The Keeper of Happy Endings(48)

“I don’t know what I think, Anson. You’re sneaking around down here with a flashlight, raking through papers that clearly aren’t yours.” I’m talking fast now, hating the words as they leave my mouth. I want so badly to be wrong, but what if I’m not?

When he reaches for my hand I pull away. He stares at me, astonished. “You’re afraid of me?”

“There’s been so much talk. And you’ve been acting so strangely . . .”

He takes a step back, raking a hand through his hair. “You think I’m the spy? And now that you’ve stumbled onto my little secret, I’ll be forced to—what? Strangle you? Slit your throat?” His eyes are flinty as they lock with mine, but there’s hurt there too, as if I’d drawn back my hand and physically struck him. “After all this time,” he says finally. “After everything we’ve shared, that’s who you think I am?”

“Anson . . .”

“I think I liked it better when you suspected me of going behind your back with Elise. I think she’d prefer it, too, to being called a Nazi.”

“I didn’t call either one of you a Nazi. But what am I supposed to think?”

“You’re supposed to trust me.”

I lift my chin. “The way you trusted me?”

He blows out a long breath, and I suddenly see how tired he is. “It’s got nothing to do with trust,” he says wearily. “It’s to do with being careful. If I’m caught . . . I couldn’t put you in that kind of danger. I never meant for you to know any of this.”

“But I do know. Or at least I think I do. So you might as well tell me the rest.”

He shakes his head. “No.”

“The men,” I press, determined to confirm what now seems plain. “The ones who died so suddenly. All those empty beds. They didn’t die, did they?”

“Leave it alone, Soline. Please. Go back upstairs and forget you saw any of this.”

I shake my head, refusing to be put off. I need to know it all, about the work he’s doing and the risks he’s taking. “It was you,” I press again. “You helped them get away. Using papers like these. It was you.”

He blows out a breath, annoyed by my persistence. “It was a lot of people. An entire cell risking their lives to save a handful of men. Airmen mostly, along with a few friends of the Resistance who managed to get themselves into the Gestapo’s crosshairs. There’s a man who does the papers, an artist turned forger, if you can believe that.” He pauses, pointing to the documents on the table. “This is his work. We give them new names and get them across the border into Spain, then on to England, even to the States now and then. Sometimes we need a guy’s bed before we can safely move him down the line, so we hide him—down here.”

I glance around the tiny room again, the sparse furnishings and contraband radio, the crude facilities. All this time, Anson has been risking his life to help others escape the Nazis—soldiers fighting to pry France from Hitler’s grip, agitators and fellow resisters in danger of arrest.

My thoughts wander to Erich Freede, the man my mother had loved but let go, of the family he might have gone on to have in Germany. A wife, children with whom I share blood and history, and I find myself praying that someone like Anson helped them get out in time.

“You could have told me,” I say softly. “I would have kept your secret.”

“Except it isn’t just my secret to keep. It belongs to all of us, Soline. Everyone who works for the Resistance. And it’s up to all of us to keep it.”

“Well, now it belongs to me too,” I say flatly. “But I want to do more than just keep the secret. Let me be a part of what you’re doing, Anson. Let me help.”

“I can’t let you do that.”

“Please. I don’t know what I can do, but there must be something.”

“No.”

“I’ll go to Dr. Jack, then,” I tell him. “I’ll ask him to let me help. And you needn’t pretend he doesn’t know about all of this. Nothing happens here that he doesn’t sanction.”

Anson’s face remains stony. “Soline, I won’t—”

I press the flats of my fingers to his lips, cutting him off. “Don’t tell me no, Anson. Tell me what I can do.”





TWENTY


SOLINE

Without faith, even our work is doomed to fail. Faith is everything.

—Esmée Roussel, the Dress Witch

27 August 1943—Paris

I’ve been stunned to learn what a handful of brave men and women has been able to accomplish under the watchful eyes of the boche. While Paris crawls with G?ring’s Gestapo, Dr. Jack and his staff have been quietly waging their own war against Herr Hitler. And I have become a part of it.

If anyone had ever hinted that I would be involved in such a thing, I would have accused them of drinking too much wine. But I find it gives me a fresh sense of purpose, a way to feel less a victim while the Nazis overrun our city. And I fancy Maman looking down on my clandestine activities with approval, if only for the sake of Erich Freede.

It also helps me feel closer to Anson, to know his cause is my cause, that we’re passionate about the same things. We talk more and more about the future these days. We do not speak of forever—the war makes such talk feel imprudent—but we talk about our tomorrows. Places we mean to go and things we mean to do. And in these sweet, silly musings, we are always together. For now, it is enough. As Maman used to say, the work must come first.