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"Looks like rain," the old man said, setting a folded newspaper on the park bench between us.
The fountains had been shut off in le bassin rond, so the park was quieter than it usually was. A few birds chirped. Children called to one another from between the barren trees.
I nodded, squinting up at the sky. "Or snow, possibly." The clouds were dark and low, but there was a bite in the air that made me think of winters at Radcliffe, of fat, wet flakes on the back of your neck as you hurried home from supper.
"I wouldn't mind a bit of snow," the old man said, levering himself to his feet with the help of his walking stick. "The city looks so lovely then, for a while." He turned and smiled at me, touching the brim of his woolen cap. I nodded again and watched him make his slow way along the broad path and out toward the other side of the park.
He'd left his newspaper behind on the bench. I sighed and picked it up, but I didn’t look at it right away. As long as I didn’t look, I wouldn’t know what my next assignment was, and this all-too-brief hiatus I’d been having wouldn’t be over yet. There’d be no new hell to find a way into, no new young person to whom I'd have to deliver the worst news: your information is going to make it out of here, but you aren’t.
I watched the fat grey pigeon at the edge of the path for a while instead, the way it strutted along with its head bobbing, looking for bits of food left behind by the day’s visitors. If this were an American park, the pigeons would have to compete with squirrels for their take. But I’d yet to see a single squirrel in Paris. No one had ever really been able to tell me why.
Eventually I found myself too chilled to delay it any longer. I spread the newspaper open in my lap and squinted at the stories there. But I could see only inconsequential things, nonsense about Nazi victories I knew to have been fabricated, an interview with Olga Chekhova about her newest film. I frowned, and turned the paper over in my hands a couple of times before I finally noticed the single word penciled in the margin: fuis.
I stared at it for a moment. The old man was my regular link to the resistance here in Paris. I didn't know his name, but I had been receiving my assignments from him for some months now; I trusted him as much as I trusted anyone. Flee, he'd told me, and I knew he had risked a great deal to give me this clear a warning. Someone had betrayed me.
I folded the paper and set it down on the bench again, casually rubbing at the penciled word with one spit-dampened thumb as I cast my gaze around the darkening park. There was no one who seemed out of place here, no solo lingerers like me. I saw a young woman pushing a baby in a buggy, an elderly couple walking slowly past toward the gates arm in arm. If they were coming for me, they hadn't followed me here. I glanced down at the paper as I took up my own walking stick; there was nothing left of the old man's warning but an indistinguishable grey smudge. Satisfied, I stood and began to limp my own way out toward the street.
My hotel would be surrounded, of course, so I turned outside the park's gates and went down into the metro instead. I left my lovely, carved walking stick leaning in the shadows at the bottom of the stairs, abbreviating my gait, turning my limp into an older woman's shuffle. Stooping disguised my height and added years to my age, as well. I completed the impromptu disguise by slipping Georgia Penn's pretentious chinchilla fur cap into my coat pocket, sliding my scarf up to cover my head and shoulders instead. It was a different woman who boarded the train when it hissed to a stop at the platform. She was at least a decade older than Georgia Penn had been, smaller and quieter, her mouth a sour pucker. She walked as though it pained her, and she kept her head low. Her fur coat was a little too expensive, but it was too cold to go about without one, so I’d have to keep it for now.
I rode the metro as far as Pont de Neuilly, then began the long walk into Puteaux. There was a safe house there; with any luck, they'd be able to keep me tucked away until safe passage out of the city could be found for me. The streets were nearly deserted, but there was a bad moment on the bridge, when a few young German soldiers strolled up and overtook me halfway along. But older women were of little interest to them, and they passed me by without remark. It was a damned lucky thing they did, too: there had been no chance to stop and dispose of Georgia Penn's papers yet, so I still had them in my handbag. I kept my head down, but I watched them until they had walked all the way to the other side of the bridge before I felt safe enough to breathe easily again.
