The Room on Rue Amélie(76)

“And where is that?”

“I don’t know. I only know you’ll be heading west. The escape is by water rather than by land.”

Thomas looked surprised. “By water?”

“Across the Channel. From what I’ve heard, this plan was months in the making. But you’ll be among the first to test it. I’ve vouched for you, but the men involved in this escape line don’t really know me. So they’ll need to evaluate you for themselves.”

“Of course,” Thomas murmured.

“I, um, was hoping that you wouldn’t mind if Charlotte spends the day with me today,” Lucien said, glancing first at Charlotte and then at Ruby. “I have a lot of work to get done, and I could really use her help.”

Ruby smiled at him sadly. Charlotte left with him every day; there was no need to ask her permission anymore. But she understood what he was saying: he was promising that Ruby and Thomas would have the apartment to themselves. “Of course,” Ruby said.

“Good.” Lucien smiled encouragingly at her. “We’ll be back at five so I can bring Thomas to the bistro.”

“Thank you, Lucien.” Thomas stood and shook the boy’s hand. Lucien stood too, and Ruby had the strange, fleeting thought that they could almost be father and son—or at the very least, brothers.

Charlotte stood and hugged Thomas tightly. “I’ll be very sorry to see you go. We will miss you very much.”

“I’ll miss you too. All of you.” Ruby could see tears in Thomas’s eyes, and that ripped the hole in her heart even wider.

Charlotte gave Ruby a quick peck on the cheek. “Are you all right?” she whispered.

Ruby could manage only to nod; to speak would have been to open the dam.

After saying good-bye to Lucien and Charlotte and closing the door behind them, Ruby turned slowly and found Thomas gazing at her with a sad smile. “What is it?” she asked.

“I was just thinking about what a beautiful future we’re going to have,” he said. “You and me.”

All at once, there were tears streaming down her face. “Thomas, we’re barely guaranteed tomorrow.”

He took a few steps toward her and pulled her into his arms. “We just have to believe, Ruby. We have to believe that things will work out just the way they’re meant to.”

“But how?”

He was silent for a moment. “Let’s talk about the life we’ll have,” he said. “Tell me about what it will be like for us in California.”

She pulled back to look at his face. “You’re saying you’ll come to California with me?”

“Unless you’d prefer to stay in Paris.”

She thought about that and shook her head. Everything she’d come for was gone. The only thing that mattered here was Charlotte, and she was confident that if Charlotte’s parents didn’t return, she would be able to officially adopt the girl and move her to America after the war. “No. But what about England?”

“We can go there too, if you’d like. Buy a farm, maybe, move to the countryside. But wouldn’t you rather go somewhere that hasn’t been ravaged by the war?”

“Yes,” Ruby whispered.

“Will your parents like me?”

Ruby laughed, wiping a tear away. “They’ll love you, Thomas. You’re exactly the kind of person they’ve always wanted for a son.”

“So tell me.” He touched her cheek gently. “Where will we live?”

She hesitated, because to speak her dreams aloud would surely be to jinx them. But what if, instead, giving them voice made them come true? “My parents have a big piece of land near Lancaster,” she said. “It’s about sixty miles north of Los Angeles.”

“So we’ll be rubbing elbows with all the movie stars? Cary Grant and Humphrey Bogart will be around for dinner a few times a month?”

“Hardly! It’s worlds away from Hollywood. But it’s the most beautiful place you’ve ever seen. My parents live on the edge of a huge poppy field.”

“I remember. The photo in your old apartment. The one of you in the field when you were a girl.”

“Yes. The poppies bloom every spring, and it’s like the whole world has come completely alive. Sometimes, when I see sunsets here, I think of home, because the colors are the same: reds, oranges, yellows in every shade you can think of. It’s truly like nothing you’ve ever seen.”

“Poppies,” Thomas said, holding her gaze. “You know what they mean, don’t you?”

“Yes. Remembrance.” In Europe, after the Great War, poppies had become a symbol to honor soldiers who had lost their lives in battle. It wasn’t something she wanted to think about now.

“?‘In Flanders fields the poppies blow,’?” Thomas said softly, reciting the words to the famous John McCrae poem. “?‘Between the crosses, row on row.’?”

“My father used to read me that poem when I was small,” Ruby said. “He fought in the war, and he said once that he liked to look out at our fields and imagine a parade of his fallen brothers in arms. But the poppies always meant something else to me. When I was a little girl, I imagined fairies living among them, and even when I was older, I believed somehow in the flowers’ magic. I still do. It’s a very special place. My parents always said that if I wanted to come home, they’d give me a piece of their land to build my own house on. I think they were very disappointed when I moved here instead. But it’s not too late to fix that.”