The Room on Rue Amélie Page 21

  “But there’s still a chance.”

  “I haven’t heard anything from them in a year. I must brace for the worst.” There was no official word from the east of course. It wasn’t as if the Nazis politely sent back death notices. But sometimes, loss could be felt in one’s bones.

  “You can’t lose hope, Charlotte.”

  “But you have, haven’t you?” Charlotte spoke before thinking, and Ruby flinched. “I can see it. You feel like you don’t matter anymore.”

  Ruby rose slowly and crossed to the edge of the terrace, where she gazed into the distance. “Even after I lost the baby, I was able to find a purpose to my life. But who am I now? I don’t know anymore.”

  “You’re my family,” Charlotte said. Ruby turned and looked at her, and Charlotte went on. “You’re my family, Ruby,” she repeated more firmly. “I wouldn’t have survived without you. Don’t you see that?”

  “But there will come a time when you won’t need me anymore,” Ruby said. “And then what?”

  That night, Charlotte couldn’t sleep. To say aloud that she believed her parents were dead felt like a betrayal. But now that she had, well, it was all she could think about. Every time she closed her eyes, she saw Maman’s face, or Papa’s. They reached out to her, begging her to save them, but there was nothing she could do. She’d had her chance, and she’d failed. She began to cry, and once she started, she found she couldn’t stop.

  Just past midnight, something pinged off the frame of her open window. She slid out of bed, peered into the dark courtyard, and blinked a few times as her eyes adjusted to the darkness.

  “Charlotte?” The voice from below was a whisper, but she recognized it immediately.

  “Lucien?”

  “You are crying,” he replied.

  She could barely see him in the darkness, and she was glad, for it meant he couldn’t see the way her cheeks were flaming. “I’m fine. What are you doing here?”

  He didn’t answer her question. “Meet me at your door.”

  She heard a rustling below, and then he was gone. She stayed paralyzed for a moment. He had never called on her this late before, and certainly never once she was in her nightgown. Ruby would be furious if she found out. But Charlotte had to see him. She crept quietly to the front door of the apartment.

  Lucien was already there, and as she stepped aside to let him in, he pulled her into his arms. He kissed her on both cheeks, tenderly. “You taste like salt,” he murmured.

  “What are you doing here, Lucien?”

  “I heard you. You sounded sad.”

  “But why were you in the courtyard in the first place?”

  Instead of answering right away, he took her hand and led her quietly into her bedroom. Her heart was nearly pounding out of her chest. “I’m in the courtyard often, Charlotte,” he said as he shut the door behind them. “To make sure that you and Ruby are safe. But I’ve never heard you cry before.”

  “I’m okay,” she mumbled.

  He pulled her into his arms. “It’s all right not to be.”

  “I want to be strong,” she whispered. But pressed against his solid chest now, breathing in the impossibly woodsy scent of him, all she could think about was what she’d lost.

  “You are strong,” he said gently, pulling her even closer. “What is it?”

  “I shouldn’t be here.”

  “With me?” he asked, beginning to push away a little.

  “No,” she said, holding on. “No. That’s not what I meant. I meant that my parents are probably dead. And somehow, I’ve survived. I don’t know how to live with that.”

  He sighed and eased her onto the bed. For a moment, she was sure that he was about to kiss her. But instead, he simply lay down beside her, his body pressed against hers. “You have to live with it,” he said after a while. “Because if you’re not alive, I don’t want to be alive.”

  “But I let them take my parents . . .” She was sobbing again, and she was grateful for the darkness in the room, because she knew her tears weren’t pretty.

  “There’s nothing you could have done.”

  “How can I ever forgive myself?”

  “There’s nothing to forgive. Surely your parents’ greatest wish would have been to know that you were free.”