On the Puteaux side of the river, I turned down into a side street and sped my steps a little, risking the reappearance of the limp to gain a little speed. It had to be nearing curfew and I really couldn't dare to be caught out late. They would check my papers for certain, then, and I'd be dead in the water. My bad leg burned where the straps holding my prosthetic in place rubbed against it. I thought sadly of my abandoned walking stick, with its polished black oak shaft and the carved lion's head grip. I wasn't used to walking without its added support anymore; my back ached, too. But what use was there in thinking about little nuisances like that when there wasn't anything you could do about them? I shook my head; Georgie Penn's easy collaborator's life had made me soft.
It began to snow as I crossed the street -- not the fat, wet flakes I'd imagined, but hard, gritty ones that stung my face when I turned it up to look at them. I tugged my scarf a little closer and wobbled along the slippery cobblestones. The safe house was at the end of the next block, if I remembered right, across from the ravine which sheltered the train tracks that connected this suburb with the countryside to the south. The houses I was passing now were all shuttered for the evening. The street seemed very dark. I could hear my own breath, the faint sound of wind in the trees. There was no traffic, not here. Everyone had gone properly to ground for curfew.
So why, I thought suddenly, halfway along the block, was I hearing the sounds of a quiet conversation in the street ahead? I slowed and then stopped walking entirely, my head cocked. There were two voices, both young and male. I could only hear some of the words they were saying, but all those were clearly German.
I swore silently, sinking into the shadows in the lee of the stone wall surrounding the house I'd stopped next to. I couldn't see either speaker, but that didn't matter. I knew what they were. Whatever had happened to reveal me had been bigger than I'd thought. Others had been betrayed too, and the family who operated this safe house must have been among them. These young men were lying in wait for anyone who tried to shelter here, like cats at a mousehole. Why go hunting your prey when it will blunder along to you, after all?
God damn them. There were four children in the family whose house this had been, and their father had been my friend. Their mother had died before the war; he’d been all they had left. I clenched my hands into fists and closed my eyes, letting my head fall back against the stone wall behind me. There was nothing I could do to help them now. It was too late. It was always too late.
I shook my head and swallowed the useless rage. Getting myself arrested along with them would help exactly no one; I had to keep my wits about me. It was certainly past curfew now. I knew of another safe house on the east side of the city, but getting there would be impossible tonight -- and anyway, chances were good that it had been ratted out, too.
There was no shelter back the way I had come, only open streets and then the bridge. The ravine had scrub and trees and darkness to recommend it; I could walk along it all the way to Chaville, I thought, trying to picture the maps I'd been advised to memorize in my mind's eye, and from there I thought I knew of a safer way out in the morning. But I'd have to get across the street to reach it.
There was no way to do this here without being detected -- the shadows near the wall and the slight bend in the street were keeping me out of the soldiers' line of sight where I was, but crossing the street would make me obvious. If I could run, I might have chanced it. Instead, I backtracked to the beginning of the block, where the bend in the street meant that no part of it would be visible to the waiting soldiers. Then I crossed as quickly as I could, skidding a little on the grass at the far side of the street and slipping straight down over the edge of the ravine. I swallowed the yell that wanted to come out of me, catching grimly at the icy grass and scrub as I slid past it, staying my fall. I froze then, clinging like a rather ungainly limpet to the steep side of the ravine, listening for signs I'd been detected. But there was nothing. Only the distant sounds of traffic on the main roads and the chill wind stirring the tops of the trees.
I couldn't really see what I was doing, so I had to find my way down the rest of the hill by feel. I had already skinned a knee in the fall; the rest of my descent gave me several new bruises and a long tear in my skirt. But I reached the bottom of the ravine intact, for the most part, finding a cleared gravel approach and then the tracks themselves. There was enough ambient light that I could see a little once out of the trees. I straightened my skirt and coat and brushed the worst of the dirt away, then began my slow progress southward.
