cold night, not going for a beer as he’d mumbled to me, but for a bullet. I’d thought I might redeem that mistake by finding Rose when everyone else gave up hope—but I’d redeemed nothing. In a Provençal café I’d told Rose I wouldn’t leave her, but I had. I’d let an ocean and a war come between us, and now she was dead too. I’d lost them all.
Failed, the harsh voice said in my head, over and over. The litany to which I’d been living. Failed.
I put my hands on Madame Rouffanche’s arm, giving a mute squeeze—all the thanks I could summon. Then I tore away and took off toward the street, stumbling as I ran. I fell over an abandoned flower pot, a broken earthenware thing that had probably been filled with scarlet geraniums on the doorstep of a French housewife who got gunned down on that June tenth. I scraped my hands, but I pushed upright and kept stumbling. I saw the shape of a car through my tear-blurred eyes and veered toward it, only to realize that it wasn’t the Lagonda but the abandoned Peugeot, rusting since the day its owner had been rounded up in a field and shot. I stumbled back from that innocent horrible car, looking wildly around me for the Lagonda, and that was when Finn caught up to me, pulling me into his arms. I buried my face in his rough shirt, squeezing my eyes shut.
“Get me out of here,” I said, or tried to say. What came out was a garble of harsh sobbing sounds, barely words at all, but Finn seemed to understand. He scooped me up off my feet and carried me to the Lagonda, lowering me into the seat without opening the door, then flung himself in behind the wheel. I shut my eyes tight and inhaled the comforting smells of leather and motor oil, curling against the seat as Finn roughly threw the car into gear. He drove as though a horde of ghosts was coming after us, and they were—oh, God, they were. In the forefront, in my mind’s eye, was a baby just old enough to toddle. She was lifting her arms toward me, wanting her Tante Charlotte, but the top of her head was blown off. Rose had named her after me, and now she was dead.
She’d been dead close to three years. I made another inarticulate sound as we bumped and rattled over the river. Everything that had driven me here had been a lie.
Once we were clear of Oradour-sur-Glane, Finn pulled up crookedly at the nearest roadside auberge and got us a room for the night. Maybe the proprietor saw the wedding ring on my hand (Mrs. Donald McGowan, Rose was never going to laugh at my Donald), or maybe he didn’t care. I stumbled into a threadbare chamber, and was stopped, swaying and tear blurred, by the sight of the bed. “I’m going to dream,” I whispered as Finn came up behind me. “As soon as I go to sleep I’m going to dream. Dream of her the way she—” I stopped, squeezing my eyes shut, clutching after my old comforting numbness, but it had shattered utterly. Tears doubled me over in great waves. I couldn’t breathe. I couldn’t see. “Don’t let me dream,” I begged, and Finn took my face between his big hands.
“You won’t dream tonight,” he said, and I saw tears in his eyes too. “I promise.”
He found a bottle of whiskey somewhere, and brought it back to the room. We didn’t bother with supper; we just kicked off our shoes, climbed onto the bed, sat our backs against the wall, and started methodically drinking our way through the bottle. Sometimes I wept and sometimes I just stared at the window, which went from daylit to twilight blue to night black and star filled. Sometimes I talked, recounting memories of Rose like rosary beads, and after that it was memories of James, and soon I was weeping again for them both. Finn let me talk and cry and talk some more, sliding my boneless body down so my head was pillowed in his lap. I looked up at some point around midnight and saw silent tears sliding down his still face. “That place,” he said softly. “Jesus Christ, that place—”
I reached up, smoothing his wet cheek. “Have you ever seen a worse one?”
He was silent for so long I didn’t think he was going to answer. Then