The Keeper of Happy Endings(50)

It’s a relief to get back to the hospital and finally hand off the smuggled pouch to Elise. She’s matter-of-fact in her praise, which isn’t unusual. She’s not the effusive type, but there’s something unsettling about the way she won’t meet my eyes. And then she tells me. Anson has failed to return from last night’s mission.

The news nearly knocks me to the ground. Elise makes me sit down and brings me a cup of coffee. There’s no pretense that Anson and I are merely work colleagues. She’s just a woman, comforting another woman, and I’m grateful. She tells me it isn’t unusual—a hundred things could have happened—and she’s sure he’ll be back anytime now. But I can hear in her voice that she’s worried, and as I go back to my duties, my mind runs to worst-case scenarios, to Anson shot dead or herded onto a train bound for one of the camps.

Working with the Resistance means expecting the worst, accepting that capture, torture, even death is inevitable. But I cannot and will not accept those inevitabilities for Anson. He must be safe. He must be. But the day drags into evening, and there’s still no word, no sign of him anywhere. I think of Maman, her hands busy with her beads as she spoke of Erich Freede, and I suddenly understand. At such moments, we will trust anything, believe anything that allows us to hold on to hope.

Adeline senses that something is wrong. I insist it’s only a headache, and there’s no need to go home, but she continues to press me until I agree to at least go to the mess and eat something.

I taste nothing as I try to swallow some soup. Adeline is beside me, insisting that I go home and get some rest, when he’s suddenly there in the doorway. I nearly drop my spoon, gulping down tears I mustn’t let spill. He looks spent, his eyes heavy and smudged with shadows, but he meets my gaze across the busy hall, holding it in a way that says everything I need to hear.

I’m safe. I’m sorry. I love you.

I stand on wobbly legs and duck into the nearest lavatory to sob out my relief. When I find him again, someone has brought him a cup of coffee. It’s black, not light and sweet the way he likes it, but he doesn’t seem to notice. I see Elise catch his eye from across the room, brows raised. He shakes his head almost imperceptibly. I wonder what it means but know better than to ask him anything with so many people around.

Later, when the mess is empty and Anson has finished his second sandwich, I ask him what happened. I know it’s breaking the rules, but I don’t care.

“Where have you been?”

He shakes his head. “I can’t.”

“I thought you were dead,” I whisper raggedly. “Or gone to one of the camps. Don’t tell me you can’t.”

“I need to talk to Sumner,” he says blankly, as if I haven’t spoken at all. “Where is he?”

His stare is empty, devoid of warmth or affection. He’s in Resistance mode—clandestinité—that stoic corner of his heart where there is no room for me. Or for anything that doesn’t involve the cause.

“Four new casualties arrived a few hours ago,” I tell him, trying to keep my voice even. “I heard someone mention a double amputation, but he might be out by now.”

Anson nods, then drains his coffee cup and stands. “We need to talk. But I have to do this first. Go home and sleep. I’ll come later.”

I frown at this breach of the rules. It was a precaution we had agreed on when I joined the cell: he would never, under any circumstance, come to the apartment on Rue Legendre. So far as the outside world knew, we were colleagues and nothing more. For my protection, he’d explained, so there was never a chance of leading trouble to my door. But something has changed his mind, and I’m frightened.

“I thought we needed to be careful about them learning my address.”

His eyes darken. “We’re past that now.”

“Why?”

“Because they already have it.”

A shiver runs through me, like a cold finger sliding down my spine. “The Gestapo knows where I live?”

“They know everything, Soline.”





TWENTY-ONE


SOLINE

Much can go awry between the asking and the doing, for that is when a union is most at risk—before the charm has been woven and the vows exchanged. The Spell Weaver must be on her guard against any and all tempests, and there will almost certainly be tempests.

—Esmée Roussel, the Dress Witch

27 August 1943—Paris

I feel like a character in a spy novel as I glance over my shoulder, then slide the heavy brass shop key into the lock. No sign of a black Mercedes-Benz—the Gestapo’s vehicle of choice—parked anywhere on the street. No man in a gray suit and black fedora loitering in a nearby doorway.

They tell us what to look for. They also tell us what to expect if we’re arrested. Beatings, being shackled and hung upside down, or forced into a tub of frigid water, held under until you nearly drown, then repeated again and again. The baignoire, it’s called—the bath.

It’s also common to pick up and question a suspect’s female loved ones—mothers, sisters, lovers—and interrogate them for hours. One technique, said to be highly effective, is to threaten to send them to one of the specialty brothels favored by German soldiers. The prospect makes me shudder as I push inside and bolt the door behind me.