He could attest to the truth of the claim.
This one was so ornate he couldn’t catalogue the features fast enough. He spotted cherry, walnut, maple, pear, and mahogany woods, and that was to say nothing of the gold vines dancing up the legs, around the sides, and under the lid.
Zelie frowned. “How many I gotright? I don’t suppose I do.”
He angled a smile her way. “Why focus on the few mistakes when what’s right so far outweighs them? You’re an excellent pianist. I don’t know many nonprofessionals who attempt Rachmaninoff.”
Her breath came out in an exhale that barely avoided being a huff. “I’ve let myself get rusty. Even before I had the handy excuse of a war that sent me away from my own piano. Motherhood does that, I suppose.”
He tried to recall if Colonel Bellerose had mentioned his children but came up blank. He hadn’t been around the man that often. Marcel honestly hadn’t even known he was married. “Are your children here in Paris with you?”
She shook her head and slipped out from in front of the piano, waving toward the seat in an obvious invitation. “They’re with my mother, near Cannes.” Her voice said the separation was killing her by degrees.
He eased onto the bench and let his fingers caress the polished keys. Not so much as a speck of dust greeted his fingers—a far cry from the gritty piano he’d played at the camp. “How old are they?”
“Blaise is the elder—he’s nine for two more months, attending a boarding school in Marseille. That’s where my family is from. I actually grew up in Shanghai, until my father died when I was thirteen—he was a diplomat, assigned there. Then there’s Elise, who’s six. Blaise is smart as a whip but prefers sport to books, and aircraft to absolutely everything. Elise is quite possibly the stubbornest child to ever grace the earth.” She laughed as she said it, love for them evident in every single feature that he glanced over to see. “And the sweetest.”
He found himself grinning in response as he played a quick scale to get a feel for the keyboard. “My mother’s youngest sister is only nine years my elder. Her children are the same age as yours. They lived but a street over from me until the war, so I was at their flat several times a week.” He’d heard that they’d evacuated Paris before the invasion and had gone home to Marseille for a few months before moving again.
Yet another something they had in common. He glanced herway as he debated what to play. “I imagine you know my family is also from Marseille.”
She nodded. “I’ve met them—your parents, when I was meeting with your cousins at their parents’ home, right next door. That’s your father’s brother and his wife, correct? And your mother’s sister, Josephine, and her family were there too, visiting your mother. Those young cousins of yours played with my children over the Christmas holidays, while I spoke with Gustave and Emile.”
How much she knew of him, how interwoven their lives had become while he was a prisoner. He’d known, intellectually, that the world had kept on spinning while he was locked away. Still, it was strange to see the paths it had cut through his universe. The people who had become important before he even knew who they were.
I know the plans I have for you.The verse, memorized so long ago, filtered into his mind unbidden.Plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future.
From his bunk at the camp, the very thought of the future had been vague and unbelievable. Marcel hadn’t quite dared to hope he’d have any real part in it. His entire world had contracted to the plot of Germany between those fences and guard towers, the comrades within it, the guards who would either sneer at him or tap their feet to his rhythm.
How foolish he’d been, to think God had been trapped in those fences too.
His fingers teasing out the opening notes to Ravel’s “Jeux d’eau,” Marcel studied her. “Under whom did you study? Did you attend a conservatory?”
“Almost. I was admitted to the Paris Conservatory in ’29, but I got married instead.”
“Are you serious?” He could tell by her lopsided grin that she knew why he asked. His lips curved up to match. “We would have been classmates.”
“I know.” She leaned against the boards, gaze on his fingers. “How can you play and carry on a conversation at the same time?”
Marcel chuckled, tickling out the next phrase, the notes mimicking the playfulness of raindrops. “The credit for that goes to my brother, Raoul, and our cousins. Ours was a madhouse of laughter and shouting. If you couldn’t do something amidst interruptions, it never got done.”
“That does sound like Raoul—and like Emile and Gustave, for that matter.”
Her familiarity with them still boggled him. “How did you meet them?”
She kept her attention on his hands. “Your brother and mine served together in the air force. And from Raoul, it isn’t a far trip to your cousins. Rascals, those three. Especially when together.”
“We always called them the triplets.” Gustave and Emile were only eleven months apart, and Raoul was right between them. The three had always been inseparable—while he, the boring older brother and cousin by two to three years, had tried and failed to herd them toward responsibility. “Troublemakers, all of them.” He said it with another grin.
Hers went downright impish. “Given that now they’re directing that trouble toward the Nazis, I heartily approve.”
“As do I. Although... I’ve never been like them. You should know that. I have neither my brother’s daring nor my cousins’ fearlessness.”
At last, those blue eyes lifted, and her gaze met his as he trilled the next notes on the keys. “I don’t need your brother’s daring or your cousins’ fearlessness for this particular task, Marcel.”
“What do you need, then? Exactly?” The words came out normally enough, he hoped. But after he spoke them, his breath hitched in his chest.
How odd it was, to think their lives had so many potential ways to have crossed—at the conservatory, through their brothers,through the colonel even, perhaps. Yetthiswas the way they’d met, with her recruiting him to some sort of clandestine work.