I hadn't got very far before I heard something…out of place. My footsteps echoed a little on their own, but there was a second echo now, and a small rustling along with it. It was coming from the trees to my left. I kept walking, not letting on that I had heard anything awry, but trying to catch a glimpse of whatever it was. I thought it unlikely that any soldier would be so covert in his pursuit, and the footsteps were too light for heavy, booted feet anyway. A dog? I thought. But why would it keep itself hidden?
I sidled closer to the trees, casually, and finally saw it -- something pale and small moving in the shadows. It was person-shaped, but only about two-thirds my height. It seemed to be wearing a pink flowered dress.
I let out my breath. "You mustn't make a noise," I said softly, in French. "But do please come out. I think I know your father."
There was a long moment of hesitation. Finally, a girl stepped out from between the trees. She was small and slight, but I knew she was eleven or twelve years old. Her name was…Rochelle? No. Rosalie. She was the youngest child of the man who had operated the safe house. When I'd met her the first time, nearly three years ago, she had been a scoundrelly little tomboy who'd sneaked up under the table where I'd been chatting with her father and rapped on my wooden leg with her knuckles. A dare.
"I'm Marie," I said -- another alias, but that was the one this particular circuit would know. "Do you remember me? I've got the funny wooden leg." I lifted it a little and rapped at it with my own knuckles. Rosalie's eyes widened in recognition, and then her whole face crumpled. She buried it in her hands.
"Oh, now," I murmured, embracing her awkwardly. “Shh. There, there.”
She sniffed a few times and then nodded, swallowing the rest of her tears with a heroic effort. She was icy cold, covered in dirt and dried leaves, her hair a sad tangle. She was wearing only the pink dress and a pair of wooden clogs. I shrugged out of my fur coat and wrapped it about her shoulders.
She looked up at me gravely. "Thank you," she said.
I waved a hand: don't mention it. "What happened?" I asked.
Her chin wobbled, but she got it under control very quickly. "The Gestapo," she said. "They came in so suddenly. There was no time for anything. My brother, Remy, he pushed me out the kitchen door and I hid and they." She stopped and pressed her lips together for a long moment. At last she shook her head and swallowed hard, giving me a pained, pleading look.
I touched her shoulder. "It's all right," I said. "I understand." I pushed a hand over my face; last I'd seen him, Remy had been this child's age, a serious, dark-eyed lad who had gone beet red when he'd realized what his sister had been up to under the table. "I'm so sorry," I said.
She nodded, miserably, still not able to speak.
I sighed, thinking. The girl had nowhere to go. If there were members of her family left alive, they would have been arrested; if they were lucky, they wouldn't be alive for much longer. She would have to come with me. "I have a plan," I told Rosalie. "We shall have to walk for most of the night, and it's going to be very cold and difficult for a while, but I think I may have a way to get us out. All right?"
She nodded. Together, we set off.
*
So many pieces of the plan I'd devised could have gone awry. If the identity papers I’d cached behind a loose stone in the church’s garden wall had been found, or if we’d been checked even once on our way to them; if the trains out of the city had been stopped that day, or diverted elsewhere. But they weren't, and we weren't, and somehow we managed to get all the way to Toulouse before the end of the week. There, I was pleased to find that the same old couple who had sheltered and fed me during my first escape from France were still coordinating their leg of the Rat Line. They tsked to see me back in in the drink again, but they had gotten even better at what they did in the years since I'd seen them last. Within a matter of days, we were rattling along in the back of a pig truck with a number of other Evaders, on our way to the mountains so we could be sent over the border to Spain.
"There are creatures up there you know. Great wooly beastmen who wander about in the snow, crying for human blood." The speaker was a man a few years younger than me, one of our fellow escapees. He widened his eyes at Rosalie, tilting his head toward her. "They drink it, you see. It's like milk to them."
