The Darkest Hour(24)

“Stop! We have to stop,” I say, panting.

“There’s no time to catch our breath.”

“It’s not that. Look around us.” I wave at the sweeping fields that we’re standing in, as vast as a ripe green sea. I count three farmhouses within eyeshot, and who knows if the people living there are friendlies or German collaborators?

Sabine won’t hear of it. “Let’s push a little farther.”

“And risk someone spotting us?” Harken may have left her in charge of this mission, but I won’t let her risk our necks over this. “A little farther” could lead us right into a Nazi trap and then a prison cell. “The Nazis need only a pair of binoculars to find us out in the open.”

She plants two fists on her hips, looking ready to carry me to the safe house herself, but even she must see how futile it is to keep pressing forward. “Very well,” she says grudgingly. “We better wait until nightfall, but we can’t stay here.” She points a little ways north. “Follow me.”

We settle in the shadows of an abandoned church that lies half crumbled in a fallow pasture. Its windows are long gone and a furry layer of moss has covered its stones, but it’s cool and quiet and we couldn’t ask for much more than that—aside from a pitcher of water and a plateful of Maman’s fricasseed chicken and a great helping of her tarte normande for dessert. That was Theo’s favorite meal, and Maman would cook it for his birthday every year. On his birthday this year, however, not long after Theo passed, Maman had spent hours shut in her bedroom while Papa had left for who knows where. I took over both their shifts at the bakery and begged Mr. Richard not to let them go, which he halfheartedly agreed to because it wouldn’t look very patriotic to fire the parents of a dead soldier.

At least Ruthie stopped by to keep me company. She didn’t say much—that’s Ruthie’s quiet way—but she swept the floors and smiled at the customers even though she was hurting as much as I was. I couldn’t help but think about the life she and Theo could’ve had. A house by the beach? A couple of children with Theo’s smile and Ruthie’s smarts? They would’ve called me Aunt Lucie. Thinking about all of that nearly did me in that day, especially with the weight of Theo’s last letter in my pocket, but Ruthie must have sensed this and placed a warm hand on my shoulder. I wondered then what it might’ve felt like to have a sister.

Sabine and I take shifts sleeping. When it’s my turn I try to get comfortable, but a cloud of gnats buzzes around my head and darts in and out of my ears. I manage to get in a few winks, but my eyelids are heavy when Sabine shakes me awake.

“Quiet,” Sabine whispers. “It’s me.”

I take a long look at her, then all around us. The world has shifted since I fell asleep. The sun has vanished and has been replaced with a scattering of stars. The air has chilled, too, breathing goose bumps over my skin and making me long for a knitted blanket to wrap around myself. And that’s not all that has changed.

“Where did you find those clothes?” I ask. Sabine is wearing a faded red dress with brown buttons down the front. She’s also sporting new cotton stockings rather than her shredded old ones from the train.

“I took them from a clothesline. There’s a little farmhouse not far from here,” she explains. Then she presents me with a plain blue dress and a matching knit sweater. “We’ll need these more than the farmer’s wife I took them from. I left a few francs for her troubles.”

“Someone could’ve seen you.” I’m not only thinking about the farmer or his wife catching Sabine in the act. There could’ve been one or two Nazis billeted at that farmhouse as well. When the Germans invaded France, they didn’t bother building barracks to house their soldiers. Instead they did what Nazis do best—they stole. They claimed apartments, houses, and even entire hotels for themselves.

“You think I’d be so careless?” says Sabine. She holds out the clothes for me to take. “Do you want these or not?”

I mumble a merci and snatch the dress from her. I’m so eager to shake off my dirty clothes that I forget to feel guilty that we’ve stolen a poor Frenchwoman’s clothing, but field agents like us have to make do with what we have at our fingertips. After we’ve buried our bloodstained things, I change into the dress, which hangs off me like a paper bag. But it’s clean and the sweater is soft and I hug myself at its welcome warmth. This is more than I could’ve asked for, but Sabine unveils another surprise that she has tucked behind the church’s broken wall. A bicycle.

“I took this, too,” she tells me. “It’s a little rusted but it works.”

I whistle at the sight of it. “You’re sure no one saw you?”

“What do you think?” She smirks and shoves the handlebars at me. “Here, take it.”

“Me? You’re the one who found it.”

“Must you argue with me over every little thing? Once the sun rises, it will be best for us to split up. The Germans will be searching for two girls traveling on foot.”

I shake my head at her. “I can’t take the bicycle.”

“You can and you will. You’re injured.”

“I sprained my wrist, not my feet. Besides, I thought Major Harken wanted us to stick together.”

“Major Harken isn’t here.” She thrusts the handlebars into my palms, along with additional supplies, like her compass and our last pistol pen. “Go. That’s an order. I won’t be far behind you.”