he had every night, disrupted only by chess games with Ettie. When he saw Ettie, he assumed she had come for a game, but she was barefoot and her expression was troubled. He knew her mission with Victor was approaching, and he wondered if she was backing out.
“Have you come for chess?” he asked.
In her old life, Ettie would not have been allowed to be alone in the same room with a man who was not a member of her family, but now she went to him, and because it was so difficult to ask for what she wanted, she came to sit on his lap. He was startled and confused by her unexpected action.
“There, there,” he said as if she were a girl, perhaps one of his patients who feared being ill. “You’re not getting frightened, are you? You have to be sure, Ettie. If this isn’t for you, speak up now before you endanger yourself and the others.”
“That isn’t the problem. I want to be with you before I go,” she told the doctor.
The doctor drew her off his lap, depositing her on the chair across from him. He was flattered, but not interested. He had not been with a woman since Sarah’s death, and he didn’t intend to be with one again. “Let’s play chess instead,” he suggested patiently, as if speaking to a child.
Ettie stood up and unbuttoned her dress. It was an ill-fitting frock, unlike any of the clothes in his wife’s closet. Girard thought perhaps it had belonged to the housekeeper.
Ettie could only coax him by telling him the truth. “The first one can’t be him,” she explained.
Dr. Girard shook his head. “It’s wrong.”
“No it isn’t,” Ettie insisted. “It has to be you. I trust you.”
He poured them both a glass of wine, then took the chessboard and placed it on the table between them. “Whoever wins decides.”
He assumed there was no chance of his losing, but she was better than he thought, and, he supposed, he had been a good teacher. Ettie was a smart girl, smart enough to win.
They went upstairs, not to his room—he could not have taken her to the bed he had shared with his wife—but to a guest chamber where friends from Paris had often stayed in the time when people could travel freely. Many of their past visitors were already dead. No friends had visited for many years. Now the only guests he had stayed in the barn.
Ettie removed her dress and undergarments and folded them onto a chair, then slipped into bed. The doctor hesitated, watching her with concern. He noticed the scar on her arm in the shape of a letter.
“It’s in memory of my sister,” Ettie said when she caught him staring.
Girard thought this might be madness, for the two of them to be in this bedroom together; surely it was unethical. But when she motioned to him to join her, she looked fragile, and he didn’t know which would wound her more, responding to her suggestion or turning away. He took off his jacket and folded it onto a chair, then undressed and sat on the edge of the bed. He ran his hand over her hair.
“Don’t treat me as if I were your patient,” Ettie scolded, taking offense. She leaned up to kiss him, and he kissed her in return. “That’s better,” she said.
He folded himself into bed with her, and they both forgot who they were and what had brought them together. But Ettie didn’t forget that he was a kind, decent man, and he didn’t forget she was a girl of twenty who might not live to be twenty-one. Because of this what transpired between them was something they hadn’t expected, it was almost as if they had fallen in love in a world where anything could happen and nothing was impossible.
CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN
BEEHIVE HOUSE
HAUTE-LOIRE, JULY 1944
MARIANNE CAME FROM THE BORDER with brambles threaded through her hair. It was hot, with the white sun beating down on the hillsides. She was exhausted and looking forward to sleeping in her own bed after weeks in the woods. More children than ever were being taken over the border. Everyone knew the war would soon be ending, still there would be chaos for some time. Economies had been ruined; neighbors had turned against neighbors. The Royal Air Force had already dropped tons of bombs on Berlin. In June, Allied forces heavily bombed targets in France, invading Normandy on June sixth. Most of the Nazi