I glanced at Rosalie, but she only rolled her eyes and crossed her arms over her chest, giving the man a skeptical look. "They don't even," she said.
The man raised his eyebrows. "Just you wait," he said. "You'll see."
As though on cue, the truck began to slow just then. We made a sharp turn and then were rumbling over much rougher ground. We were climbing, too -- the incline was steep enough that we began to slide across the floor. I grabbed hold of the wood at the side of the truck with one hand and held on, anchoring Rosalie with the other. The rumbling ascent went on for some time. The noise of our passage was much too loud to let us speak to one another, so we rode in silence. Even after there was no need to keep hold of it, Rosalie did not let go of my hand.
Finally, the road evened out and stayed that way for a little while. Then we were pulling to a stop. The sudden silence in the wake of the engine was loud enough my ears rang. I shifted, getting ready to haul myself to my feet. My good leg had gone numb from being stuck in one cramped position for so long; I thumped it with my fist, and squinted blearily with the rest of the group when the back doors suddenly came open, letting in the full light of late afternoon. There was an unfamiliar face there, standing next to the man I recognized as our driver. He nodded at us. "Come on," he said. "Out you get. Vámanos."
It was an ordinary farm, even though it was far enough up the mountain that we stepped over patches of snow and ice as we walked. The air was beautifully fresh and clear, scented with pine and woodsmoke. We passed a chicken run and a few wooden outbuildings before we came to the barn where the farmer had set up a place for us to spend the early part of the night. There were blankets and food, water for washing and for drinking. "You can rest on the straw," he told us in his strangely accented French. "Someone will come for you late at night. You'll need the full dark if you're to make it through the tall rocks unspotted." He nodded again and went out, pushing the barn door closed behind him.
We ate and washed. We couldn't risk a lamp, so there wasn't much to do once night fell. Rosalie and I spread a blanket beneath us and huddled under another, playing twenty questions. "Is it bigger than a mouse? Smaller than an elephant? Is it something alive?" She managed to doze for a while after that. When the quality of the quiet outside told me it must be nearing ten o'clock, I woke her gently and made her drink her fill of water again, then helped her stuff the coat she'd been given in Toulouse with a layer of insulating straw. She and I had both traded our skirts for trousers, too. I used some of the farmer's twine to bind the hems closed around our calves, stuffing more straw into them, and into our cloth boots. We tore one of the blankets into wide strips and wound them about our heads and hands. By the time the barn door came open again, we were as prepared as I could make us.
Our guide had a muffled lantern. He lifted it so he could examine each of us, his lined face stern in the gloom. When his gaze came to rest on Rosalie and me, his mouth tightened. "This is no trip for women and children," he said. "We will be moving very quickly, and on rough terrain. The two of you will get us caught. We can't risk it."
I took a breath, then closed my mouth on the sharp retort I had planned to make and put my hand on Rosalie's shoulder instead. "She's older than she looks," I lied. "Fifteen. She's been on harder treks. And I've escaped through the Pyrenees before, through the trail near Castillon. I know what I'm in for."
The guide was shaking his head. "I won't have it," he said. "You'll be the death of us. You'll have to go back to Toulouse in the morning; perhaps someone from the network can find you a place to hide."
Rosalie had flushed a deep red. I closed my hand a little harder on her shoulder. "All right," I said. "Fine. No problem."
"But--" Rosalie started, looking at me. I lifted my eyebrows and shook my head. She closed her mouth, frowning, but she didn't say anything else.
The rest of the group filed out past us. The man who'd teased Rosalie in the truck paused next to us as though he wanted to say something, then just sighed and let his head sag forward, continuing on his way. We watched them until they had pulled the barn door shut behind them, leaving us in darkness. Rosalie turned to look up at me again, then -- I couldn't see it, but I could hear the movement. I smiled. "Patience," I said. "We'll give them a little head start and then we'll follow along in the path they've made. Easy peasy." I gave her shoulder a little shake.
