The Darkest Hour(37)

“If Jean-Luc is half as tough as you are,” I tell her, “then I’m sure that he’s all right.”

She doesn’t thank me or turn around, but I think I see a flutter of a smile before she digs out a canteen and takes a long sip. She offers me some, but I shake my head. Sabine doesn’t put the canteen away, though, choosing to run her finger along the side of the container.

“I have a question for you,” she says suddenly. “Why do you keep that glass bottle in your room?”

My own shoulders tighten. She’s talking about the bottle in my nightstand. I didn’t think Sabine would’ve remembered that, but nothing really gets by her, now, does it?

“Do you not have glass bottles in America?” she asks.

“Of course we do.”

Sabine gives me a quizzical look and my shoulders inch up farther, but I wonder what’s the use of holding on to this secret. Theo’s gone, and who knows if the three of us will survive the night?

“It’s something my brother and I did,” I say finally. “When we were kids, we would write letters to our relatives in Saint-Malo and put them inside of glass bottles. Then we’d toss them into the harbor. Whoever could throw the farthest would win.”

“Win what?”

“Nothing. Just pride that you threw the farthest that day.” Not surprisingly, since Theo was four years older than me, he usually won.

“Why wouldn’t you mail the letters?”

I shrug. Because we didn’t have the money for postage. Because we’d never even met our relatives. “It was a silly thing that kids do. Didn’t you and Jean-Luc ever do something like that?”

“Sometimes, yes.” She looks back out into the ocean, and I wonder if she’s remembering something from her past. Whatever she’s thinking about, she doesn’t share it with me. “So you have family in Saint-Malo?”

“Not anymore.” My mother hasn’t stepped foot in that city since she left for the US with my father. I’m sure they arrived in Baltimore all shiny with hope. And for a while, they truly lived the American Dream. They opened up their own café, Les Delices, where they pushed out dozens of ham omelets and croque-monsieur every day. There were plans to open up a second location, maybe even a third down the road, but that was before the Depression. The bank notices came quickly after that, forcing them to find work at Pascal’s, for Mr. Richard’s next-to-nothing wages. Not long after that Papa started hitting the bottle. “How about your family? Are they still in Normandy?”

“My father is.” A sour note creeps into her voice. “He lives on my family’s land and cares for my grandfather.”

A brother, father, and now a grandfather. Sabine has an entire family somewhere in France. Although I do notice that she doesn’t mention her mother.

“Jean-Luc and I are supposed to inherit the farm one day,” she adds.

An image plants in my head of Sabine holding a pitchfork and wearing boots and an apron. “You? A farmer?”

“Don’t laugh. That land has been in my family for over a century.”

“I can’t quite see you planting turnips.”

“We grow apples.” She shoots me a glare before her eyes go soft. “My mother taught me how to prune the trees when I was little. Before she returned to Algeria.”

My mouth feels dry. “I’m sorry.”

“Don’t be. I don’t blame her for leaving Papa.”

Sabine’s family history seems to grow grimmer and grimmer, and in some ways it reminds me of my own. We have fathers we hate and brothers we love. And I wouldn’t blame my maman, either, if she ever decided to leave Papa. I wish I had known all of this when I first came to Paris. I wish she had told me.

Sabine brushes her fingers over the thick grass underneath us. “When the war’s over, Jean-Luc and I might try to find her.”

“You should go,” I say. Before it’s too late, I want to add. I can’t help but think about Theo’s letters and how he talked about us visiting Saint-Malo and seeing where our mother had grown up. I hope that Sabine and Jean-Luc’s plans will end better than ours did. I hope she won’t have to live with the regret that I do now. I should’ve written Theo back sooner. I should’ve told him that, of course, I’d forgiven him. I didn’t know that we’d have so little time left.

The first patter of raindrops falls around us. Both Sabine and I look up. It won’t be long until those clouds rip open and douse us from head to toe. I go awaken Dorner, but I freeze in place when the sound of voices enters my ears. The sound of laughing.

I flatten myself against the chilly ground, and Sabine does the same. Who could be out here at this hour? Soldiers, probably, but I cling to the hope that it’s a pair of farmers who got a little too drunk and a little too lost.

“Can’t believe we have to be out in this weather,” one of the men says in French.

French! I nearly smile. I’d much rather hear French out here than German.

“Move your feet. The sooner we’re done with the watch, the sooner we can tell the captain that we’re finished and maybe he’ll let us go home.”

I curse silently. They may be speaking French, but that doesn’t mean they’re friendlies. They’re likely the French police, the Nazis’ hired help. My hands roam quietly for the pistol pen, just in case, but maybe I won’t have to use it. We might go undetected with the darkness cloaking us, and if Dorner doesn’t snore.