reload the gun with the extra bullets from the box. I had no time to read the directions, aiming straight for his heart and firing the gun.
This time I was a perfect shot.
‘He’s dead,’ I cried out, using every bit of strength I had left. ‘He’s dead…’
Papa flew into the room, bracing both sides of the doors with his hands, his eyes stretched in a million directions, first looking at Gérard’s body slumped on the floor and then at the gun still smoking in my hands. When he saw Mama pulling at her throat with blood streaking down her chest, I thought he might die right on top of Gérard. ‘Ma chérie!’ he cried, wanting to touch Mama but unsure where.
Mama sobbed his name, the sound coming from deep within her body: ‘Albert.’
Papa wept into Mama’s shoulder, saying her name over and over again as if an apology, wiping the tears from his eyes with the back of his hand. ‘I’m here,’ he kept saying. ‘I’m here.’
Mama swallowed relentlessly trying to feel her throat again. Thin red veins had bloodshot her eyes. ‘Adèle, you must run,’ she said with coarse breath. ‘Run far away.’ She put a hand to her mouth as if she couldn’t believe she’d even say such a thing. ‘It’s the only way.’
Papa’s eyes swelled pink. ‘Yes,’ he said. ‘Run away. Into the hills if you have to.’
I scooted back, my body shaking, thinking about the consequences of what I had done. Regardless of what Gérard had planned for me, I had shot a member of the Milice.
Mama grabbed my shoulders. ‘You’d be lucky to get a quick death if they give you to the Gestapo. Germans—they’re ruthless. My time as a nurse—’ Mama caught herself, a brief glance to Papa to collect her words; then the truth of what bound her and Mother Superior spilled from her mouth. ‘They killed my friend because they thought she was a spy. The way they killed her, pulling her organs out while she was alive, making me and Elizabeth watch…’
I shrieked from her words and Papa wailed along with Mama.
‘Albert!’ Mama said, wiping tears from her face. ‘We’ll bury him in the field.’
They talked in hurried whispers over Gérard’s body, deciding where in the field was the best spot while I ran down stairs, my heart racing, thinking about what I should pack, my feet skidding across shards of broken glass strewn across Mama’s parquet floor, the ringing of the gunshot still piercing my ears, and I stopped—right in the middle of the kitchen—my eyes clenched and my fists just as tight, until the sound of the gunshot faded and I could hear myself think: if I did run I’d only be known as the girl who ran away. Forever.
Mama had started crying again upstairs, telling Papa who I really was. ‘The Catchfly,’ I heard. ‘Résistance, both of us.’
The Catchfly.
My hands stopped shaking; the glint of a paint tube lying on the kitchen counter amidst the rubble of glass caught my eye, and I knew what to do. A fleeting glance upstairs and a kiss meant for them both.
‘We do what we have to, Mama.’ I swung open the kitchen door, the paint gripped tightly in my hand. ‘When we have to.’
The door swung back and slammed shut behind me.
*
I stood in the middle of the road, the train station at the end of it, cars swerving out of the way, honking for me to move. My dress looked like a mere shred of a rag stained with Gérard’s blood, held closed by one blood-stained hand.
There was no time for a breath. People started to gather on the pavement, staring, wondering what I was doing and if I had gone mad. A shrug of my shoulder and my dress slipped off, falling into a lumpy, soiled pile at my feet—gasps, men pointing, women hiding their children’s eyes as I stood naked, a fire in my soul lighting up my eyes as I squeezed paint onto my fingertips, writing across my chest and breasts, the word in red bleeding from my skin: Catchfly.
A stillness swept over the gathering crowd. Cars engines turned off. Women dropped their hands from their children’s eyes to place them over their hearts while men took off their hats. And I walked, straight toward two Milice standing under the large clock that hung above the station’s stone archway.
There would be no running. Not today.
Charlotte sat on the bench outside her boutique, shaking her head in her