"But he said we had to go back to Toulouse," she said.
I smiled grimly. "Yes, but that was stupid of him. This isn’t the army, is it? We aren’t soldiers. And that means we don't have to follow stupid orders."
It was risky. There was a moon tonight, so there ought to be enough light to see their tracks by, but wind or weather could wipe them out so easily. I had come through these mountains before, but it had been a long time ago and I'd used a different pass. If we lost our guide, we might wander in the mountains until we froze -- or stumbled into a Nazi checkpoint. But going back was even riskier, especially for Rosalie.
I took a breath. The group had been gone for several minutes, and that was enough of a head start, I decided. I nudged Rosalie toward the door. "Vámanos, young lady," I said, and so she was giggling as we went out into the night.
It actually went pretty smoothly, for a while. We were far enough behind the group that we couldn't hear them, nor they us. But their footprints were as clear as day in the crusty, just-frozen ground. Even when the path disappeared and left us picking our way up the steep, rocky side of the mountain, I could see that we were still heading in the right direction. Rosalie was so light and small that she found the going much easier than I did; my artificial foot couldn't be trusted to bear my weight in the narrower toe-holds for long, so I had to go up one step at a time, half the pace the girl could have managed on her own. She paced me without complaint, though, ready to offer me a hand when I wobbled or skidded. We reached the top of that escarpment tired and winded, but all right.
There was a stretch of wood here, though the trees were small and strange-looking. It was much easier going and we picked up quite a bit of lost ground -- so much that we nearly stumbled right into the heels of the main group. They had stopped to catch their breath in the clearing at the far side of the shrunken wood. They were so quiet we were nearly on top of them before I knew they were there.
I caught Rosalie's wrist and tugged her to a stop, laying a finger across my lips when she turned to look at me. When I saw she understood, I pointed ahead; there was just enough light to see the edge of someone's pale face, a glint of reflection from someone else's makeshift belt buckle. Rosalie shrank back against me. Together, we waited for the group to begin walking again, their muffled boots and gear making only a faint rustling as they went.
When they were safely ahead, I tugged Rosalie into motion. The path was beginning to get steeper again, rising up and up in long switchbacks between enormous glacial boulders. Here was the exposed ground our guide had been talking about, I thought. If we were going to be spotted, it would certainly be here -- there was very little cover.
I kept us to the shadows near the rocks as much as possible. My chest ached with the thin air and the unaccustomed exertion, and the hip of my bad leg was on fire, every step a fresh spike of agony. Even little Rosalie was beginning to flag; she walked stiffly, her head down, feet dragging. Worse, the moon had nearly disappeared. I couldn't see the colour of the clouds that covered it, but by the smell of the air I knew that it was going to snow. We'd passed a little wattle and daub shepherd's hut a few hundred yards back. I thought it might be wiser, now, to cut our losses, turn back and hole up in that small shelter until the worst of the coming weather had passed. I was about to say as much to Rosalie when the first shots rang out, echoing so much amidst the rock around us that it was impossible to tell where they had come from.
I yanked Rosalie into the lee of one of those glacial boulders, pressing her into the rock while I tried to see what was happening. It was nearly pitch dark, now. The wind had picked up, and the snow had started in earnest. A few breathless moments passed in silence, then a flurry of new shots filled the air. Someone shouted, hoarse and desperate. Another shot silenced him. And then we heard nothing more.
I closed my eyes, briefly. It must have been an ambush waiting in the pass. From the sounds of it, they had not been interested in taking prisoners.
"Are they all dead?" Rosalie asked softly.
I cleared my throat. "I don't know," I said. "Come. We can't stay here -- they'll have to come this way to get back down."