  After that, there were no more words to say. Charlotte didn’t know how to believe what Lucien was telling her, but she wanted to. She wanted to forgive herself. She wanted to hope. And maybe someday, she could. But for now, the warm comfort of his body was enough. He held her and stroked her hair as she faded into sleep. The last thing she was aware of was his kiss on her forehead, lingering, comforting, telling her silently that despite everything, it was all going to be okay in the end.

  CHAPTER THIRTY

  November 1943

  It was a brisk fall morning, and Thomas’s mission was to help escort twelve Douglas A-20 Boston bombers to their target forty miles south of Dunkirk, France. What was unusual about the mission was that in addition to escorting the bombers, Thomas and the other Spitfire pilots were tasked with flying close to enemy fighter bases in Saint-Omer for the purpose of eliciting a response that would draw attention away from the bombers’ mission. The idea was that the Huns would be so busy chasing down the fighters they’d miss the bombs being dropped on German-run munitions factories in northern France until it was too late.

  “It’s dangerous, lads,” the briefing officer had told them in no uncertain terms. “Chances are that at least one of you will be shot down today. If you are, it is your duty to try to evade capture.”

  Thomas knew all this, of course. And in fact, it didn’t need to be stated; it was basic self-preservation. But he also knew the escape line that had once shepherded him safely out of the country and across the Pyrenees was no longer operating as efficiently; the British embassy in Spain had sent word months ago about the breach of the network. He worried every day that Ruby had been caught up in the stings that had followed the arrests in Urrugne.

  But what could he do beyond continuing to fight for the Allies? The sooner they could weaken the Nazi stranglehold on France, the safer she would be. Would it be too late, though? He couldn’t let himself consider that option.

  He stood in line upon leaving the briefing room to get his standard-issue survival pack, which was more advanced than the one he’d had when he parachuted into the French wilderness. It contained a map of France printed on a silk handkerchief, some francs, some food tablets and water purification tablets, and two trouser buttons that could be assembled into a compass.

  The pack was supposed to make the pilots feel prepared, but Thomas knew that once you were on the ground, if you were lucky enough to survive your plane going down in the first place, all bets were off.

  They set out at midday in formations of three, joining up with three other squadrons over Britain and then climbing above 11,000 feet once they had cleared the Dover coast. Over Calais, Thomas and a few others broke away from the main group to head toward Saint-Omer. Thomas was just preparing for possible air combat—unlocking the catches on the armament, tightening his safety harness, going through a mental checklist of evasive maneuvers—when a terse voice came over the VHF. “Bandits three o’clock below.”

  Thomas cursed as at least a dozen Nazi 109s materialized from the clouds.

  “Attack in sections!” yelled the CO over the radio.

  Thomas took a deep breath and peeled off to the right, initiating a dive. It should have been routine, but suddenly, his cockpit was on fire. He hadn’t even realized he’d been hit, but there was the attacking plane behind him, lining up to come at him again.

  It turned out that wasn’t necessary. The flames were advancing quickly; the fuel tanks were less than a minute away from igniting and blowing up the plane in midair. Thomas had to get out.

  He ripped off his oxygen mask and radio plug and pulled back the canopy hood. “Please, God,” he found himself murmuring as he detached his safety harness and pulled the cord t
o open his parachute. In an instant, he was watching his flaming jet peel away from him, trailing smoke, a Nazi fighter still on its tail.

  The drift to the ground seemed to take forever. He came down in the middle of an empty field, not a soul around. Quickly, he bundled his parachute, his life jacket, his helmet, his goggles, and his gloves and buried them in the dirt, then he struggled out of his flight suit, turning it inside out like he did last time. There was still no sign he’d been noticed, so he pulled out the silk map and determined that Paris was some 140 miles away. A three-day journey if he could keep up a brisk pace. He took a deep breath, snapped his compass together, and began to walk south. To Paris. To Ruby. To the future.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE

  November 1943

  By the time the air had turned crisp in the autumn of 1943, Ruby knew there was something going on between Charlotte and Lucien. She supposed it should have bothered her more, especially since she was the girl’s guardian, but Charlotte had sworn that she hadn’t had relations with Lucien and certainly wouldn’t, and Ruby believed her.

