The Room on Rue Amélie(97)

“I love you too, Lucien.”

And together, with all the voices of Paris, they joined in the singing of the national anthem.

Arise, children of the homeland.

The day of glory has arrived!



THE NEXT MORNING, CHARLOTTE AWOKE shortly after dawn to a beautiful sunrise just outside the window of the apartment she shared now with Lucien. She had been living with him since the day the police picked Ruby up in April, and although Lucien had been back to the old building a handful of times to check on things and to meet with Monsieur Savatier, Charlotte couldn’t bring herself to go. This was her life now—until Ruby returned, at least—and looking forward was easier than looking back. It was just that the past had a strange way of haunting you, even when you didn’t want to think about it.

If someone had told Charlotte three years ago that she’d be living with a boy she loved, she would have laughed out loud and then turned bright red. It simply wasn’t what proper young ladies did. But things were different in wartime, and although Charlotte was only fifteen, she might as well have been twenty-five. She and Lucien had seen too much, done too much to ever go back to childhood. Even after Ruby had been arrested, they had continued to work for the Resistance, and that was the kind of thing that changed a person forever. Now that Paris was liberated, that work was done, and there was nothing left to do but wait.

Lucien rolled over and wrapped his arms around Charlotte, pulling her closer and burrowing his face into the warm space between her neck and shoulder. He was most affectionate when he was sleeping, when his guard wasn’t up, when he wasn’t worrying about the things that could go wrong. She loved these moments before the world was awake, when she could pretend for a short while that she was nothing more than a girl in love with a boy.

As she gazed out at the coming morning, she wondered whether Ruby could see the same sky. Were the colors of dawn—pinks, oranges, blues—as brilliant where she was as they were in Paris? Or was the sky here celebrating the liberation along with the rest of the city while the sky to the east remained stubbornly gray?

Beside her, Lucien stirred, murmuring her name as he often did upon waking. She turned and kissed his cheek and then looked out the window again.

“What are you thinking about?” he asked softly, burying his face in her hair.

“Just that maybe somewhere out there, Ruby can see the same sky,” Charlotte said, closing her eyes. “Maybe one of these days, the sun will rise, and as it makes its way west, she will follow it home.”





CHAPTER FORTY-THREE


August 1944

On the same morning, some twelve hundred miles farther south, Thomas was watching the sunrise too. He was in the cockpit of a Spitfire, his heart pounding as he waited for takeoff.

He was heading back to France. To the land where Ruby lived. To the country the Allies were in the midst of reclaiming. Now that the good guys were in control again, it no longer mattered to his superiors if he returned to France; there was no escape line to betray, no danger of being shot from the sky.

His job was simply to deliver the Spit to an airfield near Ramatuelle that had, until a month ago, been an olive grove. When the Allies had arrived, the U.S. Army had bulldozed the area to create a makeshift landing strip for deliveries. This was to be a staging spot from which to wage the remainder of the war to the east.

Thomas took off just past dawn, marveling, as he often did, at the glorious colors of the world at both ends of the day. Dawn and dusk were like beautiful bookends, and though the color often leached from the sky as noon approached, the day always began and ended with the same magnificent hues. Thomas smiled to himself that morning, thinking of how, when the war was over, he would take Ruby for a flight through the sunrise sky. Would the colors near the horizon—the oranges, the reds, the yellows—remind her of the poppies she’d told him about? Did the sunrises look the same over California?

He thought of Ruby as he flew, wondered what she was doing right now. He’d seen the newsreel footage of the liberation of Paris, and he’d searched the jubilant crowds for her face, knowing that the odds of seeing her were slim. Still, he imagined her—with Charlotte and Lucien by her side—dancing victorious down the Avenue des Champs-élysées. He felt a great sense of relief; she would no longer have to put herself in danger by sheltering pilots. If Paris was free, then so was Ruby. The end of the war was in sight, and one day soon, he’d be able to return to her. As he flew north, he imagined that he could see all the way to the French capital, could see the French flags flying triumphant over the city once again.

In what felt like no time, the French coast was upon him. Beneath the Spit, the water gleamed a perfect topaz blue. Ramatuelle, a fingernail of a village carved out beneath Saint-Tropez, seemed to rise from the edge of the sea, its rooftops glowing sherbet orange in the morning light as they crawled up the cliffs away from the water. He could make out a church tower, a forest beyond that, a few boats bobbing serenely in the water. He could see the airstrip in the distance, and he began to prepare for landing.

And then, everything went wrong.

It started with a shudder, an abrupt rat-tat-tat in the engine that felt unfamiliar and strange. Frowning, Thomas checked his instrument controls, but he didn’t need them to tell him the most pressing problem: he was losing altitude, and fast. Had he been hit? Had something happened to the fuel line? Was there an electrical problem? He was usually an ace at diagnosing problems and reacting calmly, but right now, he was at a loss. Everything had been fine one moment, and the next, his plane had gone haywire for no apparent reason at all.