The Book of Lost Names(62)

“For what?”

“For the fight we know is coming.”

“But I thought you were just working as a courier.”

He turned to look at her, and in his eyes there was pain, but also steely determination. “I know Père Clément believes the only way to win this war is through peaceful resistance. I’m afraid I no longer agree.”

“What are you saying?” Eva already knew the answer, though, and instantly, she was battling tears she knew she would cry later, alone.

“That someone has to take the fight to the Germans, Eva. No one is coming to save us. The British are helping, sure, but they’re not here, are they? Nor are the Americans. We’re on our own, and the Germans are only growing in power while we sit by and sneak around under their noses with our false papers. We have to stop them before it’s too late, or we’ll have no one but ourselves to blame for losing France.”

“Rémy, I—”

He looked at her, but she didn’t know what else to say. How could she beg him to stop when deep down, she agreed with him? And how could she explain that sparring with him as they worked side by side for seven months had made her fiercely protective of him? She’d learned his humor, the skills about which he was so confident—but also the insecurities that his occasional brashness struggled to mask. But it wasn’t her right to feel that way, was it? They had made no promises, sworn no vows. And so she said nothing, and neither did he for a few minutes. “Eva, I’ll be okay,” he said at last. “I always have been. I always find a way to pull through, remember?”

“Rémy, I’m very frightened that might not matter at all in the end.”

He didn’t reply, and they worked in silence for the next several hours, Eva carefully etching the necessary stamps on the roller and Rémy dutifully filling in blanks with a clerk’s practiced scrawl. She saved little Anne—Frania Kor—for last, and as she took the girl’s documents from Rémy’s hands and asked if she could be the one to fill in the blanks for her, she could feel a tear slipping down her left cheek. She looked away, but it was too late. Rémy had seen it, and slowly, with a gentleness that surprised her, he reached out and tenderly wiped it away with his thumb.

He paused, his index finger just beneath her chin, and when she looked up at him, his face was just inches away. The first rays of dawn were piercing the darkness outside the windows, and soon, Père Clément would be back for the papers and the children would be on their way east. But for now, time was as frozen as the icicles dangling from the eaves outside, and when Rémy leaned in to kiss her, it felt like coming home.

As he pulled her toward him, she fit exactly into the arc of his body, the softness of her curves and the solidity of his muscular chest pieces of a jigsaw puzzle she’d never realized was there. The way he kissed her made her feel, impossibly, as if he’d always known her, perhaps better than she’d known herself. His hands tangled in her hair and then roamed her body, timidly at first, shyly, and then with more confidence.

No one had ever kissed Eva like that before, like they knew her inside and out. She had been proper and reserved her whole life, set on making her parents proud, filled with guilt the few times she had necked with good Jewish boys at school, though she had never let things get any further than that. Now, as Rémy cupped her hips, lifting her onto the table where they worked, she wanted nothing more than to feel his skin against hers, to be as close to him as she could possibly be.

Then, abruptly, he stopped, pulling back quickly and leaving her there, still fully clothed, her cheeks hot, her body on fire. “I—we can’t,” he said, looking away from her as he hastily tucked in his shirt.

“But—” she whispered, at a loss. Had she done something wrong? Perhaps her inexperience had been obvious.

“It isn’t you,” he said, answering the question she hadn’t asked. He still wasn’t looking at her, but as she sat up and smoothed her wild hair, she had the feeling he knew she was fighting tears.

“Then what—?”

“I—I can’t let another person down,” he mumbled, looking at his feet.

“But, Rémy, you won’t—”

“I will,” he interrupted. She could hear a faint tremor in his firm voice. “I will, Eva, don’t you see? I’ll let you down, and then I won’t be able to live with myself. I—I’m sorry. I need to go.”

And then he was gone, running out the door of the small secret library as if the building was burning down. The only comfort Eva had was that before the door closed behind him, he looked back, just once, his eyes meeting hers. And in that split second, she read torture and sadness on his face. He was telling the truth, she knew; he was fleeing because he thought he would hurt her.

And perhaps it would always haunt her that instead of going after him, she stayed where she was, shame and loyalty to her mother rooting her to the spot. By the time she gathered herself and made it to the front door of the church, he was long gone. His footprints in the snow, heading in the direction of the children’s home, were the only sign that he had ever been there at all.



* * *



Eva didn’t go home that morning; she wanted to be there to hand the new documents to Père Clément in person, and in the back of her mind, she was hoping that Rémy would change his mind and come back.