. “We will do no such thing,” she said as she held her arm out, admiring the diamonds on her wrist. “It’s the most beautiful thing I have ever seen.”

“We cannot keep it,” he’d said in a whisper. “Please, Francine.”

“Can’t I just enjoy it without you ruining everything?

” she asked, tears suddenly glistening in her eyes.

“Besides, Madame Marceau will not survive, will she? Guilty or not, the Germans have her now. And good riddance.” She was sobbing now, and it was so at odds with the sharp steeliness of her tone that he wondered for a moment if they were alligator tears.

But just like every time she cried, he backed off.

If he didn’t know better, he might think she did it on purpose, knowing that she could bend him to her will.

But that wasn’t Francine. Francine was troubled, certainly, but she was a woman he had sworn to cherish and protect, in sickness and health, in good times and in bad.

Lately, the bad times had threatened to overcome them both, but he realized that he had been given a gift, an opportunity to change that.

Francine was right. Madame Marceau would not be coming home.

He understood that with a bone-deep sorrow, and it was a guilt he would carry with him for the rest of his days.

But the bracelet could make Francine happy.

It could give them a better life. As her husband, he owed that to her, didn’t he?

What harm could there be in keeping the treasures of a dead woman?

“I’m sorry, Francine,” he’d said, and she had nodded, satisfied.

“You’ll see, Guillaume,” she said. “Everything will be different for us now.”

And she was right, in a way. She’d had the idea a day later that he should go back to the Marceaus’ apartment to search the linings of the girls’ other clothing, and though he had protested, he made it in undetected, simply by going in through the front door the police had left unlocked.

The concierge hadn’t given him a second look; his uniform had convinced her that he was there on official business.

In the wardrobe in the children’s room, he’d found six other pieces with hems heavy with treasure, and he had come home with enough jewels to start a new life anywhere they chose.

Their future changed in an instant, and they were able to move first to the countryside, and then, when the war was over, to America.

The bracelet that had been sewn into the hem of the little girl’s nightgown on the night he took her, the one that sparkled like a universe of stars, bought the Charpentiers entry into a new life across the sea.

Guillaume had given it in 1948 to Hubert Verdier, a greedy former police colleague, who had called him in 1945 to say that he knew Charpentier had the bracelet that had disappeared the night Annabel Marceau was arrested.

“I want it,” said Verdier, who was in the process of immigrating to the United States, thanks to the fact that he had an American grandfather.

He’d apparently come into some money recently and could finally afford the move.

“If you let me have it, I will help you move to the States, too. Leave the past behind once and for all.”

It had taken nearly three years to convince Francine, who loved that bracelet more than she loved anything. But she knew, as did Guillaume, that their future wasn’t in France. It was across the ocean. It was the only way.

In return for the bracelet, Hubert had sponsored their citizenship application and furnished the necessary false papers.

Verdier had always been a bastard, and in retrospect, it seemed he had remained one, betraying Guillaume for years by carrying on an affair with Francine, who had never forgiven Guillaume for trading the beautiful bracelet in for their chance at a better life.