The Baker's Secret(56)

Emma pulled away at her harness. She could hear more planes in the distance, and she wanted to be home. An old fantasy returned—that Philippe would somehow be waiting there for her—but she pushed the idea out of sight.

“Grandmother,” she called over a shoulder. “Did he announce the count at the end of each baptism?”

Mémé had circled her arms around the bird cage, cooing to the creature within. She nodded to the cage, as if the bird had asked the question. “Yes.”

Emma took several steps, thinking. “What number was I?”

“You were . . .” Mémé furrowed her brow.

She examined her hands, she searched the sky. “You were. You were.” Mémé scratched her head, fidgeted her clothes all over, wiped her face with both hands. Only then did Emma see that the woman was crying. She hurried out of her harnesses, back to her grandmother’s side. “Dear one.”

“Can’t remember,” the old woman chattered to herself. “Beautiful baby. Can’t remember.”

“It’s all right,” Emma said. “It doesn’t matter.”

Mémé yanked off her shoe and threw it in the road.

“Grandmother, really.” Emma trotted back for the shoe. “We need to be getting home now.”

“Can’t remember,” the old woman roared. “Damn it.”



Monkey Boy and the Goat lurked by the eastern well, glancing around from time to time to make sure no one was watching. As Emma trudged her slow approach, it seemed as if they were playing a game. The boy was prancing, making the strange two-step he had done around the mansion on the bluff, the one with a guard outside. But as Monkey Boy hopped sideways, the Goat crawled along with a strip of tailor’s tape, attempting to measure the width of each step.

“Please slow down,” the Goat chided. But the boy could not contain himself, and polkaed halfway up the lane. The Goat hung his head, then noticed shoe prints in the dust. “Oh, now there we go,” he called out, stretching the measuring tape between four or five prints, then sitting back on his heels to calculate on his fingers. “Good lad.”

Monkey Boy came skipping back, followed closely by Emma towing the cart, her grandmother in the back banging the side of the wagon with the flat of her hand. The Goat straightened and addressed Monkey Boy.

“And you say there are seventy-seven of your hops between the mansion and the bluff? And you’re certain you measured the one with the army inside, and not the young couple, correct?”

Monkey Boy skipped in a circle large enough to contain the Goat, the well, and the wagon. Day was done and Emma’s head hanging, but he showed no lack of energy. “Seventy-seven,” he sang, as though it were a nursery rhyme. “Seventy-seven from the bluff. One hundred sixty-four from the road.”

“What’s going on here?” Emma demanded, straightening, pressing both hands at the small of her back.

“Coordinates,” the Goat replied. “Targets.”

“Seventy-seven,” Monkey Boy chimed, skipping past Mémé.

“Grrr,” she replied, making her wrinkled hands into fleshy fists.

“One hundred sixty-four,” he sang, bouncing out of reach.

“Give her room or she’ll brain you,” Emma warned. “Mémé’s in a foul humor. And you—” She pointed her chin at the Goat. “Is that my measuring tape?”

“I confess that it is,” he answered. “But I needed it for an extremely important reason.”

“You entered my house and stole it.”

“I cannot claim innocence of the crime. But you see—”

Emma snapped her hand out. “Give it back now.”

“Let me explain, please.” He placed the tape in her hand, immediately bowing backward a few steps.

“If you ever enter my house again”—she stuffed the tailor tape into her pocket—“I will wait till you are asleep in the hog shed and then I will set it on fire. Do we understand one another?”

“Emmanuelle.” The Goat shook his head. “Don’t you see what is happening? Don’t you feel what is coming, any minute now? Our possessions—tape measures, anything—are not going to matter anymore. Not when our lives are at stake. Believe me, if only because of our long friendship. We need to join—”

“We are not friends.” She slid back into her harnesses. “We have never been friends.”

“You are mistaken, Emma. All we have left is one another.”

She started pulling the wagon. “I want you out. Pack your things and vacate the hog shed tonight.”

The Goat flapped his arms against his coat. “For God’s sake. What would it cost you to give me half a minute to explain?”

Emma paused, staring at the ground for a moment, the soil of her home and origin, trodden by the ages into hard-packed clay, and one day, the place her dust would spend all eternity. All at once she found herself struggling not to cry. Odette was in jail, her father gone, so many killed.

And what a day she’d had, the fifth of June. It felt as long as a week. She had nearly choked to death on straw, the army confiscated all of Yves’s fish, the little girl could trust only eggs, there was no one to help Emma, no one to protect her, and meanwhile this very minute another wave of bombers was droning closer to pummel the train station—which, in addition to whatever military value the Allies awarded it, happened also to be Philippe’s means of someday coming home. The wonder was that Emma did not cry all day long.