Josette nodded against Zelie’s shoulder and clung to her. “I begged him not to go. Ibeggedhim.” The woman’s hair smelled of lilac and fresh spring air and a broken heart. Zelie smoothed a hand over it, where the wind had tossed it from its usual careful style.
“So did I. I had such a horrible feeling.” A feeling that sank, now, into the very fiber of her being.
“I don’t know yet what will befall him.” Josette pressed her forehead into Zelie’s shoulder, dug her fingertips into her shoulder blades. Each place of pressure an anchor point. “Execution? One of their concentration camps?”
No. Please, Lord Jesus, no.Even as the words formed in hermind, they withered. She hadn’t prayed, notreallyprayed since school. She would toss a few pleas heavenward now and then, when the situation demanded it... but she’d never meant it.
Who did she think she was to cry out to God now, just because she felt shaken to her soul? Why should he listen, when she ignored him every other day?
And Navarre—he was as much a skeptic as she was. The sort who only put his faith in what he could accomplish himself.
Look where it had gotten him.
Josette pulled away and groped in her pocket for a handkerchief. “I’m sorry. I’m a wreck.”
“You don’t need to apologize.” Zelie rubbed a hand up and down the woman’s arm, hoping it would convince her own internal dam to hold on a little bit longer. “Come in—we’ll get a room for you—”
“No.” Josette eased back a step, mopping at her face. “I need to get back to my children, and then in the morning, we’re leaving. I brought... I brought everything he left at the house. Related to work, I mean. When he left, I packed it all up and hid it at my church, and I’m glad I did. They ransacked the house this afternoon.” She lifted her chin. It quivered, but even so. “They found nothing.Nothing.I made sure of that.”
“He will be proud of you when he hears it.” Zelie let her hand drop lower so that she could catch Josette’s fingers and give them a squeeze. “You did exactly right.”
“They’re in the boot.” Shoulders sagging, Josette flicked her gaze to the men still hovering at the bottom of the stairs. “Could you...?”
The Laurents sprang into action.
Josette pulled her fingers free—gently but without apology. Her gaze didn’t lift to Zelie’s. “If he escapes somehow, he’ll know where to find me. But it’s best if no one else does. There’s nothing more I can do anyway. For you, I mean. For this.” Her eyes flickedup but got no higher than Zelie’s chin. “I’m not like you. I can’t... I only want to keep my children safe.”
Most likely, she didn’t mean it as a slap to Zelie. But it felt like one all the same. “I understand.” Wrapping her rejected hands around her opposite elbows, Zelie took a step back. “Go with God. If ever I need to get you news, I’ll leave it with your priest in Pau.”
Nodding, Josette backed up too. “If he... if he contacts you and not me, tell him I kept to the plan.”
Perhaps, if Josette hadn’t turned at that exact moment, Zelie might not have seen the flash of resentment in her eyes. But the light from the house caught it. Then she was back in her car and pulling around the dormant fountain and leaving.
Zelie stood there a long moment, wondering what else she should have said. What Navarre would have wanted her to say. Should she have assured Josette that Jean would never reach out toherand not his wife?
She couldn’t—she didn’t know if it was true. The truth was something gnarled and knotted and incomprehensible unless you were part of it. The truth was that he might, because he thought of his schemes and plans and mission above all else. Above his family. Above his wife. And in those schemes, Zelie was his second in command. So yes, he could well reach out to her. As a general would reach out to his colonel when a battle didn’t go to plan.
Not once had she asked if Josette understood that or if she thought... assumed... wondered... It would have been natural for her to think the worst of Zelie. Perhaps she knew her husband well enough to know that the only interest he’d ever had in other women was in how he could use them to protect France.
Maybe she didn’t. Maybe she’d believed all this time that her husband and Zelie were having an affair, maybe that’s what the resentment was about. Or maybe she knew the truth and resented Zelie for filling a role Josette never could.
Maybe it didn’t matter. Because he was gone.
She turned back toward the door but stopped. The opening had filled with her people—Marcel, Emile, Gustave; Vivi, Lucien, a few others crowded in behind. Seeing all their faces, deep shadows and bands of light falling over them in odd angles, her hands wanted to shake. Tears wanted to rise.
She swallowed it all down. “Navarre has been arrested in Algiers,” she said for the benefit of those who hadn’t heard Josette sob it into Zelie’s ear.
Silence. The hoot of an owl. The whisper of the wind.
Then Lucien’s voice, as soft as the breeze. “What do we do?”
All the steps Navarre had laid out for her flashed into her mind. None of them felt doable. “What time is your next transmission to England?”
“Nine in the morning.”
She nodded and then let herself turn away from the collection of earnest faces. “I’ll have something by then.”
“Where are you going?” Vivi, sounding like her mother instead of her agent.
