She heard an aeroplane engine overhead, felt the whoosh of air on her cheeks, and smelled exhaust. It swooped in above them, flying low enough to make the trees shudder. She heard a loud mechanical scree and the banging of metal on metal and then a parachute appeared, falling, a huge box swinging beneath it.

“Weapons drop,” Gaëtan said. Tugging her hand, he led her into the trees again and up a hill, to the encampment deep in the forest. In its center, a bonfire glowed bright orange, its light hidden by the thick fringe of trees. Several men stood around the fire, smoking cigarettes and talking. Most had come here to avoid the STO—compulsory deportation to forced-labor camps in Germany. Once here, they had taken up arms and become partisans who fought a guerrilla war with Germany; in secret, under cover of night. The Maquis. They bombed trains and blew up munitions dumps and flooded canals and did whatever else they could to disrupt the flow of goods and men from France to Germany. They got their supplies—and their information—from the Allies. Their lives were always at risk; when found by the enemy, reprisals were swift and often brutal. Burning, cattle prods, blinding. Each Maquis fighter carried a cyanide pill in his pocket.

The men looked unwashed, starving, haggard. Most wore brown corduroy pants and black berets, all of which were frayed and patched and faded.

For all that Isabelle believed in their cause, she wouldn’t want to be alone up here.

“Come,” Gaëtan said. He led her past the bonfire to a small, dirty-looking tent with a canvas flap that was open to reveal a single sleeping bag and a pile of clothes and a pair of muddy boots. As usual, it smelled of dirty socks and sweat.

Isabelle ducked her head and crouched low as she made her way inside.

Gaëtan sat down beside her and closed the flap. He didn’t light a lamp (the men would see their silhouettes within and start catcalling). “Isabelle,” he said. “I’ve missed you.”

She leaned forward, let herself be taken in his arms and kissed. When it ended—too soon—she took a deep breath. “I have a message for your group from London. Paul received it at five P.M. tonight. ‘Long sobs of autumn violins.’”

She heard him draw in a breath. Obviously the words, which they’d received over the radio from the BBC, were a code.

“Is it important?” she asked.

His hands moved to her face, held her gently, and drew her in for another kiss. This one was full of sadness. Another good-bye.

“Important enough that I have to leave right now.”

All she could do was nod. “There’s never any time,” she whispered. Every moment they’d ever had together had been stolen somehow, or wrested. They met, they ducked into shadowy corners or dirty tents or back rooms, and they made love in the dark, but they didn’t get to lie together afterward like lovers and talk. He was always leaving her, or she was leaving him. Each time he held her, she thought—this will be it, the last time I see him. And she waited for him to say he loved her.

She told herself that it was war. That he did love her, but he was afraid of that love, afraid he would lose her, and it would hurt more somehow if he’d declared himself. On good days, she even believed it.

“How dangerous is it, this thing you’re going off to do?”

Again, the silence.

“I’ll find you,” he said quietly. “Maybe I’ll come to Paris for a night and we’ll sneak into the cinema and boo at the newsreels and walk through the Rodin Gardens.”

“Like lovers,” she said, trying to smile. It was what they always said to each other, this dream shared of a life that seemed impossible to remember and unlikely to reoccur.

He touched her face with a gentleness that brought tears to her eyes. “Like lovers.”

*   *   *

In the past eighteen months, as the war had escalated and Nazi aggression mounted, Vianne had found and hidden thirteen children at the orphanage. At first she had canvassed the nearby countryside, following leads given to her by the OSE. In time, Mother had connected with the American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee—an umbrella group for Jewish charities in the United States that funded the struggle to save Jewish children—and they had brought Vianne into contact with more children in need. Mothers sometimes showed up on her doorstep, crying, desperate, begging her for help. Vianne never turned anyone away, but she was always terrified.

Now, on a warm June day in 1944, a week after the Allies had landed more than one hundred and fifty thousand troops in Normandy, Vianne stood in her classroom at the orphanage, staring out at the children who sat slumped and tired at their desks. Of course they were tired.

In the past year, the bombing had rarely stopped. Air raids were so constant that Vianne no longer bothered to take her children into the cellar pantry when the alarm sounded at night. She just lay in bed with them, holding them tightly until either all clear sounded or the bombing stopped.

It never stopped for long.

Vianne clapped her hands together and called for attention. Perhaps a game would lift their spirits.

“Is it another air raid, Madame?” asked Emile. He was six years old now and never mentioned his maman anymore. When asked, he said that she “died because she got sick,” and that was all there was to it. He had no memory at all of being Jean Georges Ruelle.

Just as Daniel had no memory of who he used to be.

“No. No air raid,” she said. “Actually, I was thinking that it’s awfully hot in here.” She tugged at her loose collar.

“That’s because of the blackout windows, Madame,” said Claudine (formerly Bernadette). “Mother says she feels like a smoked ham in her woolen habit.”

The children laughed at that.

“It’s better than the winter cold,” Sophie said, and to this there was a round of nodding agreement.

“I was thinking,” Vianne said, “that today would be a good day to—”

Before she could finish her thought, she heard the clatter of a motorcycle outside; moments later, footsteps—jackboots—thundered down the stone corridor.

Everyone went still.

The door to her classroom opened.

Von Richter walked into the room. As he approached Vianne, he removed his hat and tucked it beneath his armpit. “Madame,” he said. “Will you step into the corridor with me?”

Vianne nodded. “One moment, children,” she said. “Read quietly while I am gone.”

Von Richter took her by the arm—a painful, punishing grip—and led her into the stone courtyard outside her classroom. The sound of falling water from the mossy fountain gurgled nearby.

“I am here to ask about an acquaintance of yours. Henri Navarre.”

Vianne prayed she didn’t flinch. “Who, Herr Sturmbannführer?”

“Henri Navarre.”

“Ah. Oui. The hotelier.” She fisted her hands to still them.

“You are his friend?”

Vianne shook her head. “No, Herr Sturmbannführer. I know of him, merely. It is a small town.”

Von Richter gave her an assessing look. “If you are lying to me about something so simple, I will perhaps wonder what else you are lying to me about.”

“Herr Sturmbannführer, no—”

“You have been seen with him.” His breath smelled of beer and bacon, and his eyes were narrowed.

He’ll kill me, she thought for the first time. She’d been careful for so long, never antagonizing him or defying him, never making eye contact if she could help it. But in the last few weeks he had become volatile, impossible to predict.

“It is a small town, but—”

“He has been arrested for aiding the enemy, Madame.”

“Oh,” she said.

“I will speak to you more about this, Madame. In a small room with no windows. And believe me, I will get the truth out of you. I will find out if you are working with him.”

“Me?”

He tightened his hold so much she thought her bones might crack. “If I find that you knew anything about this, I will question your children … intensely … and then I will send you all to Fresnes Prison.”