CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE
December 1943
Hanukkah began on December 22 that year, and although it was too risky to have a menorah, Ruby, Thomas, and Lucien joined Charlotte in lighting a single white candle on the first night of the Festival of Lights.
“Blessed are you, Lord our God, king of the universe, who sanctified us with His commandments and commanded us to kindle the Hanukkah light,” Charlotte recited solemnly, her eyes closed, while the four of them held hands. “Blessed are you, Lord our God, king of the universe, who performed miracles for our forefathers in those days, at this time. Blessed are you, Lord our God, king of the universe, who has granted us life, sustained us, and enabled us to reach this occasion.” She opened her eyes and looked up with a half smile. “I might have gotten some of the words wrong. It was my papa who used to say the blessings.”
“It sounded beautiful, Charlotte,” Lucien assured her. “Should we say a prayer for your parents too?”
Her eyes filled with tears, and she nodded. Ruby waited for her to speak, but instead, the girl closed her eyes and remained silent. When she opened them again, she looked somber. “My prayers for them were in my heart. God knows what I was asking.”
“Amen,” Thomas murmured, and Ruby and Lucien followed suit.
They gathered each night to light the same candle again, and on the twenty-fifth, they celebrated Christmas together too. There were no presents, no tree, no feast, but the four of them were together, and that felt, to Ruby, like the greatest gift she could ask for. They had become a family, somehow, and though she’d never been a very religious person, she couldn’t help but feel that God was with them. God is present wherever love can be found, her mother used to say.
She didn’t have a doubt that Thomas loved her, and she him, but what had surprised her over the past few months was that she could see the same feelings reflected strongly in Lucien and Charlotte. Before the war, she would have said that they were too young to know what love was. But they’d both lost so much and had managed to find each other. It gave Ruby a feeling of hope, because she knew that if anything happened to her, Lucien would protect Charlotte with his life. He was a survivor, and he would make sure Charlotte lived too.
THE YEAR 1944 ARRIVED UNDER a dark shadow, although there was the sense throughout Paris that the tide was turning. The Americans were involved heavily in the war now, and Lucien often brought news of illicit BBC broadcasts that spoke of Allied victories against the Germans and Italians. Berlin was being bombed regularly, he informed them, and the Germans were surely growing weary. “It’s just a matter of time now,” he said again and again, grinning at Charlotte, and Ruby and Thomas would exchange concerned looks. Believing that the end of the war was on the horizon was certainly tantalizing, but it didn’t feel realistic. Not yet. And Ruby hated to think of Charlotte harboring the false hope that within a few months, her parents could be home.
Thomas continued to spend his days hidden in the closet and his nights in Ruby’s bed, but it was clear he was growing restless. He hadn’t been outside the apartment in more than two months for fear of drawing attention, but Ruby had caught him staring longingly out the window more than once. As much as he loved her, part of him must have yearned to return to the skies.
A few days after the new year, Lucien arrived at their door just past dawn, wearing a grim expression. “I’m not just here for Charlotte,” he said right away when Ruby opened the door, pulling a bathrobe around herself.
A shiver ran down Ruby’s spine as she stepped aside to let him in, closing the door behind him. “What is it?”
Lucien cleared his throat again, as if the words he needed to say were lodged there. “There’s word of a new escape line, Ruby. This one goes west, to the coast. It’s put together by MI9, British intelligence. It’s—it’s a way to get Thomas out. If you want.”
Ruby didn’t respond right away. Of course she wanted to get Thomas out. Didn’t she? After all, the sooner he left, the safer they all were. Yes, there would be risks involved in his escape, but she had to believe that a line established by MI9 would be as secure as possible. He wouldn’t have to sleep in a hidden closet or stay confined to a small apartment while the world went on without him. And he could once again try to make a difference in the war effort. She knew those things would make him happy.
But he would also be gone from her life, a thought that made her feel as if her heart were splitting in two. Though she’d known that the euphoria she’d felt over the past weeks couldn’t last, she still wasn’t prepared for it to end so abruptly. He’d promised to come back for her at the war’s end, but what if he didn’t survive the escape? What if he was killed in air combat a few months from now? What if someone came for Charlotte, and Ruby died protecting her? What if the arrests of last January finally led back to her door? If they parted now, there was no guarantee that she’d ever see him again. But she had no choice, and neither did he.
“Ruby?” Lucien asked into the silence.
