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“But I can’t tell Josie. She’s asking me not to tell her.”

“She’s trying to protect her.”

“I know. But Josie . . . Josie just lost her mother and brother. She needs to know Andrée is alive. She needs hope.”

“And if Andrée doesn’t make it home? If she takes a turn for the worse? Then Josie loses her all over again. Andrée is trying to spare her that.”

Tina presses the letter to her chest. “What do I do, Maurice? What’s the right choice?”

“You honor your daughter’s wishes. You keep the secret. And you pray she comes home soon so you can tell Josie the truth.”

Tina nods. He’s right. It’s the hardest thing she’s ever had to do. But he’s right.

“I’ll write back tonight. Do I tell her about Louis? Maurice, help me—do I tell my daughter her father is dead in a letter or wait for her to come home?”

“Only you can decide that, my friend. But she’s very weak just now.”

“You’re right. And I won’t tell Josie she’s alive. For now.”

It’s the beginning of July 1945. The summer has arrived; Paris is bathed in sunshine, and Tina has somewhere to be. After packing Josie off to school, she heads for the Hôtel Lutetia.

The plane from Sweden has landed in Paris. Andrée is among the thirty survivors being repatriated. Buses drive them into Paris, to the Hôtel Lutetia.

She walks with a cane, slowly, carefully. Every step hurts.

Tina is waiting for her, and when Andrée alights from the bus and hobbles up the steps to the hotel foyer, she sees her mother and nearly collapses. Tina runs, actually runs, and catches her daughter in her arms.

They hold each other for a long time. Neither of them speaks. They don’t need to.

Finally, Tina pulls away. Looks at her daughter. So thin. So scarred. But she’s real and she’s here.

“Papa?” Andrée says.

Tina shakes her head. Can’t speak. Just shakes her head.

Andrée’s face crumples.

Tina takes Andrée’s face in her hands. Forces her to look into her eyes. “Your father never broke, Andrée. He protected everyone. The network. The work. He died a hero.”

“I know. I know he did.”

Tina tells her about Josie’s mother and brother. They cry together. For Louis. For Ruth and Léon. For Josie. For everything they’ve lost. For everything that can never be the same. Similar scenes play out around them. There is so much joy and so much pain.

“Josie,” Andrée says finally. “I need to see Josie.”

“She’s at school. She’ll be home at three o’clock.”

“Then let’s go home. I want to be there when she arrives.”

The apartment on rue Blomet looks the same. And completely different. The piano is exactly where she left it. Polished lovingly by Tina yesterday.

“Josie is on it constantly,” Tina tells. “She practices every day. Teaching herself from your books. Preparing for when you come home. I haven’t breathed a word, but she’s refused to believe you wouldn’t come home. She’s even been trying to compose her own music. The sound of her life, she calls it.”

Andrée’s throat tightens. “She still plays?”

“Every day. For hours. I offered to find her another teacher, but she refused. She says that when you come home, she’ll be ready for her next lesson.”

Andrée sits at the piano. She rests her fingertips on the keys for a moment before trying a few tentative notes. Music. Fragile and familiar all at once. She thinks of the times she hummed “Clair de Lune” in the darkness of Ravensbrück, offering what little she had to the women around her. She wonders, not for the first time, whether music can save not only your soul but your life.