The Room on Rue Amélie(70)
CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE
November 1943
By the time the air had turned crisp in the autumn of 1943, Ruby knew there was something going on between Charlotte and Lucien. She supposed it should have bothered her more, especially since she was the girl’s guardian, but Charlotte had sworn that she hadn’t had relations with Lucien and certainly wouldn’t, and Ruby believed her.
It wasn’t just the blossoming relationship that scared Ruby, though. It was the danger that seemed to swirl around all of them like a gathering storm. And with her role in the escape line finished, Ruby felt powerless to do anything about it. Every time she passed a Nazi soldier on the street, guilt coursed through her. She should be doing more, but how? Her only mission now was to protect Charlotte, and she had thought she was doing that to the best of her ability. But she’d forgotten, somewhere along the way, that Charlotte might not want to be protected anymore.
“You’re stifling me,” Charlotte blurted out over dinner one night.
Ruby paused with her fork halfway to her mouth. “Stifling you?”
“I know it’s because you care for me, but I can’t keep living my days confined in this apartment while the world goes on without me.”
“It’s my duty to keep you safe, Charlotte. I promised your parents.”
“I know. And you’ve been marvelous, Ruby. But it’s time you begin letting me make my own choices. I’m not a child anymore.”
“But you are! You’re just a girl.”
Charlotte’s cheeks turned red, and she stood abruptly from the table. “I’m not! Don’t you see that you’re doing the same thing Monsieur Benoit did to you?”
Ruby stared. “What?”
“He refused to see you for what you were. And you’re doing the same. You think you’re protecting me, but you’re taking away my right to be who I am.”
“Charlotte—”
“No, please let me finish. I can be doing something, Ruby. I can help Lucien; he has offered to teach me to forge documents. I feel like I can’t survive this war by merely being a prisoner in this apartment. I’ve tried to respect your wishes so far, but you must let me go. You must let me help. It’s what I’m meant to do; I know it.”
“But you can’t think I’m like Marcel. He refused to see me as an equal. He thought I was nothing.”
Charlotte didn’t say anything, although Ruby could hear the accusation in her silence. It stung, not least of all because there was some truth to it.
“I’ve never for a moment believed that you’re nothing, Charlotte,” Ruby said after a moment. “I know you’re resourceful and smart. It’s that I can’t bear the thought of something happening to you. I love you, and I’m just trying to keep you safe.”
“And you have. You’ve given me a home. You’ve given me a life.” Charlotte paused and leaned forward. “And I’ll owe you forever for that. But if we want to defeat darkness, we must find our own way to the light. We have to follow our hearts and accept the danger. It’s my turn to fight, Ruby. Please try to see that.”
Ruby stared at the girl for a long time. She could already see her slipping away, but it was no longer in her hands. She knew that now. She saw herself in Charlotte, and it scared her. “You must promise me that you won’t do anything foolish. You must never let your guard down. The danger is so much greater for you than it is for me.”
Something changed in Charlotte’s face, and Ruby knew the girl understood she was letting her go. “I know,” she whispered. “But don’t you see? That’s why I need to help. France has turned its back on people like me, but I can’t turn my back on France. I still believe in the goodness of mankind. I believe that things will change, but only if we’re brave enough to stand up.”
“And Lucien will be with you? He will be there to look out for you when I’m not?”
“Lucien will be with me always.”
And so Ruby did her best to leave Charlotte be, and in the next few weeks, it became a bit easier. Charlotte disappeared with Lucien every few days for several hours at a time, and although Ruby’s stomach was always in knots as she waited for the girl to come home, she also knew it was the right thing. There was a lightness to Charlotte that hadn’t been there before, and Ruby recognized it as a sense of purpose. Charlotte was finally playing a role in saving herself. It was just how Ruby had felt when she began work on the escape line.
And although Ruby worried too about Charlotte getting her heart broken in the midst of everything else, she also had the feeling that Lucien wasn’t planning to hurt her. More than once, Ruby had seen Charlotte’s eyes fill with tears over something—most often a mention of her parents—and Lucien was immediately at her side, comforting her, before Ruby herself could react. He was in tune with her in the most rare and wonderful way.
Ruby had been wrong about him, and the realization taught her a lesson. When she’d first seen Lucien, he had seemed dangerous, the kind of boy her own parents would have warned her to stay away from when she was Charlotte’s age. But if there was one thing she had learned, it was that you could never judge a book by its cover. Lucien was a much better person than Marcel had been, certainly, and Ruby had dropped everything and flown across the ocean to be with him. What if there had been a Lucien right under her nose all along, and she had simply neglected to see him? Would her life have turned out differently?