Madame Coudray raised her pale eyes. “Madame Aubrey has been gone almost a year.”
Paul’s breath snagged in his throat.
“You are at the factory more than ever.” She frowned at his desk. “When you are home, still you work. Rarely do you go out. You do not have guests.”
For reasons too complex and secret for her ears. “No, I don’t.”
She swept her hand toward the window. “Take your daughterfor a walk. Listen to her stories. They are mere childish fantasies and will soon be gone. You do not need to like her stories, but you need to listen to them.”
Outside, past the vine-draped wrought iron fence, boulevard Suchet lay wide and empty. Paul and Simone used to go walking, driving, dancing. They’d gone to the races and the museums and the opera. They’d dined with friends. Always lots of friends.
So long ago.
He hauled in a breath. “You are a wise woman, Madame Coudray.”
Paul strolled down a path in the Luxembourg Gardens between rows of chestnut trees grown together and pruned so they looked like giant hedges on stilts.
Josie chattered from her perch on Paul’s shoulders. “Feenee stomped up to the big, ugly rock-monster. ‘Get out of my house! You can’t be here, Mr. Rock-Monster. It’smyhouse.’ Then the rock-monster ate Feenee’s toes. Then it ate her feets. Then it ate her knees.”
How macabre. Paul twisted his head to see his daughter. “What a sad story.”
Her brown curls danced in the breeze. “No, Daddy. I’m not done.”
“All right. Go on.” The parallel paths and lawns and tree hedges opened up to a garden edged by statues.
“It’s not sad. Feenee grew wings and flew away from the monster.”
Paul tightened his grip on his daughter’s ankles. “But she lost her legs.”
“She had to,” Josie said as if Paul were daft. “As long as she had legs, she couldn’t have wings. She can’t haveboth, Daddy.”
Paul frowned, but three German soldiers neared, carryingDer Deutsche Wegleiter für Parisguidebook. A frown could be interpreted as hostility, and he erased it.
“I want wings.” Josie flapped her arms. “Wings are better than legs.”
Childish fantasies that would soon be gone. Soon had better be before she started school. He could only imagine how teachers and children would react to Feenee.
“Down, please.” Josie patted Paul’s hat.
“Sure thing, gumdrop.” Paul squatted, helped her to the ground, and pulled her dress and coat back down over her underpants.
Josie slipped her hand in his and skipped as they passed a lawn ringed by pink flowers. “I can skip now. See me skip?”
“I do. I’ve never seen such good skipping. Sometimes legs come in handy.”
Josie looked up at him, and he winked. She grinned, flashing tiny white teeth.
A white board fence and armed guards blocked the pathway leading past the reflecting pool to the Luxembourg Palace, which was draped with red-and-black swastika flags. The German Luftwaffe used the former home of the French senate for their headquarters in France. Even after a year of occupation, the foreignness, the sense of violation remained. Like a panzer racing in the French Grand Prix. And winning.
Paul turned right to leave the gardens. He hadn’t visited Paris’s 6th arrondissement on the Left Bank of the Seine in ages, but the Odéon Métro station couldn’t be far to the north. Certainly closer than the station south of the gardens where he and Josie had arrived.
Two familiar figures approached. Dr. and Mrs. Bentley Young, and Paul’s chest tightened. “Good day, Mrs. Young, Dr. Young.”
They didn’t even meet his gaze.
How many lively evenings had the Youngs and the Aubreys spent together?
The tightness grew and darkened. In his first thirty years, Paul had never lacked for friends. In his thirty-first year, he’d lost them all. After a month or two comforting Paul after Simone’s death, his friends had turned their backs on him for selling Au-ful trucks to the Germans.
