Lucie put her arm around her friend’s shaking shoulders. “I—I don’t know.”
“I’ve never seen—never seen—” Alice pressed her hands over her eyes.
“Me neither.” After things quieted down, Lucie would see Alice home.
“What are they thinking?” The shopgirl folded her arms across her stylish white silk blouse. “In broad daylight.”
The attack was planned. Choreographed. A chill shimmied up Lucie’s arms. The note—the one that read “Champs”—was it for this?
A cry strangled in her throat. The note, the signal for the attack—she’dpassed it along. She’d played a role in this shooting. This violence.
How many times had people reminded her she was too impulsive, not bright enough? Whatever made her think she could be levelheaded and clever?
Two men lay bleeding, maybe dying. In reprisal, other men would be shot.
And Lucie—Lucie had played a role.
SATURDAY, SEPTEMBER20, 1941
Sometimes Paul wished he spoke German. At a café on boulevard Saint-Michel, he read a book while two German soldiers sat at the sidewalk table to his right.
When Josie was at Children’s Hour, he always chose a table close to the rock-monsters. Sometimes they sat with French people and spoke French, and Paul eavesdropped. Rarely did they discuss anything but home and women and movies.
An elderly man in a black coat sat on the far side of the Germans and leaned toward them. “Excuse me? May I ask a favor?”
A dark-haired soldier set down his cup. “You ask a favor of us?”
“I read in the paper—inJe suis partout—that in Germany you make the Jews wear stars so you can tell them apart. When can we have that here? I would like that. I don’t want their kind in my store.”
The soldier smiled. “It is a good idea, ja? Maybe someday here too.”
Paul’s stomach warped. He slapped down his payment and left. It was time to pick up Josie anyway.
How could people be so cruel? And if Nazi racial theory enabled them to pick out Jews by the shape of their heads and noses as they claimed, why did they need to label them?
“What have we come to?” he muttered.
He marched down the narrow street. A bilious yellow poster rimmed in black fluttered on a wall, partly torn.“Avis”it proclaimed, listing three men executed for espionage by the Germans. Someone had painted a bright redVover the poster, and dried-out bouquets lay on the sidewalk, defying the law against memorializing résistants.
Paul averted his eyes. Twice this past week, résistants had shot Germans—and in turn, ten hostages had been hauled out of prison and shot.
Restlessness hustled his step. He ought to return to Massachusetts. He really ought to. That could have been his name on that poster.
But how could he leave yet? He and Lucie and Josie needed papers, including passes to cross the demarcation line between occupied and unoccupied France, which could take weeks to obtain. As soon as Paul applied, Schiller would move to requisition the factory. Which meant all resistance work would have to be shut down beforehand.
They’d have to stop using the factory as a safe house, and right now seven airmen were crammed in that room.
Paul blew out a sharp breath.
At least Schiller’s investigation had found nothing. And although Lafarge’s blackmail put a damper on sabotage, Paul’s men were plotting subtler methods. If Paul left, even subtle sabotage would have to end.
At the place de l’Odéon, he turned onto Lucie’s street and tried to calm down for Josie’s sake and Lucie’s.
Something was wrong with Lucie, which had made it even harder to leave during Children’s Hour. Not only did he want to watch Lucie spin stories and spin on her toes, but he also wanted to find out what had stolen the sparkle from her eyes.
Paul entered the bookstore. Lucie stood by her office in her pink skirt and sweater. She chatted with a young mother while two children played on the floor with Josie.
Josie had insisted on wearing pink today with her hair ribbon tied around her head like Lucie’s rather than in a bow above her ear. She’d been trying to stand on her toes too. His daughter could do far worse than to emulate Lucille Girard.
