They had encountered a patrol, left behind as the German division moved to the north ahead of the Allied army. They had come upon the patrol, outnumbered, but they had the advantage of knowing the countryside. They had left the bodies for the crows, just as the Germans had left so many of her own people. Then, splitting up, the decision to come home had been a simple one. It was close by, and the one they called Jehanne would be far away, moving with the Allies, if they believed the rumors.
She had been on the move for three days after sending the others off, refusing to slow them down. She couldn't remember when she last slept.
“What will you do?” Albert asked, his breath creating a faint cloud in the wintry cold of the darkened kitchen.
“I will find others and join them. There is still work to do.” she replied, glancing across the kitchen table at the boy who was no longer a boy. The war had done that to all of them—a whole generation.
“We have heard the Allies are very near Paris,” he whispered through the darkness. “It will be over soon.” Then, his voice wistful, “It is almost Christmas.”
Christmas. How many had come and gone since she was last there?
There was a time she had thought it would never be over, that it would all go on—the shortages of food, then no food; the gaunt faces of the people in the countryside; the ever-present enemy tanks, a reminder that they were not their own people any longerbut part of the Reich; and the arrests, the bodies of those who were made an example, then those who simply disappeared, their bodies discovered later in a forest clearing, riddled with bullets, left for the crows.
“I must go.” She moved stiffly, the towel tucked into the waist of the too-large pants. She'd stayed too long—she needed to be on the move.
“Come to the village,” Albert replied. “You will be safe there.”
She wanted to. She wanted to see her mother and sister, to sleep without thinking she might waken with a gun at her head, but she was not so naive to not know what would happen if she was caught.
The Germans had a price on her head. They would execute her on site along with everyone else found with her. It was the stark reality of the reputation she had earned, and she wouldn't have changed any of it. She shook her head.
“I will stay the night here,” she decided. She had not seen anyone else nearby.
It was cold. There would be no fire, but at least she would have a roof over her head that night, and she would be gone before the sun rose.
“You will tell them that I am well? And give them my love?”
He nodded. “What about food? You must eat.”
Did she look that pathetic, she thought, that even a twelve-year-old boy noticed?
No sleep, and no food these past days. It was how they all lived, on the run. He shoved an end-slice of bread into her hand.
“What about you?” she asked. It was a long walk to the village through thick forest and snow, and he'd obviously brought the crust of bread with him for a reason.
He shrugged a thin shoulder. “There are apples beneath the trees. One has only to dig beneath the snow. They are not so bad.”
Her father's prized apples that had once supported their family, before the war.
She nodded and tucked the bread into her pocket. “You will be careful.”
“And you, Jehanne,” he said with a solemn expression. “You will come back when this is over.”
She watched through the glass in the window as he made his way past the garden, then darted into the cover of trees at the edge of the orchard, keeping to the shadows.
Sneaky little devil, she thought with a weary smile, as he disappeared completely.
Oh, how she would have liked to go with him, but it was too dangerous. If she was caught with them...but she wouldn't put him or anyone else at risk.
The kitchen was as she remembered it: the chairs painted blue, the table where her mother had served meals, the porcelain sink where they had peeled apples for one of her mother's apple pies, the crust so flaky that it fell apart, her father complimenting her mother on another fine meal, her brothers arguing with one another.
Gone.
She pushed away from the kitchen counter. Her side ached, but at least the bleeding had stopped for now, and she was so very tired. Perhaps now that the Allies pushed toward Paris it would end soon.
She was tempted to sleep downstairs on the overstuffed sofa her father had purchased for her mother, before the war. It wasn't new, but her mother acted as if it was the most beautiful thing she had ever seen. There was also the old rocking chair where Grandmere used to sit before the fire when she was very old, before the war.
Everything, every happy memory, was before the war.
