glancing fleetingly at Marguerite, catching her playing with the silver locket her fiancé had given her. Philip. My stomach sank, remembering how he died. I took my coat from the hook and reached for the door. ‘I’m leaving.’
Marguerite blocked me. ‘What do you expect to do? Wander around until you find someone, or someone finds you?’ The Dove Birds got off the floor and refolded their maps, wanting to get far away from our rising voices.
‘You can’t stop me.’
An odd look strained in her eyes. I’d seen this face of hers before when we were at the convent together, and I remembered it very well. ‘I watched the man I loved die right in front of me and then be buried in that… that most brutal way. And what good came of it?’
I shoved my hands into my coat pockets, staring at her. She wasn’t going to stop me, but it was up to her if she wanted to join me. ‘If you were me, would you stay here?’ The woman with the cigarette looked at me admiringly, while the Dove Birds got close, holding each other. I reached behind Marguerite and opened the door. Rain spat into the cottage as I waited for her to answer.
‘You’re impossible!’ Marguerite thrust a pair of Wehrmacht binoculars into my hands before throwing on her coat. ‘After you.’
I tucked the binoculars into my pocket and we walked into the dark, rain-splattered night.
26
We trudged through a field of thicket until we got to an area Marguerite called the cradle, where the British dropped supplies in the middle of the night to résistants. Usually the valley bustled with activity, but on this night the only sound was the wind rustling through the tree limbs and the splat of raindrops blowing off leaves. Marguerite bent down to inspect the dirt road, which was muddy with puddles of rain filling in the tyre grooves. She pulled a lighter from her pocket.
‘There was a scuffle,’ she said, holding the flame to the ground. ‘Right here.’ She pointed to a swampy area with waterlogged footprints.
People shouted from somewhere, and I latched on to Marguerite when she bolted to a stand. ‘This way!’ she said, and we climbed up the mushy hillside, using our hands, holding on to the grass to keep from slipping until we reached the summit. Dropping to our bellies, we peeked over the top.
A line of men and women stood with their hands on their heads as the Gestapo pinned red paper to their chests for aiming. Their faces turned toward a barrage of headlamps shining from sputtering cars. ‘No! It can’t be—’ I pulled the binoculars from my pocket, scrambling to get a closer look.
‘Look at them all,’ Marguerite said. ‘There’s so many.’
Faces of white, beards that needed to be shaved, mud on their skin and in their hair. Women with their dresses half-torn off, bare breasts and bruised faces—but no Luc.
‘He’s not there,’ I said, heaving with relief. ‘He’s not there.’ But then my heart broke anyway, gazing upon the résistants’ white-lit faces, thinking about their families, and whom they left behind. Some would never know what happened to their loved one, others would know and would be punished for being related to them.
‘Is that Mavis?’ Marguerite snatched the binoculars right from my hands, peering down the hill. ‘I can’t tell… I can’t tell!’ She fumbled with them, trying to get a clear view. Then the Gestapo raised their guns. My stomach dropped, a sinking feeling from knowing lives were about to end. Marguerite let go of the binoculars and laid her head on the wet ground. ‘What use is it now?’
Headlamps flashed brighter; one German voice shouted over another; guns aimed straight. ‘The red paper… it’s meant to show where their hearts are.’ Marguerite squeezed my hand, bracing for the inevitable. ‘But their hearts are with France.’
Pop, Pop, Pop—
We flinched, and their bodies fell backward into the mud.
Everything got quiet, like a hush after a thunderclap; smoke steamed from the barrels, bare legs lay crisscrossed on the ground, some jerking, fighting to live.
As quickly as the shooting happened the Gestapo piled into their cars and started driving out of the cradle. ‘What do we do?’ I said to Marguerite, realizing they would see us if we didn’t hide. The roar of a sweeping, rolling rain suddenly poured from the dark sky, soaking our coats, the purr from their car engines getting closer, louder, and their lights brighter.