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Tina’s cell has a crack in the wall. She can see it when the light comes through the window. A thin line running from floor to ceiling. She traces it with her eyes. Follows it up and down. It gives her something to focus on besides the pain in her arm, the fear in her heart.

They set her arm after two days. Roughly, and with no anaesthetic. She screamed. Couldn’t help it. But it’s set now. Splinted with wood and wrapped with cloth. It will heal, if she lives long enough for it to heal.

She thinks about Louis constantly. Is he eating? They provide so little food. He always gave her a bigger portion when rations were tight.

She thinks about Andrée. Her baby. No matter how old she gets, she’ll always be Tina’s baby. Did they hurt her? The thought makes Tina want to scream, to beat her fists against the walls, to demand they bring her daughter to her.

But she does none of those things. She sits. She waits. She traces the crack in the wall with her eyes. And she endures.

Josie wakes in Monique’s bedroom. For a moment she forgets where she is. Then reality crashes back in: the Levallois apartment, the Militia, the arrests. It all happened just a month ago, but it feels like a lifetime.

It’s July 10, and Josie is thirteen today. Her Maman isn’t here to celebrate her birthday. Léon isn’t here. The Levallois family aren’t here. She’s alone with people who are kind but aren’t her people.

Stéphanie tries to mark the occasion with a small cake made from hoarded sugar and the two precious eggs that Maurice dropped off yesterday. She lights a single candle.

Monique sings “Happy Birthday” softly, but all Josie can think is, I’m thirteen and everyone I love is gone.

She blows out the candle and makes the only wish she can think of: Bring them home. Please bring them all home.

Josie and Monique walk to school. It’s the last week of the school year before the long summer holidays.

Josie slides into her seat beside Monique. Thirteen, especially now, feels like something to be quietly endured rather than celebrated. But she has been thinking about what it means to be a teenager. Is she meant to feel different somehow? She doesn’t.

She is bent over her exercise book when the classroom door opens and Mlle Évrard steps in. The class teacher looks up, surprised. Mlle Évrard raises one hand in a small apology for the interruption and then turns to look directly at Josie with an expression that is warm and deliberate and gives nothing away.

“Girls,” she says, addressing the rest of the class with calm authority. “I believe there is something we need to attend to before the morning goes any further.” She clasps her hands together. “Today is Joséphine’s birthday. She is thirteen years old.” A pause. “I think that deserves a song—don’t you?”

There is a beat of surprised delight, the particular pleasure of an unexpected thing on an ordinary morning, and then the classroom fills with voices—some tuneful, some not, all of them enthusiastic, all of them turned toward Josie.

Josie sits very still while they sing. She looks at her desk. She tries to smile. She manages it, just, for most of the song.

But by the final phrase, something has come loose in her chest that she cannot contain. Her eyes brim, and then spill over with tears, and there is nothing to be done about it.

The singing trails off. A few of the girls exchange uncertain glances. Monique puts her arm around Josie immediately, without a word.

Mlle Évrard crosses the room unhurriedly and crouches down beside Josie’s desk so that they are eye to eye. She doesn’t rush her. Doesn’t tell her not to cry.

“There,” she says softly, covering Josie’s hand with her own. “There, my dear. You are allowed to feel it all. Every bit of it.”

Josie presses her lips together and nods, tears sliding silently down her face.

“Thirteen,” Mlle Évrard says gently. “That is something, Joséphine. That is a great deal, in fact.” She squeezes her hand once, firmly, before standing. “Now, can we have a birthday girl who has dried her eyes before lunch?”

Josie wipes her face with the back of her hand and manages, this time, a real smile.

“Good,” says Mlle Évrard. And returns to the door as though she has simply stopped in on her way somewhere else.

In Fresnes, Andrée doesn’t know it’s Josie’s birthday. Doesn’t know what day it is at all. They have all blurred together. The interrogations have started. The officers change, but the questions are the same. They took their time coming for her, which made her hope that they’d forgotten all about her. But in the end, they came.

She gives them nothing. Not a name. Not an address. Not a whisper.

They tell her Louis has talked. They tell her Tina has given them everything. They show her documents they claim her parents signed. Confessions. Lists of coconspirators.

She doesn’t believe them. Her parents wouldn’t break. They’re Levallois. They hold the line.

“Your parents are weak,” the aging captain who witnesses her beatings tells her. “Old. Broken. They told us everything to make the pain stop. Why do you protect the people who betrayed you?”

“Because you’re lying,” Andrée says. “If they’d talked, you wouldn’t need me. You’d already have your arrests. Your raids. Your victories. But you don’t. Which means they held.”