The Book of Lost Names(97)

“He—he told me that when the Germans arrested him in December, they offered to pay him if he’d become an informer.”

“But he’s a Jew!”

She sputtered, blood gurgling. “You weren’t supposed to leave so early, he said. He promised you to them; he promised he would bring them the Jew who was behind all the forged documents in the region. He didn’t believe I didn’t know where you’d gone.”

Eva’s blood ran cold. “He did this to you because of me?”

“It’s not your fault.” Geneviève groped for Eva’s hand, her eyelids fluttering again. “It’s mine.” She took a trembling breath, and Eva could hear a rattle in her lungs. “I—I trusted the wrong person.”

“I trusted him, too.”

“You have to go. Before he comes back.”

“I can’t leave you.”

“For me, it’s over.” Geneviève’s voice was getting weaker. “Make him pay for what he’s done.”

“But…”

“Eva. Go.”

Eva wavered. She put a hand on Geneviève’s midsection and felt only blood, hot and pooling. Joseph had shot her and left her to die a slow, terrible death, all alone. But she wouldn’t be alone. Eva could do that for her, at least. “I won’t leave you, my friend. I’m here.”

Geneviève was too weak to argue. So while she fell in and out of consciousness, Eva held her hand and softly crooned “Au Clair de la Lune,” the lullaby Geneviève’s mother had comforted Geneviève with when she was just a little girl. “Ma chandelle est morte,” Eva sang, “Je n’ai plus de feu. Ouvre-moi ta porte pour l’amour de Dieu.” My candle is dead. I have no light left. Open your door for me, for the love of God.

As Geneviève slipped away, Eva sang the song again, turning the last words of the verse into a prayer. “Open your door for her, please, dear God.” And then Geneviève was gone, her suffering over. Eva stood, her hands coated in her friend’s blood, and headed for the ladder, one more innocent death on her conscience, one more reason to fight burning deep in her soul.



* * *



The only place Eva could think to go was back to the church. She was still reeling from the betrayal, which had knocked her sideways with confusion and guilt. How could Joseph have turned against them? Against her? Obviously, she had never really known him at all, the charmer with the dark good looks and a heart of stone. Fury churned within her—at Joseph and at herself. How had she been so blind, so quick to believe in him just because she’d known him in her previous life?

She had to warn Père Clément. But how would she stop Joseph if he was already here? He had a gun, and Eva had only… what? Her righteous anger? Her crippling grief? Still, it would have to be enough. She had failed her mother and Geneviève. She couldn’t fail the kindly priest, too.

She stopped only long enough to wash as much of Geneviève’s blood from her hands and face as she could, and then she grabbed Geneviève’s bicycle and set off toward town. She had to walk it through the snowdrifts until she reached the main road, which had been cleared. She climbed on and rode the rest of the way as the sun sunk toward the horizon and the wind froze her tears.

The church was dark and silent, though the front door was unlocked. This is God’s house, Père Clément had once told her. The doors will never be closed to a soul seeking God’s peace. It wasn’t peace Eva was seeking today, though.

She checked Père Clément’s office, the confessional, and the secret library, but the church was deserted. A quick check of his small apartment behind the church came up empty, too; the doors were closed and locked, the windows dark. Eva retreated back to the library, though she knew as long as she remained there, she was a sitting duck. Joseph knew about it—and about Père Clément’s key to the room—and sooner or later, he might come looking.

But there was something she had to do.

In silence, she lit a few lanterns and pulled the Book of Lost Names from its innocuous place on the shelf. It was the one thing Joseph wouldn’t be able to take from her; she thanked God she had shared the secret only with Père Clément and Rémy.

She stared at the book for a moment as she held it in her hands. The brown leather was even more worn than it had been when she first held it, the spine more creased, two slight faded spots on the back of the book now and one on the front from her own fingertips, from the number of times she had held it without fully removing the chemicals and ink from her fingers first. She was only the latest person to put her mark on it, though. How many Catholic worshippers had held this book in their hands over the past two centuries before it found its way to her? It had existed before the French Revolution, before Napoleon had been born, before Louis XVI and Marie Antoinette had lost their heads in the name of liberty, before Eva’s parents had come to France believing that doing so would give them a life of freedom and opportunity. And here it was, in the hands of a proud Jew, in the back of a church where God had seen evil and treachery unfold.

Eva blinked back tears and opened the book to page two, Rémy’s page. She knew exactly what she wanted to tell him, what she should have said in that cottage on the edge of France just a few days earlier. On the first line, her hand trembling, she marked a tiny star over the é in étoit, then a dot over the p in prions. On the next page, she added another dot over the o in recevoir, and on page four, a dot over the u in leurs. She continued like that on Rémy’s pages—six, nine, fourteen, twenty-two, thirty-five, and so on—until she had said what she wanted to say: épouse-moi. Je t’aime.