I led her up into the rocks, away from the narrow path. It was treacherous going in the dark, slippery and uncertain. The wind and snow picked up as we climbed, making things even more difficult. When I thought we must have climbed far enough, I tugged at Rosalie's ankle and she slid down to sit with me in a narrow crevice between two of the enormous rocks, huddled into me for warmth. The storm had gotten so bad by then that we could see nothing of the path we'd left, hear nothing but the wind whistling its way through the rocks. There was no way to know for certain if the soldiers had gone or when, no way to even be sure we were looking in the right direction. We would have to wait it out, I decided. Even if the soldiers had gone down already, we'd surely end up wandering straight into a ravine if we tried to go anywhere now. This little hollow we'd found would have to be shelter enough. I curved my body around the child's, making an extra layer of protection for her. And then we settled in to wait.
I must have dozed eventually -- first light took me by surprise, a long, yellow finger glancing over the edge of the ridge and straight into my eyes. I blinked and stirred, grunting in pain when I discovered how stiff my muscles were. "What's happening?" Rosalie asked from somewhere near my left armpit. "What's going on?"
"Shh," I said. "It's all right. It's morning, that's all."
We extricated ourselves from our temporary shelter. Snow drifted deeply everywhere the wind had been able to access, but I could still see the narrow path below. We'd only managed to climb twenty or so feet away from it -- most of our progress had been lateral. It was a good thing we had stopped when we had, too. We were only another ten yards from a steep drop-off. If we'd kept going in the same direction, we'd be dead.
I stretched and winced again. I was extremely stiff and slow, and there was blood on my trousers where the straps holding my prosthetic in place had worn through my skin. I was hungry and very thirsty, and my thoughts were wooly and thick, clogged with pain and exhaustion and far too little sleep. We both had some frostbite, too: a dead, white streak marked each of Rosalie's cheeks where her makeshift scarf hadn't quite reached, and my own questing fingers told me the same was true of my face, too. Rosalie's feet were in the worst shape, though -- she couldn't feel her toes at all anymore. I tugged her boots off and chaffed her white, cold feet with my hands until she bit her lip in pain. There was some healthy pink returning to the ends of her feet and her biggest toes, now, but I feared for the littlest ones on each foot -- they remained stubbornly white and numb, no matter what I did.
"Don't worry," I told her cheerfully, helping her put her socks and straw-padded boots back in place. "A good roaring fire and a hot bath ought to fix them right up again." I wasn't at all sure that I was telling the truth, but there was no sense in scaring the girl now. Not when there was nothing else we could do.
We picked our way back to the snowy path. I had no idea if the soldiers had made it down off the mountain while we'd been hidden, but if we went back the way we'd come, we'd be clearly visible as we crossed through the treeless high rocks again. We started up the path toward the pass.
I'd hoped that the new snow might have covered the bodies of the men who'd been shot last night, but we were not so lucky. The trail widened as it came up to the pass, an open, sloping field of scree and rock. There was a steep rockface to the right of the trail. The other side sloped away to the ravine we'd nearly stumbled into the night before, with a misty vista of other peaks beyond it.
The first of the bodies was halfway to the ravine, dusted with a fine layer of snow, but still easily identifiable. And there were more ahead. I put a hand on Rosalie's shoulder and gave it a squeeze. "It would have been quick," I said. "They won't have suffered."
She nodded mutely, but what I could see of her face was very pale.
We pushed on quickly once we had passed the last of them, climbing toward the top of the rise, eager to put the signs of the slaughter behind us. In our haste, neither of us noticed the thin spire of smoke rising up from the edge of the ridge ahead until we had topped the rise and found ourselves looking down at the campfire it had come from, and the green and grey uniformed German officer who was tending it.
We froze, but the officer had already heard us and looked up from his fire. He was as surprised to see us as we were to see him, it seemed; for a long moment, all we did was stare at one another. But then he shouted something I didn't catch, fumbling for his sidearm, and a second officer was running up the trail from behind him with a pistol already drawn. Time slowed, as it was wont to do at moments like this. Rosalie had turned to look at me, her blue eyes frightened and sharp and full of ferocious intelligence, waiting for me to tell her how we would get out of this. They brought another pair of sharp blue eyes to mind, another brave, frightened girl not much older than this one. I had been helpless to save that girl, just as I had been to save Rosalie’s family. But I'd be damned, I thought now, my body already in motion, if I would let that happen again.
