Lovely War(98)

Colette didn’t trust herself to answer then. If she said what was in her heart—“You were spared because I need you”—she would reveal to the treacherous skies that she needed Aubrey, and then, next time, the Fates wouldn’t miss the target she’d just painted on his chest.

“If I’d heard them,” Aubrey went on. “If I’d gone out with him. If I’d had my pistol.”

“Then you might be dead too.”

“If he’d just not had to take a leak!”

She leaned her head against his shoulder. “I know.”

Aubrey remembered, then, how well she did know.

“He was my friend,” he said. “I know that’s not the same as losing your family.”

She stopped him with a kiss on his cheek. “Grief is not a contest,” she said. “What happened was horrible. No one should face it. Especially not from their own countrymen. It’s a crime against humanity. Against decency and reason.”

“Sometimes it feels like America’s short on all of that,” Aubrey said bitterly.

“But America produced you,” she said. “So it can’t be all bad.”

“It’s not as if,” Aubrey said, “this was just a couple of bad guys. Sick in the head, you know? This is all over the place. All over the military. All over the South. And not just the South.”

Colette watched him. “Will you go back?” she asked. “Or can you stay here in France?”

His eyes grew large. “Stay here?” He considered the prospect, until his expression fell. “Uncle Sam won’t let me,” he said. “And I’d miss my family.”

She leaned against his arm. “If you have a family,” she murmured, “and you can be near them, do.”

He kissed the back of her hand. “I can’t believe I’m here,” he said. “You can’t know how much I’ve missed you.”

“Yes, I can.”

His smile fell. “I’m not who I was before,” he said. “I haven’t got much to offer you. I’m a soldier now, not a pianist.”

Colette laughed. “Yes, and I’m a ballerina.”

“You are?”

She rolled her eyes. “You’ll always be a pianist, Aubrey. No one can take that from you.” She gazed at him with sorrowful eyes and traced a fingertip lightly over the contours of his face. “You’re not just mourning Joey,” she told him. “It could’ve been you. You think it should’ve been. You blame yourself for not being the one in the latrine when killers came looking. You’re in shock over your own death.”

He stiffened. “You make me sound selfish.”

Her eyes narrowed. “Non. I make you sound exactly like me.”

He watched her curiously.

“I blame myself, every day, for crossing the river that morning to pick apples. For running for the convent as soon as I heard the first guns.”

He caressed her hand. God bless apples, and God bless nuns.

“I feel like a monster for surviving the Germans who hunted down my family and shot them in cold blood. I’m a selfish coward—after my mother died of grief, my heart kept on beating. I loved my own life, you see, more than I refused to face a world without those I’d lost.”

Pedestrians filed around them on the street.

“You’re not a monster for living,” he told her. “There’s no crime in picking apples.”

“And there’s no crime in sneaking out at night to see your petite amie,” she said, then smiled wryly. “Well, the army would say there is, but that’s a different matter.”

Aubrey watched curls of Colette’s hair, escaping from her scarf, dance in the breeze. They’d found each other once, then found each other once more. Here she stood—not a jazz singer, not a glamorous Belgian, but a grieving girl who understood. Who had fought to live, and who filled Aubrey with the will to fight and live beside her.

But what came next? Tonight he had to go back to the Front. If this war ever ended, he’d have to go back to New York.

New York felt so very far away. In New York, he couldn’t kiss her in the open air without fear of what onlookers might say.

But in Paris, he could. He could kiss her like he was making up for lost time.

At least for that kiss, death and grief were far away.

Maybe, he thought, he ought to just kiss Colette and never stop.

But even the best kisses end eventually.

“I’ve missed you so,” he whispered. “I never wanted to leave you behind.”

They strolled on. A kind of peace filled Aubrey’s body. He hadn’t realized how heavy a weight it had been, keeping Joey a secret for all those months.

“I wish I could do something for Joey,” Aubrey said at length. “Or for his family. Or something to remember him by.”

She smiled. “That’s a good idea,” she said. “Something to preserve his memory.”

“But what?” he wondered. “A fancy gravestone?”

They turned a corner. “I have often wished,” she said, “that I could do something for my brother, Alexandre. A memorial. But any idea I’ve ever had felt weak. Insufficient.”

“Gravestones are cold,” said Aubrey. “Memorials only go so far.”