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?
But she couldn’t think like that. If she’d followed a different path, she wouldn’t have known Charlotte. Or Thomas. Or any of the people here in Paris who’d made her proud to be fighting for something bigger than herself.
AUTUMN HAD PAINTED THE TREES in the brilliant hues of sunset, and as Ruby strolled toward the Seine on a sunny November afternoon, she could almost believe that life was normal. It was a trick of the light, but on days like this, when the neighborhoods bustled and the Germans weren’t filling the streets, Ruby could imagine that this was the Paris she had dreamed of. This was the Paris that Hemingway had written about a generation ago, the Paris that had tantalized her from afar.
She crossed the river at the Pont de l’Alma, marveling as she always did at the way the Eiffel Tower sliced into the bright blue sky off to the right, and made her way down the Avenue Bosquet. She turned left on the rue Saint-Dominique and right on the rue Amélie, intending to walk by the old building just once, as she did every Monday. She had mostly lost hope that she’d ever see Charlotte’s parents or Thomas or any of the other pilots again, but to cease trying would be to admit defeat. So it had become part of her weekly routine to walk briskly along the narrow street that had once been her home, pausing only briefly outside the old building to look for signs that someone was trying to find her. She never knew quite what she was searching for: a note? A handkerchief tied to a terrace? It was a fool’s errand, but it soothed her somehow. As she passed, she always said a prayer for Charlotte’s parents, for her own lost baby, and for the safety of all the pilots she had helped, and this day was no different. In fact, she was so lost in her own thoughts that she almost didn’t hear her name being hissed from across the street.
“Ruby!” There it was again, an urgent whisper coming from the shadows of a doorway on the other side of the narrow lane. She turned in the direction of the voice, cursing herself for being careless enough to come here like this. She could be putting everything in jeopardy. She took a few steps backward, prepared to make a hasty retreat.
But then the figure in the doorway emerged into the crisp afternoon light, and she froze. The man in the shadows was thinner than he had been two years before, his face darker, his eyes more intense. But she would have known him anywhere. “Thomas?”
He began to walk toward her, and for a moment, she couldn’t move. It felt like an impossible mirage. Surely, the handsome pilot wasn’t once again standing in front of her, smiling that perfect smile, looking at her with relief and tenderness written across his face. “It’s you,” she whispered, a warm glow spreading over her whole body.
But then, common sense kicked in and unfroze her, reminding her of where they were—who they were. Quickly, she motioned him back into the shadows. He paused and retreated toward the doorway he’d been standing in. She scanned the street for passersby. They were alone, but for how long? She crossed the street quickly, and then, she was just inches from him. This couldn’t be happening. She knew she’d have to get him someplace safe, but for now, time stood still. She reached out to touch his face, her fingertips grazing the stubble along his jaw. She longed to kiss him, to fall into his arms, but she couldn’t do it here, not in public.
“Ruby,” he murmured, and it was his deep, familiar voice—the one she’d never really expected to hear again—that finally snapped her back to reality. What if he didn’t feel the same way she did? After all, it had been two years. Anything could have happened in that time. The fact that he’d returned wasn’t necessarily an indication of his feelings; it could just as easily have been that he knew nowhere else to go. Suddenly self-conscious, she dropped her hand back to her side. “Thomas, what are you doing here?”
“I was shot down over Saint-Omer a few days ago. I came as quickly as I could.”
“But the escape line has been compromised. Didn’t you hear?”
“Yes, but I had to see you. I had to make sure you were all right.” His smile faltered. “But no one answered at your apartment, and I began to fear the worst.”
“You were worried about me?”
He reached for her hands, pulling her closer. He was cold, and she had the sudden, strange thought that she’d like to draw him a warm bath. “Ruby, of course.”
“But why?”
He looked startled. “I’ve thought of you every single day. Have you thought of me?”
“Yes,” she whispered.
