The Nightingale(175)

He started to cry, and she pulled him into her arms. It took perhaps the greatest courage of her life to let go of him. She stood. The two men immediately appeared at her side.

“Hello, young man,” Phillipe said to Daniel, giving him an earnest smile.

Daniel wailed.

Vianne took Daniel’s hand and led him through the house and into the front yard, past the dead apple tree littered with remembrance ribbons and through the broken gate to the blue Peugeot parked on the side of the road.

Lerner got into the driver’s seat while Phillipe waited near the back fender. The engine fired up; smoke puffed out from the rear exhaust.

Phillipe opened the back door. Giving Vianne one last sad look, he slid into the seat, leaving the car door open.

Sophie and Antoine came up beside her, and bent down together to hug Daniel.

“We will always love you, Daniel,” Sophie said. “I hope you remember us.”

Vianne knew that only she could get Daniel into the automobile. He would trust only her.

Of all the heartbreaking, terrible things she’d done in this war, none hurt as badly as this: She took Daniel by the hand and led him into the automobile that would take him away from her. He climbed into the backseat.

He stared at her through teary, confused eyes. “Maman?”

Sophie said, “Just a minute!” and ran back to the house. She returned a moment later with Bébé and thrust the stuffed rabbit at Daniel.

Vianne bent down to look him in the eye. “You need to go now, Daniel. Trust Maman.”

His lower lip trembled. He clutched the toy to his chest. “Oui, Maman.”

“Be a good boy.”

Phillipe leaned over and shut the door.

Daniel launched himself at the window, pressing his palms to the glass. He was crying now, yelling, “Maman! Maman!” They could hear his screams for minutes after the automobile was gone.

Vianne said quietly, “Have a good life, Ari de Champlain.”





THIRTY-EIGHT

Isabelle stood at attention. She needed to stand up straight for roll call. If she gave in to her dizziness and toppled over, they would whip her, or worse.

No. It wasn’t roll call. She was in Paris now, in a hospital room.

She was waiting for something. For someone.

Micheline had gone to speak to the Red Cross workers and journalists gathered in the lobby. Isabelle was supposed to wait here.

The door opened.

“Isabelle,” Micheline said in a scolding tone. “You shouldn’t be standing.”

“I’m afraid I’ll die if I lie down,” Isabelle said. Or maybe she thought the words.

Like Isabelle, Micheline was as thin as a matchstick, with hip bones that showed like knuckles beneath her shapeless dress. She was almost entirely bald—only tufts of hair grew here and there—and she had no eyebrows. The skin at her neck and along her arms was riddled with oozing, open sores. “Come,” Micheline said. She led her out of the room, through the strange crowd of silent, shuffling, rag-dressed returnees and the loud, watery-eyed family members in search of loved ones, past the journalists who asked questions. She steered her gently to a quieter room, where other camp survivors sat slumped in chairs.

Isabelle sat down in a chair and dutifully put her hands in her lap. Her lungs ached and burned with every breath she drew and a headache pounded inside her skull.

“It’s time for you to go home,” Micheline said.

Isabelle looked up, blank and bleary-eyed.

“Do you want me to travel with you?”

She blinked slowly, trying to think. Her headache was blinding in its intensity. “Where am I going?”

“Carriveau. You’re going to see your sister. She’s waiting for you.”

“She is?”

“Your train leaves in forty minutes. Mine leaves in an hour.”

“How do we go back?” Isabelle dared to ask. Her voice was barely above a whisper.

“We are the lucky ones,” Micheline said, and Isabelle nodded.

Micheline helped Isabelle stand.

Together they limped to the hospital’s back door, where a row of automobiles and Red Cross lorries waited to transport survivors to the train station. As they waited their turn, they stood together, tucked close as they’d done so often in the past year—in Appell lines, in cattle cars, in food queues.

A bright-faced young woman in a Red Cross uniform came into the room, carrying a clipboard. “Rossignol?”