engine go by and saw the sign: Lyon. They waited a little longer, so they would not hop on the very first cars where travelers would see them and alert the inspector.
“It’s going fast,” Moses said, watching the train picking up speed with each passing second.
“You’d better go for it now,” Marcel said, breathless.
The two brothers began running alongside the train. When they reached a good speed, Jacob jumped and grabbed a handle between two cars. Moses kept running, but the train sped up, and no matter how fast he went, Moses could not reach Jacob’s outstretched hand.
“Come on! You’ve got to jump now or else you won’t be able to!” Jacob yelled, on the verge of panic.
Moses started to lose ground, and the train moved away from him little by little. Then he felt someone grab him from behind and run with him. It was Marcel. He had seen what was happening and knew Moses would never make it on his own. He picked the younger boy up, ran as fast as he could, and threw Moses with a great heave toward his brother. Moses flew suspended in the air for the briefest of seconds before Jacob clutched him and pulled him onto the little platform. Recovering their breath, they waved goodbye to Marcel and Paul.
As they watched the train fade away into the distance, Marcel turned toward his brother. “Let’s go to the station,” he said.
“Why? We’re already going to be in trouble for what we’ve done.”
“We have to help them gain some time.”
Paul did not understand what his brother meant, but he dutifully followed to the train platforms. They hopped up on the nearest one and walked to the main entryway. The gendarmes rushed over as soon as they saw them.
“Did you think you would get far? Come with us to the gendarmerie,” a policeman said, his strong fists clenching the boys’ arms.
Marcel kicked his leg hard, and the man instinctively let go. The boys ran to the exit and slipped away into the streets as half a dozen gendarmes ran after them.
Running through the peaceful roads of Roanne, Marcel could not help but smile. He was imagining his friends on the train to Lyon, just a bit closer to their parents, which made him feel victorious. He would probably never see them again, but he would always carry them in his heart. Neither time nor distance could make him forget them. Jacob and Moses were two brave souls who had decided to face their destiny with everything they had, and he was sure nothing would hold them back.
Chapter 15
Near Lyon
July 24, 1942
The wind blew in their faces as if announcing their impending arrival. Jacob and Moses knew Lyon was just a little over sixty miles from Valence and that the river that escorted them from afar, the Rhône, was the same river that refreshed the city where their parents were.
Jacob pointed out the current of the water to his brother through the little window of the car they had slipped into. He got lost in thought about how the water he had seen seconds before was moving faster than the old wooden train run by a steam engine that laboriously chugged them toward what they hoped would be the final layover of their journey.
At times, Jacob wondered how they had been able to come so far. Without the help of so many people risking their lives day after day to protect the persecuted—pariahs of the land so universally despised—they would never have made it that far. It had been a harrowing journey. Paris now felt like a distant memory, as if they had never even lived there. All Jacob and Moses had was the present—the past was a dense fog they could never return to, hardly even in their memory—and the future seemed so uncertain they dared not imagine their lives beyond this moment.
In one sense, childhood is an eternal present. The road traveled is just a few feet beyond the starting point, and the end goal seems so far away that it gives the false sense of eternity that the young always feel.
Moses looked out again at the ripe fields, the patches of forests, and the spread-out towns with white, peaceful-looking houses. He thought about how huge the world was. He tried to imagine what the ocean was like, how it would feel to climb the high Swiss mountains, or how the coasts of Africa appeared. In the past few days, his vision of the