They stared at each other for another long moment, and finally, she believed. The impossible had happened; he had come back to her. But she was being careless; an old neighbor could recognize her, or worse, a collaborator or a Nazi could spot Thomas in his uniform. “Come,” she said, abruptly breaking the loaded silence between them and pulling her hands from his. “I must get you somewhere safe. Are you injured?”
“Nothing like last time.”
“Very well.” She forced herself to be practical, to push her feelings aside. What mattered now was getting him to safety. “We’ll need to walk a bit. To get to my new apartment, we must cross the Seine, which means you’ll be out in the open, and I’m afraid your disguise isn’t very foolproof. So instead of crossing at the Pont de l’Alma, we’ll work our way south and then west on side streets, and we’ll cross at the Pont de Passy. There’s a lower likelihood of Nazi presence there, and it’ll be easier to stick to the shadows. All right?”
He nodded and listened carefully as she explained the route she had in mind. It would take an extra thirty minutes, which would expose him for longer, but she couldn’t simply march him through a neighborhood swarming with Germans.
“Once we get there, you must stay in our courtyard until nightfall. I can’t bring you inside in broad daylight, just in case we’re followed. I can’t put Charlotte in danger.”
“Your neighbor? The one whose mother I helped?”
“Yes. She lives with me now.”
He looked grim. “Her parents are gone?”
“Deported more than a year ago. We’ve had no word.”
“Ruby, I’m so sorry.”
“I am too.” She reached for his hand, lingering longer than she should have. What if she was just a woman standing on the beautiful streets of Paris with a man she loved? It was a wonderful fantasy, but it could never be true, not as long as the war raged around them. She let go. “We must go now before someone sees us.”
She was acutely aware of Thomas several paces behind her as she headed west along the rue de Grenelle. She wound her way southeast down smaller side streets until they’d cleared the Champ-de-Mars and the École Militaire, two places that were often bustling with Nazis. Then she turned right and right again as she wove back toward the river. She looked back a few times and was relieved to see Thomas hugging the shadows, his head down. A few people stopped and stared, but they passed very few German soldiers, and the ones they did see were too preoccupied with their own conversations to give them a second glance.
When they finally turned onto the rue de Lasteyrie, Ruby nodded toward the entrance to the courtyard and let herself into the building through the front door. She watched from her window as Thomas sat down in the shade, his back against the building. He was here; he was really here. Now there was nothing to do but wait.
CHARLOTTE HAD LEFT A NOTE saying that she’d be spending a few hours with Lucien that afternoon, so Ruby was alone in the apartment. As she waited for night to fall, she felt like a giddy schoolgirl, changing into a cotton dress she hadn’t worn in more than a year and rummaging through a small box of odds and ends until she found a stubby red lipstick that she’d put away after Marcel had died.
Daylight had vanished by five-thirty, and there was a soft knock at the door. Ruby opened it to find Thomas standing there, his cheeks pink from the evening chill. For a moment, they just stared at each other, and then his arms were around her, and his mouth was on hers. Ruby pulled him into the apartment and fumbled with the lock, and then she found herself pressed against the door, her whole body on fire.
“I’ve missed you, Ruby,” he murmured, drawing back to gaze into her eyes.
“I’ve missed you too.”
“I thought of you every time I flew over France.”
“But why? I’m just a woman who helped you long ago. Aren’t I?”
He kissed her again. “You’re the person I think of each time I take off. You’re my good luck charm. I’ve spent the last two years not knowing if you were dead or alive. Standing here in front of you now feels like a miracle.”
“I think of you all the time too, Thomas.” She wanted to lead him to her bedroom, to feel his body against hers the way she’d hardly dared imagine, but Charlotte would be home soon. Besides, Thomas had been walking for days and was covered in grime; surely he’d want to feel like himself again. “Why don’t you freshen up? I’ve drawn you a bath and laid out a fresh set of clothes for you.”
“Your husband’s?”
“No, I don’t have any of his things anymore. I keep spare clothes on hand now in case pilots are sent my way.”
His smile faltered, and he took a small step back. “So there have been others you’ve helped? Others like me?”
“Thomas,” she said softly, holding his gaze, “there is no one like you.”