  It wasn’t just the blossoming relationship that scared Ruby, though. It was the danger that seemed to swirl around all of them like a gathering storm. And with her role in the escape line finished, Ruby felt powerless to do anything about it. Every time she passed a Nazi soldier on the street, guilt coursed through her. She should be doing more, but how? Her only mission now was to protect Charlotte, and she had thought she was doing that to the best of her ability. But she’d forgotten, somewhere along the way, that Charlotte might not want to be protected anymore.

  “You’re stifling me,” Charlotte blurted out over dinner one night.

  Ruby paused with her fork halfway to her mouth. “Stifling you?”

  “I know it’s because you care for me, but I can’t keep living my days confined in this apartment while the world goes on without me.”

  “It’s my duty to keep you safe, Charlotte. I promised your parents.”

  “I know. And you’ve been marvelous, Ruby. But it’s time you begin letting me make my own choices. I’m not a child anymore.”

  “But you are! You’re just a girl.”

  Charlotte’s cheeks turned red, and she stood abruptly from the table. “I’m not! Don’t you see that you’re doing the same thing Monsieur Benoit did to you?”

  Ruby stared. “What?”

  “He refused to see you for what you were. And you’re doing the same. You think you’re protecting me, but you’re taking away my right to be who I am.”

  “Charlotte—”

  “No, please let me finish. I can be doing something, Ruby. I can help Lucien; he has offered to teach me to forge documents. I feel like I can’t survive this war by merely being a prisoner in this apartment. I’ve tried to respect your wishes so far, but you must let me go. You must let me help. It’s what I’m meant to do; I know it.”

  “But you can’t think I’m like Marcel. He refused to see me as an equal. He thought I was nothing.”

  Charlotte didn’t say anything, although Ruby could hear the accusation in her silence. It stung, not least of all because there was some truth to it.

  “I’ve never for a moment believed that you’re nothing, Charlotte,” Ruby said after a moment. “I know you’re resourceful and smart. It’s that I can’t bear the thought of something happening to you. I love you, and I’m just trying to keep you safe.”

  “And you have. You’ve given me a home. You’ve given me a life.” Charlotte paused and leaned forward. “And I’ll owe you forever for that. But if we want to defeat darkness, we must find our own way to the light. We have to follow our hearts and accept the danger. It’s my turn to fight, Ruby. Please try to see that.”

  Ruby stared at the girl for a long time. She could already see her slipping away, but it was no longer in her hands. She knew that now. She saw herself in Charlotte, and it scared her. “You must promise me that you won’t do anything foolish. You must never let your guard down. The danger is so much greater for you than it is for me.”

  Something changed in Charlotte’s face, and Ruby knew the girl understood she was letting her go. “I know,” she whispered. “But don’t you see? That’s why I need to help. France has turned its back on people like me, but I can’t turn my back on France. I still believe in the goodness of mankind. I believe that things will change, but only if we’re brave enough to stand up.”

  “And Lucien will be with you? He will be there to look out for you when I’m not?”

  “Lucien will be with me always.”

  And so Ruby did her best to leave Charlotte be, and in the next few weeks, it became a bit easier. Charlotte disappeared with Lucien every few days for several hours at a time, and although Ruby’s stomach was always in knots as she waited for the girl to come home, she also knew it was the right thing. There was a lightness to Charlotte that hadn’t been there before, and Ruby recognized it as a sense of purpose. Charlotte was finally playing a role in saving herself. It was just how Ruby had felt when she began work on the escape line.

  And although Ruby worried too about Charlotte getting her heart broken in the midst of everything else, she also had the feeling that Lucien wasn’t planning to hurt her. More than once, Ruby had seen Charlotte’s eyes fill with tears over something—most often a mention of her parents—and Lucien was immediately at her side, comforting her, before Ruby herself could react. He was in tune with her in the most rare and wonderful way.

