gray slate made of local rock and the bucket of tar. They worked all that afternoon with the steamy tar, their shirts off in the bright sun.
“I won’t know if we’ve done it right until it rains,” said the old man, who introduced himself as Monsieur Bisset.
They had dinner in the kitchen, where Madame Bisset set an extra plate, asking no questions, pleased that her ceiling would no longer leak. Their son, Alain Bisset, only twenty-two, was among those who had been lost in the Battle of France. They had lit a candle in the church, and had Father Varnier say the prayers for the dead. Perhaps this was the reason the couple allowed Julien to stay through the fall in their garden shed, where he slept among the rakes and brooms, quickly learning to ignore the mice who scuttled about at night, grateful they were mice and nothing more. He wore Alain’s winter coat, and his boots, and he sat at his place at the table. Sometimes, Madame let out a gasp when she came into the room and saw him there. With his long dark hair, and lean body, he looked like her son. But he was not, and Madame Bisset knew it. All the same, they were happy to let him stay, to let one young man live and watch him emerge into the blue morning to knock at the door, ready to attend to the chores on his list.
Madame Bisset became ill in November; it was her son’s birthday month, and most likely she was sick with despair over his fate. There was no body to bury and no one to mourn, and she went into a decline, refusing to rise from bed or cook or even to speak. Julien and Monsieur were halfway through plastering the old crumbling walls in the house when Monsieur Bisset told Julien he was sorry, but Julien would have to go. There were no explanations, but Julien understood. It was dangerous to have him in their house and they had been through enough pain and sorrow. But in truth it was more, when Madame saw a young man working in her parlor she was overcome with longing for her son.
On his last day with the couple, Julien found an old recipe book on a kitchen shelf and quickly set to work baking an apple cake, with fruit plucked from the spindly tree in the garden. He wondered what Ava would say if she could see him now. He’d been a spoiled boy in her eyes, and he had realized that had been true. But now he’d been forced to learn many skills: how to fix a roof, how to cook, how to steal, how to say goodbye.
When it was time for Julien to leave, Monsieur Bisset gave him a sack of food that he could hardly spare. Bread, cheese, crackers, apples, all luxuries.
“Do you know why we helped you?” the old man asked.
The two had become quite close, working together as they did. The house was in far better shape now than it had been when Julien first arrived.
Monsieur lowered his voice, as if the Germans were right outside his door. “Because we hate them.”
Julien would miss the scent of mint that grew in the patchy garden. He would miss lying on his back in the shed, where he would talk to Lea as if she were beside him. She alone understood him, and there were times when he missed her so badly he felt twisted with emotion. Stay alive. He was a flame when he thought of the words she had whispered to him. He did not intend to disappoint her.
The weather was still fine, and Julien could camp in the woods outside the city, like so many other boys and young men who were in hiding. He ran into them sometimes, groups from La Sixième and the French Resistance who were loyal to de Gaulle, the true leader of France, though he was in exile. One evening, Julien came upon two sisters, feral creatures of eight and ten years old who had been lost for weeks after their parents were arrested. Actually, the sisters had found him. He’d made a campsite and was eating the last of Monsieur Bisset’s food, which he’d been doling out to himself in small portions. When he looked up he saw the girls staring, their eyes on his food. They had dark hair and big, glassy eyes, and they appeared to be starving.