Page 25

After Josie has left, Andrée packs a small bag. A change of underwear. Identity papers. She has memorized her instructions from Colonel Pallas and destroyed the documents. Now she rehearses her cover story one more time. Sister. Baby. Visit. Simple. Believable.

She has done this before. But not with a child waiting at home, and not with her parents so deeply compromised.

The thought she has been pushing aside surfaces again: Was the decision to keep Josie really hers to make? If they are denounced—if Josie is discovered—what follows for her parents will be arrest, and after arrest, torture. She would do anything for that little girl; she knows that without question. But is it right that her parents are the ones risking everything? Did they ever truly have a choice, or did she make it for them?

She closes the bag. There is no useful answer to that question. There never is.

At the door, bag in hand, Andrée looks back. In her mind’s eye, she sees Josie at the piano, her hands resting on the keys. Louis stands behind her, placing his hands on her shoulders. Tina emerges from the kitchen, wiping her hands on her apron, focused on Josie.

A family. They’ve become a family. She answers her own question: This was Tina and Louis’s decision as much as it was hers. They’re all in this together, for better or worse.

Andrée raises her hand in farewell, and then she’s gone, down the stairs, out into the cold November day, into whatever waits in the fields behind Forêt de Sénart.

The train to Draveil is nearly empty. Andrée chooses a compartment with two other passengers, an elderly woman clutching a basket and a man in a worn suit reading a newspaper. Neither looks up when she enters. Good. Invisible is good.

She sits by the window, her bag on the seat beside her, and watches Paris slide away. The journey is only twenty kilometers, but it feels like crossing into another country. In the city, the streets are crowded with German soldiers. In the countryside, they’ll be fewer, more spread out. More room to move around unseen, so long as she can blend in with the locals.

The train lurches, stops, starts again. A checkpoint. Andrée’s heart beats faster, but she keeps her face blank, bored, just another woman visiting family: remembering yet again the rule of being lost in the “role” she is playing. Off to see family, duty rather than enjoyment the purpose of her visit. Two German soldiers board, moving through the carriages, checking papers. The elderly woman fumbles with her documents, drops them. One of the soldiers picks them up, hands them back without a word. Moves on.

When they reach Andrée, she has her papers ready. The photograph, taken two years ago, shows her with shorter hair, a different expression. The soldier glances at it, at her, back at the photograph.

“Purpose of travel?” he asks in heavily accented French.

“Visiting my sister. She’s just had a baby.”

“Name of your sister?”

“Marguerite Dubois.”

“Address?”

She recites it. A real address, a real family, carefully chosen by Colonel Pallas. If they check, it will hold. Marguerite is real. The baby is real. Only Andrée’s connection to them is fiction.

The soldier hands back her papers. Moves on. The compartment door slides shut. Andrée counts to one hundred before allowing herself to breathe normally again.

At Draveil, she steps onto the platform. It is midafternoon, the pale winter light already fading. She walks through the small station building, past the ticket counter, out into the street. There should be someone to meet her. Code name: Visitor.

A woman stands beside a bicycle, adjusting the basket. Dark hair, practical clothes, the look of someone who belongs here. Andrée approaches, stops a careful distance away.

“Excuse me, I’m looking for the Dubois residence. Rue de la République?”

The woman looks up. Studies Andrée for a long moment.

“Back that way, third street on the left. The house with the blue shutters.”

“The blue shutters. Thank you.”

“Are you visiting long?”

“Only until tomorrow. My sister just had a baby.”

The woman smiles. “How lovely. A new life in such times. Follow me. I’m going that way myself.”

They walk in silence, the woman pushing her bicycle, Andrée matching her pace. Two women, unremarkable, going about their business. At a corner, the woman stops.

“I’m Visitor,” she says quietly.

“Andrée.”