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“Fair enough.” He pauses. Thinks. Calculates distance, risk, possibilities. “A week. Give me a week.”

One final embrace. One final look at the apartment, at his home, his sanctuary. Then he’s gone.

The days pass like years. Tina jumps at every footstep on the stairs. Andrée stares out the window, peering at every figure in a cap, hoping and praying it’s her father. Josie watches but says nothing. She’s learned that sometimes silence is kindness.

On Sunday, the fifth day after Louis left, Andrée’s appetite vanishes. She doesn’t care.

“He’ll come home,” Tina says firmly. “He promised. He’ll come home.”

On day six, in the afternoon, before Josie is due back from school, there’s a knock at the door.

Andrée freezes. Tina’s hand goes to her throat. Is it Louis? Or is it the Gestapo or Militia? Are they coming to tell her he’s been arrested? Or worse, executed?

Tina opens the door.

Louis stands there. He looks even thinner, even more gaunt. He’s unshaven, his face gray with exhaustion. His clothes are filthy, reeking of travel and fear. But he’s alive. His eyes are sparkling. Triumphant.

The sparkle tells Andrée and Tina everything they need to know. His mission was successful.

They pull him inside and draw him into a tearful hug. Tina runs her hands over his bristly face again and again, confirming he’s real, he’s here, he came home to them.

When they finally release him, when the tears dry up, they sit down. Louis unbuttons his shirt, pulls out several pieces of paper hidden between his shirt and undergarments.

“I must get these redrawn immediately. My . . . friend will be here in an hour to collect them and take them to the colonel. This was, after all, his mission.”

“Not before bathing,” Tina says, half joking, half serious.

“Tina, please. These are critical. They need to get to London immediately. Every hour matters.”

“And we need this place smelling fresh and clean before Josie gets home. To the bathroom now. And don’t forget to shave.”

Knowing this argument is not one he’s going to win, Louis heads to the bathroom.

As the door closes, Tina and Andrée immediately grab the sketches laid out on the table. They can see the outline of the coastline, the Baie de Seine unmistakable. The roads leading down to each beach are shown in careful detail. There are bunkers scattered along the coast, fortifications and gun emplacements.

Only Louis knows what all the squiggles represent. What the measurements mean. What the Germans have built against an invasion of the land they themselves invaded.

In an hour, these sketches will be marked up, clarified, sent to Colonel Pallas and then to London.

“We can but dream,” Tina says quietly, reverently, touching the papers like they’re holy relics. “Dream that, with these, the war will turn.”

For the first time in a long time, they feel a glimmer of hope.

The word comes in May, passed from cell to cell, from network to network.

The word is invasion.

The Allies are coming. It’s no longer a rumor, or a dream, but fact, gathered from intelligence supplied from London and confirmed by multiple sources. The invasion of France is imminent. It is mere weeks away. Maybe even days.

Only Louis, Tina, and Andrée know of the small part Louis played in these developments. The information he risked his life to gather. The maps he drew that might save thousands of Allied lives on the beaches of Normandy.

The secret cell returns for their Tuesday meeting and again Louis is asked to join them. As the door closes behind the last stranger Louis tells Tina and Andrée what has been said in hushed tones, in their bedroom. They sit at the dining table, hardly daring to believe it.

“Liberation,” Tina whispers. “Real liberation. Not someday, but soon.”

“What do we do until then?” Andrée asks.

“We survive, ma petite. We take care and we prepare. And when the moment comes, we fight.”