“I’m sorry.” She refocused on the boy. His eyes were full of sympathy, and suddenly, she wanted to cry. But she had to be stronger than that. “Of course. I’ll tell him. Thank you.”
“If you’re not ready . . .” Lucien’s voice trailed off.
“But I must be. This is for the best, isn’t it?”
“Yes.”
They stared at each other for a moment. “Let me go see if Charlotte is dressed yet. And I’ll tell Thomas you’re here.”
When Lucien’s knock had come, Thomas had hurried into the hidden closet, just in case. So when Ruby arrived back in her bedroom, it seemed, for a moment, like he was already gone. She could still see the imprint of his head on the pillow on the right side of the bed, still see the spot where the sheets had wrapped around him as he held her tight the night before. She sighed and shook her head before rapping lightly on the wall. “Thomas, Lucien is here. You can come out. He’s found you a way home.”
“YOU’LL HAVE TO LEAVE TONIGHT,” Lucien said ten minutes later as the four of them sat in the living room, their expressions somber. “There’s a bistro not far from here where one of the men who runs the escape line will interrogate you to ensure that you’re really an RAF pilot.”
Thomas looked confused. “Who else would I be?”
“A few of the escape lines have been infiltrated by German spies. They need to be absolutely sure that you are who you say you are before they take you to the next stop on the line.”
“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.”
“We could build a house together.”
“With a porch and rocking chairs.”
“And a fireplace with a big chimney for the nights when it gets cold.” Thomas paused. “Does it actually get cold in California?”
“It does sometimes.” Ruby smiled. “And we’d have big windows in our bedroom that overlook the poppy fields.”
“And plenty of room for our children to play in the yard.”
Ruby reached up and touched his face. “Children?”
“I want to have children with you someday, Ruby. If you want that too.”
“Of course I do.” She wasn’t sure she’d ever felt happier than she did in that moment.
“And if Charlotte’s parents don’t come home,” Thomas said carefully, “we’ll adopt her.”
“You’d do that?”
“In a heartbeat.”
Ruby smiled. “Of course that means we’d probably have to bring Lucien too. We’ll all live happily ever after.”
Thomas pulled her to him and kissed her. “We’ll all live happily after.”
They made love three times that day, staring into each other’s eyes, whispering about the future, making promises that they both knew they might be powerless to keep.
They fell asleep in the early afternoon, and Ruby woke a few minutes before four. Thomas still had his arms around her, and his chest was rising and falling in an easy rhythm. For a long time, she just watched, committing to memory the shape of his jaw, the color of his eyelashes, the constellation of freckles that dotted his collarbone. “I’ll see you again,” she whispered. “I know I will.”
She woke him at four-thirty, knowing that Charlotte and Lucien would be home soon. Already, the light that streamed in through the bedroom window was turning apricot. Evening was on its way, and there wasn’t enough time to say all the things she wanted to, but she knew there never would be. Perhaps that was what it was like to love someone deeply: to feel that no matter how many moments together you were granted, there would never be enough.
Thomas blinked at her a few times upon awakening, as if reminding himself that he wasn’t in a dream, and then he kissed her once more, softly, tenderly. “I was thinking,” he said, “that we should also have a white picket fence. Isn’t that very American?”
She laughed. “And maybe an American flag flying in the breeze.”
“And a British flag.”
“But of course.”
They smiled at each other. “Tell me more about the poppies,” he said.
And as they rose reluctantly from the bed and got dressed, Ruby did just that. She described the way the poppies soaked in the desert sunshine, blooming the color of clementines as far as the eye could see. She told him about the soft purple owl’s clover, the deep purple lupine, the tiny yellow wildflowers, and the buttery white cream cups that grew there too, a rolling field of watercolors stretching into the horizon. She told him about the mountains in the distance, the way everything looked carved out of the brilliant blue sky. “It’s like heaven on earth,” she concluded. “I can’t wait to be there again. With you.”
They heard Charlotte’s key in the lock, and Thomas pulled her to him once more. “Thank you,” he said. “Thank you for painting me a picture of the future. It will sustain me until the day I see you again.”
And as Charlotte came inside, followed by Lucien, both of them wearing expressions of regret, Ruby thought with a strange surge of hope that perhaps this wasn’t so senseless after all. Maybe this was the reason for the hell they’d all been going through. Maybe this was the life she was supposed to find all along.