Fabrice had lied about his age to his colleagues in the Résistance, claiming he was almost seventeen, but even so his nom de guerre was Garçon, or “the boy.” Paulette’s false name was Michelle. At nineteen, she was four years his senior. And those years were frustratingly significant to those around them. Worst of all, to her.

But he dared to believe that they shared... something.

Late one night, sitting on the floor in the printshop, shrouded in the darkness and silence of the citywide curfew, Fabrice and Paulette confided their true names to each other.

CHAPTER TWENTY

The Battle of Tannenberg: Germany's Crushing Victory Over Russia in 1914

The Eastern Front: Germany vs Russia in World War I

The ANZAC Story at Gallipoli: Courage, Sacrifice, and National Identity

The Gallipoli Campaign: Why the Allied Invasion Failed in World War I

PRESENT DAY

PARIS

Cady

Cady made herself a simple supper of baguette, ripe pear, and an eye-wateringly stinky cheese called Époisses de Bourgogne that the owner of thefromageriedown the block had insisted she try. She poured a glass of garnet red Bordeaux and perched at her diminutive kitchen table, determined to slog through the literary quagmire that wasThe Château.

Everyone saidThe Châteauwas difficult to understand, so at least she wasn’t the only one. This time. Cady sometimes wondered if she had missed a critical developmental moment for learning to read, the way people who didn’t learn to speak early in their lives never really made up for it.

She understood the meaning of the words once she sounded them out, so a dictionary wasn’t helpful; her vocabulary had been honed over the years bylistening,intently, intensely. That was how she had managed all those years when she couldn’t read, but pretended she could.

The first books Cady had read voluntarily were how-to photography books. Her fascination had been sparked when she found a smallstash of antique cameras in Maxine’s cluttered back room. Noting Cady’s interest, Maxine made her a deal: for every book Cady could prove she had read, Maxine would give her one of the cameras. Cady borrowed books from the library and plowed through one after another as best she could, reciting her book reports to Maxine as they puttered around the shop. She learned about the process of photography and studied the principles of the camera obscura, making her own pinhole camera. She pored over the majestic nature photography of Ansel Adams, Jacob Riis’s gritty photos of urban life at the turn of the twentieth century, the Depression-era work of Dorothea Lange, as well as the photos Henryk Ross had taken in secret of the Jewish ghetto of Lodz, Poland.

When Cady discoveredaudiobooks, she thought she had gone to heaven, and eagerly devoured one after another. Short stories, essays, epic novels—it didn’t matter. Audiobooks introduced her to worlds she hadn’t known existed.

She used to listen while working in the darkroom, finding solace in an otherworldly solitude, an aloneness that felt anything but lonely. Even the sharp scent of the chemicals contributed to a sense of peace, of stillness. Everything was orderly: her pans were laid out in precise fashion, the jars and bottles and cans of supplies on the shelf lined up just so. There, in the dark, it was just Cady, the story she was listening to, and the magic of images appearing where once there was nothing.

Thinking of it now, Cady felt that old familiar itch to develop the photographs she had been taking, to see how the carousel shots were turning out. She always took reference photos with her digital camera, but as she had told Jean-Paul, it wasn’t the same.

She blew out a breath and flipped a page. The erratic storyline ofThe Châteauwas not holding her interest. She took another bite of the Époisses on a crusty hunk of baguette and let her mind wander.

Jean-Paul. What was his story?

After their champagneapéroearlier in the evening, Cady had bid farewell to Jean-Paul Mirassou and Madame Martin. Jean-Paul washeaded to Provence next week, and she was going back to the United States, so it was unlikely they would ever see each other again. Which was totally fine, of course. It was not as though she was interested in a fling—just look what had happened last time.

He was attractive, she admitted to herself—très beau—but what would be the point? Setting aside the fact that Jean-Paul lived in France and Cady lived in California, she was just plain no good at human relationships. Maxine and Olivia were total flukes, crumbs tossed her way by the fates to keep her from snapping one day and throwing herself off the Golden Gate Bridge.

Still, she would always remember Jean-Paul, Cady thought, sipping her wine. A man she had known all of two days. This wasn’t like her. Could she blame it on the heightened senses, the strange openness, that came along with travel?

All she knew was that he smelled good.Reallygood. She liked the way his eyes crinkled when he laughed, the way they tilted down slightly at the corners, giving him a sad, romantic air. He had thick wrists and wore an old-fashioned dial watch with a brown leather strap. She thought back on the way his whiskers tickled her cheeks when they greeted each other, the electric feeling that ran along her skin when their hands had brushed together when he passed the bowl of olives at the table.

She should have asked to photograph him.

Still, as attractive and charming as Jean-Paul was, there was something simmering just below the surface that put her on edge. What it was she couldn’t imagine, but this she did know: She was broken enough for the both of them. She could be friends with Olivia because Olivia was so healthy and even-keeled. And Maxine had been a rock, unflappable in the face of Cady’s many challenges. Nothing could bring Maxine down.

The last thing I need is another broken person in my life,Cady admonished herself as she got up from the table. She wrapped up the leftover cheese and baguette, corked the wine, and took her dishes to the sink.