Echoes Page 0,124

with agonized eyes, and shook her head. “I can't.”

“Yes, you can. He would still be out there if it had been you. You have to do it for him. And for France.”

“I don't care. I have too much blood on my hands.”

“It's not on your hands, it's on theirs. And if you don't continue the work you've been doing, it will be our blood.”

“They killed four young boys,” she said, looking sick. She was as tortured over them as she was devastated over the death of Jean-Yves.

“They'll kill more if we don't stop them. And this is all we've got. We have no other way. The British are counting on us. There's another big mission coming up soon. We don't have time to train more men. And I need you for something else right now anyway.”

“What?” she asked. As he looked at her, she looked gray. He was putting pressure on her because he knew she had to get back out there. She was too good at it to give up. And he was afraid she would fall apart completely from losing Jean-Yves. She was ravaged by grief.

“I need you to get a Jewish boy and his sister to Dordogne. We have a safe house for them there.”

“How old are they?” she asked without much interest.

“Four and six.”

“What are they still doing here?” She sounded surprised. Most of the Jewish children, if not all of them, had been deported out of France in the past year. The rest were being hidden.

“Their grandmother was hiding them. She died last week. We have to get them out. They'll be safe in Dordogne.”

“And how am I supposed to get there?” She felt hopeless and looked tired.

“We have papers for them. They look like you. They're both blue-eyed blondes. Only their mother was Jewish. They deported her, and the father was killed.” Like so many others, they had no family left at all.

She started to tell him she couldn't do it, and then as she looked at him, she remembered her vows, and thought of her mother and Daphne, and Jean-Yves. And she suddenly felt she owed it to them, maybe in reparation for the lives she had cost. She felt like a nun again. Jean-Yves had taken the woman she had been with him. She knew she would never be that person again. But Sister Teresa of Carmel would not have refused to do the mission. Slowly, she nodded. She had no other choice. “I'll do it,” she said, looking at Serge and he was pleased. He had taken on this particular mission as much for her as for them. He didn't like the way she looked since Jean-Yves's death, and Jean-Yves wouldn't have either. In a way, Serge was doing this for him, as much as for her, and the two Jewish children were orphans, Serge explained.

“We'll bring them here tomorrow night, with their papers and yours. You'll have to hide your other papers in the lining of your valise. Your papers will show that you're their mother, and you're going down to visit family in Besse.” It was in the heart of the Dordogne, where her father was from. She had never been there, and had always wanted to go. She wondered if she would see his château on the way, although she had more important things to do. “You'll have to borrow the car from the farm.” He knew that would be no problem.

She spent the rest of the day in prayer in her room, after she did her chores. She had hardly eaten in the last few weeks, and it showed. The next day she sewed her papers as Amélie Dumas into her suitcase. She knew she'd have the others by that night.

After dinner, they arrived. One of the women from the Paris cell had driven them down. They were beautiful children, and they looked terrified. They had been hidden in a basement for two years, and the only relative they had in the world had died. Serge was right. They were adorable, and they looked like her. They made her wonder what their children would have looked like if she and Jean-Yves had had babies. But there was no point thinking of that now. She sat down and talked to the children for a little while. They fed them dinner, and she tucked them into her own bed that night, and slept on the floor next to them. The little boy held his sister's hand all night. And