“What?” Erma’s gaze skewered her. “We can’t take your money.”
“Why not?” She entreated Hal with her eyes, as if she were thirteen again and asking him to dip into the allowance from her parents for new pointe shoes. “I’m practically family. I lived with you for three years. Because of you, I could stay in the ballet school when my parents returned to New York. You’ve always said I’m like the daughter you never had.”
“You’ll need your money to get home.” Erma flipped through a folder. “When the bombs start falling, you’ll change your mind about staying here. Look what Hitler did to Warsaw and Rotterdam.”
It wouldn’t happen to Paris. It couldn’t. “I’ll be fine. I want you to have my money.”
Hal turned Lucie to the door. “Don’t worry about us. Now, I know you’re hungry after practice. Go. Eat. We’ll talk to you tonight.”
Out into the warmth of the store, her home, but it was all falling away, falling apart. The Greenblatts—leaving. The store—closing.
Green Leaf Books was their dream, their life, and they were giving it up.
Ballet was Lucie’s dream. Her life. Could she give it up? If she did, what would she have? Who would she be?
She rose to demi-pointe and turned, taking in the shelves and tomes and the rich scent, and she knew what she’d have, who she’d be.
Lucie whirled back into the office. “I’ll buy the store.”
Erma looked up from the box she was packing. “Pardon?”
“I’ll buy the store. Not a gift. A business transaction.”
Hal’s chin dropped. “Sweet Lucie. You are so kind. But you—you’re a ballerina.”
“Not anymore.” Although she did stand in fifth position. She breathed a prayer for forgiveness for lying. “Lifar plans to cut me. I need a job. I’ll run the bookstore.”
After twenty-five years of marriage, Hal and Erma could speak volumes to each other with a glance. And they did. Then Erma sighed. “But Lucie, you’re aballerina.”
Lucie’s cheeks warmed. True, she wasn’t terribly smart, especially with numbers, but at least she’d read all the books the Greenblatts had recommended. “I’m good with people, with customers—I can do Hal’s job. And Madame Martel helps with the business end of things. She can do your job. She and I—we can run the store.”
“Lucie...” Hal’s voice roughened.
Her eyes stung. Her lashes felt heavy. “And when we kick the Germans back to where they belong, this store will be here waiting for you. I promise.”
Erma stared at the folder in her hands, her chin wagging back and forth. Wavering.
“I want to do this.” Lucie swiped moisture from her eyes. “I need to do this. Please. Please trust me with your store.”
Erma set down the folder and came to Lucie, ever the stern one, the practical one, the one to say no. She gripped Lucie’s shoulders and pressed her forehead to Lucie’s. “It’s yours. You dear, dear girl.”
Lucie fumbled for Erma’s beloved hands and tried to say thank you, but she could only nod. Then she broke away and ran out, ran upstairs to her apartment.
Now she couldn’t change her mind about leaving Paris. Now she had to resign from the ballet.
And she had to figure out how to run a bookstore.
2
PARIS
MONDAY, JUNE24, 1940
With every sense dull, every movement mired in liquid lead, Paul Aubrey led the German officer along the walkway overlooking his factory floor, all so he could negotiate another loss.
“This is a fine factory,” Oberst Gerhard Schiller said in excellent English.
“Thank you.” Never could Paul have imagined these circumstances. After the fall of Dunkirk, the German army had turned south and driven for Paris. On June 5. The day of Simone’s accident.
