The Nightingale(156)

“We are done with you.”

He was smiling at her in a way that made her skin crawl.

“Bring him in.”

A man stumbled forward in shackles.

Papa.

She saw horror in his eyes and knew how she looked: split lip and blackened eyes and torn cheek … cigarette burns on her forearms, blood matted in her hair. She should stay still, stand where she was, but she couldn’t. She limped forward, gritting her teeth at the pain.

There were no bruises on his face, no cuts on his lip, no arm held close to his body in pain.

They hadn’t beaten or tortured him, which meant they hadn’t interrogated him. “I am the Nightingale,” her father said to the man who’d tortured her. “Is that what you need to hear?”

She shook her head, said no in a voice so soft no one heard.

“I am the Nightingale,” she said, standing on burned, bloody feet. She turned to the German who had tortured her.

Schmidt laughed. “You, a girl? The infamous Nightingale?”

Her father said something in English to the German, who clearly didn’t understand.

Isabelle understood: They could speak in English.

Isabelle was close enough to her father to touch him, but she didn’t. “Don’t do this,” she begged.

“It’s done,” he said. The smile he gave her was slow in forming, and when it came, she felt pain constrict her chest. Memories came at her in waves, surging over the breakwater she’d built in the isolated years. Him sweeping her into his arms, twirling her around; picking her up from a fall, dusting her off, whispering, Not so loud, my little terror, you’ll wake your maman …

She drew in short, shallow breaths and wiped her eyes. He was trying to make it up to her, asking for forgiveness and seeking redemption all at once, sacrificing himself for her. It was a glimpse of who he’d once been, the poet her maman had fallen in love with. That man, the one before the war, might have known another way, might have found the perfect words to heal their fractured past. But he wasn’t that man anymore. He had lost too much, and in his loss, he’d thrown more away. This was the only way he knew to tell her he loved her. “Not this way,” she whispered.

“There is no other. Forgive me,” he said softly.

The Gestapo stepped between them. He grabbed her father by the arm and pulled him toward the door.

Isabelle limped after them. “I am the Nightingale!” she called out.

The door slammed in her face. She hobbled to the cell’s window, clutching the rough, rusty bars. “I am the Nightingale!” she screamed.

Outside, beneath a yellow morning sun, her father was dragged into the square, where a firing squad stood at the ready, rifles raised.

Her father stumbled forward, lurched across the cobblestoned square, past a fountain. Morning sunlight gave everything a golden, beautiful glow.

“We were supposed to have time,” she whispered, feeling tears start. How often had she imagined a new beginning for her and Papa, for all of them? They would come together after the war, Isabelle and Vianne and Papa, learn to laugh and talk and be a family again.

Now it would never happen; she would never get to know her father, never feel the warmth of his hand in hers, never fall asleep on the divan beside him, never be able to say all that needed to be said between them. Those words were lost, turned into ghosts that would drift away, unsaid. They would never be the family maman had promised. “Papa,” she said; it was such a big word suddenly, a dream in its entirety.

He turned and faced the firing squad. She watched him stand taller and square his shoulders. He pushed the white strands of hair from his dry eyes. Across the square, their gazes met. She clutched the bars harder, clinging to them for support.

“I love you,” he mouthed.

Shots rang out.

*

Vianne hurt all over.

She lay in bed, bracketed by her sleeping children, trying not to remember last night’s rape in excruciating detail.

Moving slowly, she went to the pump and washed up in cold water, wincing every time she touched an area that was bruised.

She dressed in what was easy—a wrinkled linen button-up dress with a fitted bodice and flared skirt.

All night, she’d lain awake in bed, holding her children close, alternately weeping for what he’d done to her—what he’d taken from her—and fuming that she couldn’t stop it.

She wanted to kill him.

She wanted to kill herself.