  Ruby had been wrong about him, and the realization taught her a lesson. When she’d first seen Lucien, he had seemed dangerous, the kind of boy her own parents would have warned her to stay away from when she was Charlotte’s age. But if there was one thing she had learned, it was that you could never judge a book by its cover. Lucien was a much better person than Marcel had been, certainly, and Ruby had dropped everything and flown across the ocean to be with him. What if there had been a Lucien right under her nose all along, and she had simply neglected to see him? Would her life have turned out differently?

  But she couldn’t think like that. If she’d followed a different path, she wouldn’t have known Charlotte. Or Thomas. Or any of the people here in Paris who’d made her proud to be fighting for something bigger than herself.

  AUTUMN HAD PAINTED THE TREES in the brilliant hues of sunset, and as Ruby strolled toward the Seine on a sunny November afternoon, she could almost believe that life was normal. It was a trick of the light, but on days like this, when the neighborhoods bustled and the Germans weren’t filling the streets, Ruby could imagine that this was the Paris she had dreamed of. This was the Paris that Hemingway had written about a generation ago, the Paris that had tantalized her from afar.

  She crossed the river at the Pont de l’Alma, marveling as she always did at the way the Eiffel Tower sliced into the bright blue sky off to the right, and made her way down the Avenue Bosquet. She turned left on the rue Saint-Dominique and right on the rue Amélie, intending to walk by the old building just once, as she did every Monday. She had mostly lost hope that she’d ever see Charlotte’s parents or Thomas or any of the other pilots again, but to cease trying would be to admit defeat. So it had become part of her weekly routine to walk briskly along the narrow street that had once been her home, pausing only briefly outside the old building to look for signs that someone was trying to find her. She never knew quite what she was searching for: a note? A handkerchief tied to a terrace? It was a fool’s errand, but it soothed her somehow. As she passed, she always said a prayer for Charlotte’s parents, for her own lost baby, and for the safety of all the pilots she had helped, and this day was no different. In fact, she was so lost in her own thoughts that she almost didn’t hear her name being hissed from across the street.

  “Ruby!” There it was again, an urgent whisper coming from the shadows of a doorway on the other side of the narrow lane. She turned in the direction of the voice, cursing herself for being careless enough to come here like this. She could be putting ever
ything in jeopardy. She took a few steps backward, prepared to make a hasty retreat.

  But then the figure in the doorway emerged into the crisp afternoon light, and she froze. The man in the shadows was thinner than he had been two years before, his face darker, his eyes more intense. But she would have known him anywhere. “Thomas?”

  He began to walk toward her, and for a moment, she couldn’t move. It felt like an impossible mirage. Surely, the handsome pilot wasn’t once again standing in front of her, smiling that perfect smile, looking at her with relief and tenderness written across his face. “It’s you,” she whispered, a warm glow spreading over her whole body.

  But then, common sense kicked in and unfroze her, reminding her of where they were—who they were. Quickly, she motioned him back into the shadows. He paused and retreated toward the doorway he’d been standing in. She scanned the street for passersby. They were alone, but for how long? She crossed the street quickly, and then, she was just inches from him. This couldn’t be happening. She knew she’d have to get him someplace safe, but for now, time stood still. She reached out to touch his face, her fingertips grazing the stubble along his jaw. She longed to kiss him, to fall into his arms, but she couldn’t do it here, not in public.

  “Ruby,” he murmured, and it was his deep, familiar voice—the one she’d never really expected to hear again—that finally snapped her back to reality. What if he didn’t feel the same way she did? After all, it had been two years. Anything could have happened in that time. The fact that he’d returned wasn’t necessarily an indication of his feelings; it could just as easily have been that he knew nowhere else to go. Suddenly self-conscious, she dropped her hand back to her side. “Thomas, what are you doing here?”

  “I was shot down over Saint-Omer a few days ago. I came as quickly as I could.”