I shoved Rosalie back the way we'd come, knocking her out down and out of the line of fire. "Run," I told her. "Hide. Don't come out until you're sure it's safe." And then I was moving myself, away from her, limping down toward the two soldiers.
One of them shouted something to me, his pistol cocked and aimed at my face. I held my hands up above my head. "Don't shoot!" I shouted, in German. "Please! I surrender!" I had no idea what my plan was, except to give Rosalie time to find a good hiding spot, to have a chance to get away. They were within their rights to shoot me here, but I hoped they would take me prisoner instead, a trophy to bring back down the mountain. I knew my voice would reveal that I was a woman, and was counting on that piquing their interest, too. Dead, I’d buy the girl a few moments at most. As a prisoner, I might still be able to help her.
The first officer kept his weapon trained on my head, but he didn't shoot. He smiled, instead. "Out for a walk, fraulein?" he called. Behind him, the second officer had slowed to a walk, his weapon at his side. He was smiling, too. No one else had appeared yet. A terrible hope swelled in me; perhaps these two were all there were, separated from their group in the storm and stranded here overnight. Perhaps the rest had already made their way down the mountain after all.
I kept lurching down the slope toward them, exaggerating my limp, mustering a few breathless sobs, as though I was terribly afraid. "Please," I called. "Don't hurt me. Please."
The first officer held up a hand. "That's close enough, sweetheart," he said. "Stop walking. Kneel. Keep your hands on your head." He waved the muzzle of the gun briskly.
I lurched awkwardly to my knees, hands on my head. There were still only two, and neither man was looking about as though he was expecting more. As they approached, I saw that one of the men was limping. The other had a ragged bandage on his left hand. They had weathered the storm perhaps better than we had, but they were not entirely unscathed.
"Where did your friend go?" the first officer said when he was next to me. "She was not kind to run away and leave you on your own like that."
I looked up at him blankly, thinking that I might be able to disable him now with a swift punch to his unmentionables -- he was standing in such a way that they were within my easy reach. But if I did that, his friend might shoot me before I could wrestle his gun from him, and then where would Rosalie be?
"No matter," he said, when I didn't speak. "We'll find her without your help, and then perhaps the four of us might have a little fun together, eh?" He reached with his bandaged hand and tugged my scarf away from my face, touched my cheek.
I swallowed my disgust. "Perhaps," I said, leering up at him.
His smile had just begun to broaden when I heard a scraping sound from above, followed by Rosalie's voice shrieking something incoherent. There was a dark blur on the trail past the first officer's legs, something large and heavy falling from the top of the rockface next to us, tumbling down onto the trail with a thud. The first officer looked up sharply, already lifting his gun in the direction of the noise. I punched up viciously with my fist, just like I had been imagining, a quick, hard jab to the groin. And then I was grasping his uniform's tunic with my other hand, tugging him over and throwing myself on top of him, using my weight to pin him as I wrested the gun from his hand. He struggled even more violently then, trying to throw me off, to regain his weapon. I clenched my jaw and took a deep, quick breath. Then I pressed the gun to his head and pulled the trigger.
He went still and I rolled off of him, chambering a new round as I sat up, pointing the gun toward the second officer. But the trail was empty. So was the rest of the field. I scrambled to my feet before I finally saw him: a crumpled form on the side of the trail, his head a bloody ruin against the snow. There was a rock the size of a wireless set lying next to him -- that had been the dark blur I'd seen. I tilted my head back, squinting against the bright sun of the morning, and saw Rosalie's face peering over the edge of the ridge above, pale but triumphant.
"I thought I told you to hide," I said.
