The Book of Lost Names(102)

“I’m so sorry.”

He waved the words away. “But I’ve managed to return, and that is what matters. The church closed when I was gone, so I was glad to be able to repair it and open its doors once again. And what about you, Eva? You made it to Switzerland?”

She nodded and briefly told him about her return to Paris and her reunion with her father. Then, because she couldn’t bear to wait any longer, she asked him the question that had been burning a hole in her heart since that cold winter night in the shadow of Switzerland’s freedom. “And Rémy, Père Clément? What happened to him?”

From the shadow that crossed Père Clément’s face and the pain that filled his eyes, she knew the answer before he said it. “Oh, Eva, you don’t know.” He reached for her hand. “I’m so sorry, my dear. He didn’t make it.”

She had known it was true, for if he had lived, he would have come for her. But she hadn’t realized until that moment that she’d still been holding on to so much impossible hope. Her whole body went cold, and in what felt like slow motion, she collapsed to her knees, her limbs suddenly as limp as rags. She could feel the blood rushing through her veins, the tears prickling at the backs of her eyes, the air suspended in her choked lungs, the aching hole in her heart where the possibility of a future had once been. “No,” she finally whispered, and then she was drinking the air in desperate gulps, unable to control the tremors that shook her whole body as Père Clément knelt beside her and stroked her back while she sobbed into her hands. “What happened?” she asked when she could finally breathe again. “What happened to him?”

“He came back to Aurignon,” Père Clément said slowly. “I caught glimpses of him twice near the town square, but both times, he pretended not to know me. I later learned he was following a gendarme named Besnard, a man who used to worship here, a man whose children I baptized.”

Eva blinked. “I remember him.” He was the gendarme who used to stare at her, whose gaze made her uneasy, though she had tried to convince herself it was only her imagination.

Père Clément nodded and drew a deep breath. “As it turns out, Besnard had been betraying his fellow officers, the ones who were sympathetic to the French, and reporting them to the German command. He was closing in on the families of some of the maquisards. Rémy had been sent to capture him before he could do more harm.”

Eva could hardly breathe. “What happened?”

“Someone tipped Besnard off, and he was heavily armed when Rémy came for him. From what I understand, there was a fight outside the same barn where Geneviève died, and both men perished.”

Eva began to cry. “When?”

“The first week of June 1944.”

It was four months after she had fled. If she had waited longer, would she have seen Rémy once more? Could she have persuaded him not to walk into a trap? To stay with her after all? They were questions she knew would haunt her forever. “Was he… was he buried here?”

Père Clément shook his head. “The maquisards took care of their own, Eva. They came for his body before it could be desecrated by the Germans. I’m so sorry.” He hesitated and added, “I said funeral rites for him anyhow.”

“That would have meant a great deal to him, I think.” For a moment, she was silent, imagining a world without Rémy in it. It was astonishing that the sun had continued to shine, that the earth had continued to turn, as if nothing had changed. The truth that he had been gone for more than a year now seemed impossible.

“I’m very sorry, Eva. I know how much you loved him.”

“If I had said I would marry him—”

“Don’t do that,” Père Clément said, cutting her off. “The end would have been the same, my child. He still would have fought. He felt it was his duty. He died a hero of France.”

“A hero of France,” she repeated in a murmur. “And what of the others? Madame Noirot? Madame Travere?”

“Both sent east. Neither returned.”

“And Madame Trintignant? Did she survive, at least?”

He sighed. “I’m afraid she was caught at the border when she tried to escape into Switzerland. She died in prison.”

Eva shook her head. The scope of loss was almost unimaginable. She thought of Rémy, standing outside the blue barn, knowing he might be walking right into his own death. Had he died knowing she loved him? Or had he died thinking that her answer to him would always be no? “Père Clément? Did Rémy return to the secret library before he died? Did he look in the Book of Lost Names?”

Something changed in the priest’s face. “Eva, I’m afraid I don’t know.”

“Can you unlock the door for me? I need to see the book.” Suddenly it felt like the most urgent thing in the world. Had Rémy read her message? Had he left one of his own? “Please, mon Père.”

But the priest didn’t move, though the sorrow on his face deepened. “Eva, the library was looted by the Nazis right around the time Rémy lost his life. It was clear the war was lost, and they were fleeing, but they wanted to take whatever they could with them back to Germany. There were several private homes ransacked, as well, along with Madame Noirot’s bookstore, but our secret library suffered the greatest losses, perhaps because they perceived our collection of old religious texts to be very valuable.”