“When she heard you were coming to Vichy, she was eager to see you again.”
“How...”Baffling. Suspicious. Alarming.“Kind.”
“You can follow me to our home. It’s our hope you’ll stay with us tonight as well, before you leave in the morning.”
“I... I thought... the note said tomorrow would be the real meeting. That this was an introduction. I assumed you would decide tonight, you and your colleagues, what to tell me tomorrow, after seeing if I’d complied with the demands for the money.” Were they trying to throw her off? Or was this invitation now meant to soften her? Or perhaps an attempt to get her comfortable so they could pump her for information? She put a quiver into her lips. “I promise you, I tried to get it all back, but I couldn’tfindanyone, it’s all fallen apart. Please,monsieur, I pray you have mercy.”
His smile harkened to the old—or rather, younger—Rollin. “Calm yourself,madame. It’s my hope we’ll have no real need for tomorrow’s meeting at all. I promise you, Julie’s invitation is meant only to put you at ease.”
She blinked, added a sniff for good measure. Nodded. “All right. Thank you.” They would be playing some game, she had no doubt. But she would play it, learn their moves.
Monsieur Rollin had found a gem of a house for himself and his wife, with row upon row of gleaming windows set in the golden honeyed stone of its enormous facade. Nothing compared to Grigoryan’s home in Paris or even Charaudeau’s in Madrid, but she gaped appropriately as he led her inside after a brief walk from his office. She fiddled nervously with the hem of her jacket, checked her hat and hair as if both suddenly felt shabby.
Julie Rollin must have been watching for them, because she hurried through the immense foyer as they entered, handsoutstretched. “Zelie! It’s been ages. Last I saw you, your first child was but an infant in arms.”
Familiarity that hardly fit their few, merely social interactions, and an immediate reminder of her children.Noted.Zelie made her smile a little strained, a little relieved, a little humbled. “I am surprised you remember me,madame. I must have seemed a naive ingenue to you back then.”
Madame Rollin tilted her head back in laughter, showing off her dangling earrings and matching collar necklace. “Weren’t we all, at the start of our marriages?” She moved to Zelie’s side, weaving their arms together. “First, you must call me Julie. And now come, join me for cocktails while Chef finishes dinner. Your little boy must be... what, nine or ten?”
Zelie let herself be led into a well-appointed room. “Ten, yes. I can’t believe how quickly the years have flown by!”
“How well I know it. My own baby is twenty-one now. I look at him and can’t fathom how he’s so old when I still feel like I’m not yet thirty.”
Mimicking her hostess’s laugh, Zelie swept an appreciative gaze around the room—and out the door. Rollin hadn’t followed them in, but she saw him angle toward the door beside this one. No doubt they’d already determined that he’d be able to hear anything she said through the wall. “I’d never guess, to look at you, Julie, that you have children in their twenties.”
Smiling, Julie motioned her toward a chair. “What’ll you have to drink?”
“Oh, just water, thank you. Jacques never approved of me drinking.” He’d never cared, but it was a handy excuse for refusing anything that could dull her senses, and it would make her seem the devoted widow.
Julie slid some ice into a glass and then popped the cap on a bottle of Perrier. “You have another child too, don’t you?”
“Elise.” She didn’t have to fake the smile. “She’ll be seven this year.”
“Ah, so precious. Treasure these years with them, Zelie. They go by too fast.”
“I know.” She accepted the glass of sparkling water and sipped at it. “Every time Blaise comes home from school, he’s sprouted up again. He’ll be taller than me before I know it.”
Taking the seat across from her, Julie gave her a maternal, sorrowful look. “I was so distressed to hear that you’d gotten caught up in this so-called Resistance. Did you give no thought to your children and what it would mean for them if you were found out?”
Well, they weren’t wasting any time. Zelie let her chin sag toward her chest and her gaze drop to Julie’s shoes. “At the time, all I could think about was Jacques. He died fighting for France. I... I wanted to do something to honor him, and when Jean asked if I would help, I thought it was what Jacques would want.” She blinked as if fighting back tears.
“Jean?” Curiosity colored her hostess’s tone.
They’d already decided, she and the others, that there was no point in denying who the former head of the group had been—she’d been seen in Navarre’s company too often. Plus, his execution could be used to explain both her unusual position and the falling apart they were trying to convince Vichy was more complete than it was. “Loustaunau-Lacau.”
“Ah.” Whether the name really meant anything to Julie or not, she sounded enlightened. And no doubt her husband was taking notes next door.
Zelie drew in a loud, shuddering breath. “Then he was arrested, and I didn’t know what to do. I was only a records keeper. A secretary. I tried to make a go of it, but I didn’t know what I was doing, and no one wanted to listen to me. I didn’t know how to get out, and... and...”
“You poor dear.” As if truly concerned, Julie got up and perchedon the arm of Zelie’s chair. “You must have been terrified,” she said, draping an arm over Zelie’s bent shoulders.
“Constantly.” As a child, she’d learned to turn on her tears when Pappa was frustrated, effectively rendering him useless. It had never worked on Jacques, but she hadn’t forgotten the lesson. It was easy to think about the pain of the mailbag, the terror when she hadn’t known where her children were, her mother, Marcel, the others. To think of Navarre, the man who’d seen potential in her when Jacques had called her useless. Easy to let the tears build and spill over. “And now I... I don’t know how to convince... convince them that I’m done. All those... those men turned on me... at the first opportunity. And now... now they’ll leave me... me to hang for it.”
“Oh, Zelie.” Julie’s hand rubbed circles on her back. “You poor lamb, led astray by untrustworthy men. It happens to the best of us when we no longer have our husbands to guide us. You’ve ended up in the teeth of a wolf.”
Wolf—that was Rivière’s new call sign. Little did this woman know that Zelie hadn’t been the lamb to fall in with the wolf, she’d been one of the ones to recruit him.
At least Emile had left Rivière’s name off his list. A favor to them? To the man he’d clearly liked?