She shook her head, cleared her throat. "Yes," she said, and her voice was shaky, but clear. "You did. But I don't follow stupid orders."
*
"Meat," Rosalie said, poking it with the tines of her fork.
I nodded. "Good. What kind?"
She wrinkled her nose. "Fried," she said. "Good. Poulet!"
I smiled. "Chicken," I reminded her. "Fried chicken."
Rosalie rolled her eyes, licking grease from her thumb. "That's a stupid word," she said in French. "Chicken. Chick-nn. It sounds like clucking." She mimed a chicken's walk, tucking her thumbs under her arms like wings. The diner's only other patron, a middle-aged man with a cup of coffee and a newspaper in front of him, smiled a little at her antics.
I smiled, too. "How have things been?" I asked. "Is it all right, living with Frannie and Merle?" When it had become clear that Rosalie's family hadn't survived the raid on their safe house, I'd brought her back to the States with me, so she could be adopted by my sister and brother-in-law. Frannie's two boys, my nephews, were nearly grown, one in college already, the other about to graduate from high school. Rosalie was a welcome distraction.
"It's good," she said. "Better than I thought. They’re very kind. And Aunt Fran is teaching me to play the piano."
“Good,” I said. “I told you they wouldn’t be so bad.” Rosalie had wanted to stay with me, at first -- probably just because I was familiar, and everything else in her life had gone strange and topsy-turvy. But I’d been asked to go back into France almost immediately after we’d arrived in New York, and by then, I knew my life would continue on like that as long as they’d let me do it. It was horrible work, but it was vital, and I was rather good at it. I was awful at mothering, in contrast. Far better for Rosalie if I kept to the role of Aunt.
She’d finished the last of her chicken while I’d been musing, and took a sip of iced tea. "The school is too big,” she said. “And everyone talks too quickly, but the math they're doing is for babies. I'm very smart at it. I think I'll get an A." She took another sip of her iced tea, slurping through her straw when the liquid ran out.
I gave her a chiding look. She let the straw go with a sigh. "Thank you for lunch," she said. "It was really good."
"You're welcome," I said. "Do you want anything for dessert?" I tugged the menu out of its rack again, but she was shaking her head, one hand on her stomach.
"No, thank you," she said. "I think I ate too much chicken." She put her other hand on her belly, too, miming a bulge a good deal larger than anything her small frame had ever been able to manage. "I might explode if I eat any more. Boom." She threw her hands apart.
I huffed a laugh, setting a tip out for the waitress and reaching for my coat. Rosalie beamed at me and slid out of the booth, pulling her cardigan closed. "Where's your coat?" I asked. "Frannie would kill me if I let you catch cold."
Rosalie sighed. "I left it in the car," she said. "It's hardly even cold!"
I tched and shook my head, but we'd reached the register and there wasn't time to say anything else. The waitress was sitting there with her feet propped on a stool, reading a dimestore novel with a nurse on the cover. She set the novel down on the counter when we came up, a questioning smile on her face.
"Everything was delicious," I said. "Thank you."
Her smile broadened and she nodded, but she didn't reach for the bill.
"What do I owe you?" I prompted finally.
The waitress blinked. "Oh!" she said. "Not a thing. That gentleman paid for everything before he left. I thought he was a friend of yours."
I felt my eyebrows go up. "Ah," I said. "Of course. Well, thank you anyway. You have a nice day."
As I led a puzzled Rosalie toward the door, I pushed my hands into my coat pockets. Sure enough, there was a card in the right pocket that had certainly never been there before. I pulled it out as we pushed through the door and into the street, squinting at it in the sunlight. One side seemed to advertise the services of a lawyer. But there was a phone number on the other side, written in a hasty, confident hand.
"What is it?" Rosalie asked softly as we slid into my car. "What's happened?"
I smiled and started the ignition. "Nothing," I said. "Nothing bad, anyway. I think I've just been offered a new job."