The Book of Lost Names(96)

Eva had failed her father back in Paris, and now she had failed her mother, too. Her parents were gone, and it was all her fault. She had hurt Rémy, too, by letting him leave believing that she didn’t want to marry him. Who knew what would happen to him out there in the cold, dangerous forests before she could correct things? And it had all been for naught; her mother had still died believing that Eva was betraying her faith.

On a cold winter’s day a year earlier, when Rémy had told her he wanted to do more to fight back, Eva hadn’t really understood. Weren’t they already resisting with their forgery? Someone has to take the fight to the Germans, Eva, he had said. No one is coming to save us. His words had frightened her, but that was before she had lost her mother. It was before her life had imploded because of her own mistakes.

It was before the Germans had taken everything.

It didn’t matter if she lived, and that’s why she decided to head for the farmhouse where she knew Joseph sometimes stayed. She would be careful that no one followed her, but she had to do something. She had to take the fight to the monsters who had stolen her family from her. She had spent the war passively helping people, but that was no longer enough. She wanted blood, and she would get down on her knees to beg Joseph to help her if she had to. He could vouch for her, send her to the fighters in the forest, tell them that she would do anything they asked.

The bus ride back to Aurignon and the long walk toward the outskirts of town did nothing to heal the gaping wound in Eva’s heart, and by the time she walked up the road to the farmhouse, her boots crunching over eight inches of snow, she was even angrier than she had been when she left the jail. She had taken a roundabout route here, weaving through town, ducking into an abandoned storefront to shed her extra layer of clothing and her cane, and wrapping her scarf more tightly as a shield against the wind, which grew more vicious as she left the shelter of Aurignon’s small town square. She looked once more over her shoulder as she approached the front door of the main house, but she was well and truly alone.

She knocked on the door, but there was no answer, even when she called out. The door was locked tight, and when she crept around back and peered in the one window whose curtain hadn’t been pulled tight, the inside of the house looked dark, abandoned. A cobweb glistened just inside the pane.

It appeared the farmers who lived here were gone, perhaps arrested by the Germans, too. But was Joseph still camped out in the barn, as he had been before? It seemed unlikely, but she knew nowhere else to go. Panic coursing through her, Eva trudged through the snow to the lopsided old building. Inside, it smelled like musty hay and stale milk. “Hello?” Eva called out, just in case Joseph had heard her approach and was hiding. “It’s me! Eva! Please, I need your help!”

Something stirred overhead, and Eva looked up. “Joseph?” she called out. “Please! Are you here?”

Her question was greeted with silence, and at last, she felt her shoulders slump in defeat. The noise she had heard had probably been a mouse or another lucky creature who had found refuge here from the harsh winter when the humans had fled. “Please?” she called out once more, but she already knew her plea was in vain. Joseph was long gone, and with him, any hope that she could join the armed resistance.

Eva turned to go, tears coursing down her face once again. Everything felt hopeless, impossible.

But then, just as she was about to walk out the door of the barn into the frigid afternoon, she heard a whisper behind her.

She turned, staring into the darkness. Had she imagined it? Was she so desperate that she was hearing things?

“Eva.” There it was again, weak but undeniable. The voice was coming from the loft above her head. Someone was there.

“Joseph?” she called out as she hastily ascended the narrow ladder against the back wall. The second she emerged into the haystacks above, though, she had to stifle a scream. Several bales of hay were splashed with crimson, and there were dark stains on the wooden floor. The loft smelled of iron, and in the corner lay Geneviève, slumped awkwardly to the right, her faded blue cotton dress soaked with blood. There was a hole, dark and gaping, where her stomach should have been.

“Oh my God, Geneviève!” Eva cried out, moving quickly to her side and smoothing her blood-matted dark hair back from her pale face.

“Eva,” Geneviève whispered. Her eyelashes fluttered; she was barely conscious. She stared at Eva without focusing. “Is it really you?”

“Yes, Geneviève! What in the world happened?”

Geneviève coughed, and a few drops of blood bubbled from the side of her mouth. “Gérard,” she whispered.

Eva looked around. “He went for help?”

“No, Eva.” She coughed again, blood trickling down her chin. “It was him.”

“What?”

“He—he killed me.”

Surely Geneviève was talking nonsense. “No, Geneviève. You’re still alive.”

Geneviève’s laugh was weak and bitter. “I’m dying, Eva.”

“I’ll get help.”

“It’s too late.” She coughed again and spit up another mouthful of blood. “Gérard is the traitor, Eva. The one who betrayed all of us.”

Eva was shaking now. “No. No, no, no. That’s impossible. I’ve known him for years. He would never…” She trailed off. “No,” she added in a whisper.