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Miss Lewes’s hens laid beautifully. The villagers had not only eggs but also three goats, who provided both milk and entertainment. Kate’s Zélie had become unofficial goat girl and could usually be seen trotting about running errands, followed closely by Minerva, the smallest of the goats, who seemed to be under the misapprehension that she was actually a dog.

Then there had been Liza. It wasn’t clear whether it was something wrong with the way the break in her collarbone had been set—as Maud loudly claimed—or if the fault was with Liza for refusing to follow Dr. Stringfellow’s orders and stay still—as Julia countered—but Liza’s collarbone just wouldn’t heal. In the end, there was nothing for it but to send Liza off to Paris for surgery. Maud, of course, had gone with her.

So Emmie had volunteered to take over the store. She was half-mad with anxiety at that point. It wasn’t that Kate wasn’t speaking to her. She was speaking to her. She just wasn’t saying anything that mattered, and all of Emmie’s attempts to broach the topic, to talk it out, only seemed to make matters worse. Everyone else seemed so busy and useful: Anne Dawlish had her carpentry classes, Nell Baldwin was starting a lending library, and Ethel Ledbetter had the older students in hand—which left very little for Emmie to do. Emmie organized games on the lawn once a week, but the children of the basse-cour and the neighboring villages didn’t need that anymore, not as they had. They were playing on their own now, playing like children again, and it filled Emmie’s heart with joy, but also made her feel decidedly out of it.

But the store had been an unmitigated disaster. Maud, it seemed, had had a talent for convincing people that what the store had was what they wanted. The wrong sort of sabots? But these sabots were so much better. And she would sell whatever it was and go away with an empty truck and the people would walk away feeling as though they’d got a bargain.

Emmie, on the other hand, would apologize profusely, take copious notes about the right thing (often entirely contradictory), and then give them the offending item as a gift to make up for it. By the end of the first week, the store was deep in arrears and running days behind schedule. They were supposed to have been to Courcelles by then, but Emmie had made it to only eight villages in five days, not the eighteen they were scheduled to serve.

“We need you on the Christmas party committee,” Alice had told her, but what it really meant was that they wanted her away from the store.

So Ethel Ledbetter had taken over the store, and Emmie had been sent down to the cellars to sort out Christmas presents for the women and children: a new suit of clothes, candy, and a toy for each child, and a practical present and candy for every adult.

It would all be fine, Emmie told herself as she stood in the freezing cellar, digging through boxes, checking her lists and matching up gifts with names, if only they had their trucks again. Then she could do what she was really here to do: social service work with the outlying villages. But the White truck was still in Paris, waiting for a hard rim to be put on, a simple job that was meant to take a week and seemed to be taking a month. The Ford truck had given up the ghost and was in Noyon for parts. Only the jitney still worked, and that sporadically, when coaxed.

The sous-préfet at Nesle, feeling sorry for them, had loaned them a horse and cart, but Tambour, the horse, had been around since roughly the days of Miss Ledbetter’s beloved Merovingians and deeply resented being asked to cart around muscular Americans. It took two of them to move him, one to drive and one to poke him with a stick. He moved at a rate of two miles an hour, when he deigned to move at all.

Kate, undaunted, had worked out a schedule, allocating use of the jitney and Tambour between the store, the doctors, and the social service department, with trips doubled up whenever possible, even though the doctors complained about riding with the store, with the rakes and hoes poking them in the posterior, and Miss Ledbetter complained that all those passengers were taking up room needed for goods.

“What about Courcelles?” Emmie had asked that morning, coming up to Kate after the others had gone, grumbling, on their way. “You don’t have Courcelles on the schedule.”

“Yes, I do,” said Kate, looking harried. A giant shipment had just arrived from the Red Cross, everything from rice to mattresses to women’s winter coats, and needed to be signed for and sorted. “It’s there for the week after next.”

“But—that’s not for ages.” Emmie stared at Kate in dismay, wondering if this was because of their fight, if Kate would have found a way if they hadn’t argued. Which was silly, she knew. Kate wouldn’t be so petty. At least, she didn’t think Kate would be so petty. Then, she also hadn’t thought Kate would mind so terribly about having her board paid.

“I can’t conjure trucks out of thin air, Emmie.” Kate had always been slight, but since her bout of fever she looked like an ivory carving, all thin lines and hollows, burning up from within. As if trying to make up for it, she added, “There’s an English Ford for sale in Amiens. I’m going to try to get it for us.”

“How long will that take?”

Kate grimaced. “How long does anything take here? I’ll do my best.”

“I know you’re doing all you can.” Emmie hurried away before either of them could say anything more, anything they might regret.

It had been like that ever since Thanksgiving: there were days when they would seem almost normal again, if somewhat wary of each other, and then Emmie would say something, something entirely innocuous, and Kate would close up, and they’d be back to the beginning again, with Emmie in the wrong and still not entirely sure why.

Kate wasn’t the only one being paid for by someone else. Maud was funding Liza; Nell Baldwin’s bills were paid by an aunt. It didn’t make them any less members of the Unit. But when Emmie had tried to point that out to Kate, Kate would only say it wasn’t the same.

She was so good at all this, Kate. Emmie just wished she could make her see it, how much she was needed, how much she was valued, what a very good thing it was she was here, no matter how she’d got here.

Emmie only wished she could be half as useful.

On her way to the cellar, Emmie passed Dave, the Red Cross driver—disastrous Dave, Nell called him, or Dave-in-the-Ditch, for his habit of crashing his truck against their gates—finishing unloading the last of the bags of rice. And that was when she had her grand idea.

“Do you think you could give me a lift to Courcelles?” she asked. “I need to do my rounds and we haven’t any cars.”

She paused only long enough to stuff a few supplies in her haversack and scribble a note for Kate.

Gone to Courcelles with Red Cross Dave. Back by supper.

It was heaven getting away from Grécourt, away from the cold water dripping down the cellar walls, the stench of the animals in their little farm. The sky was an opaque gray that signaled snow, but it wasn’t snowing yet and the clear, crisp air felt glorious against Emmie’s cheeks after weeks of rain. The ruined houses and barbed wire had become just part of the landscape now; she was used to them. Army camions rumbled past them on the road, taking a convoy of French soldiers to the front. They waved their caps at her and Emmie waved back.

“Mademoiselle Aimée! Mademoiselle Aimée!” The children had come running out before the truck even stopped in Courcelles, in what had once been the village square before the Germans had got to it. Little hands waved up at her, grabbing at her hands, her skirt. Emmie sank down into the fray, delighted.

Miss Ledbetter, much more efficient than Emmie, had made it to Courcelles once a week with the store, but when asked if Pauline had had her baby yet or if little Leon’s cough was better, Miss Ledbetter waxed poetic about the Merovingians and went off on tangents about the Crusades.

But here she was herself, with Leon’s mittened hand—she’d brought the mittens last month, donated by members of the Chicago Smith Club—in hers, tugging her to see the new school building, which now had benches and five books, five whole books, and wouldn’t she like to see them?

Why, yes. Yes, she would. And she needed to see Blondine’s missing tooth, proudly displayed with a hideous pulling back of gums, and the new mattresses that had been delivered by the Red Cross man, the one who didn’t speak any French.