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It might as well have been five feet. It took them an hour, working in pairs, to get the White up high enough to take off the wheel, and nearly as long to pump up the spare tire by hand and fasten it into place, which would have gone faster if their wet and muddy fingers hadn’t kept slipping off the nut.

“We’ll get better at it with practice,” said Margaret Cooper, her hat dripping rain all around her face.

“I hope not,” muttered Kate. “I’m not sure I could take any more practice.”

Fran grinned wearily at her. “We’ll all be strong like bulls by the time we’re done.”

“Or mad like bulls,” offered Alice.

It was full dark by the time they made it as far as Nantes, having managed, in the course of a day, to go all of forty miles. They found the other Ford parked neatly in front of an inn and Mrs. Rutherford and Liza sitting down to soup and war bread.

“Only two hundred and sixty miles left to go,” said Kate, slumping into a chair. They had paused only to scrub at the worst of the mud with the two inches of cold water allotted them by the innkeeper. The result was, at best, mixed. It was a blessing the lighting wasn’t good; the mud just looked like shadows. It also disguised what was in the soup.

“It’s going to take us a week to get back to Paris at this rate,” said Alice, dragging her spoon through her soup.

“It’s going to take a week to get to the next town at this rate,” said Kate.

“I wonder why no one has invented puncture-free tires?” mused Liza, who hadn’t spent the day wrestling with one.

“Because then the tire companies would be out of business,” said Fran, dunking her war bread in her soup to soften it.

“Do you think they dropped the nails on the road?” asked Kate.

“No, that was probably the Germans,” said Fran, straight-faced, and Liza nodded eagerly in reply.

“They think of everything,” said Kate, and wasn’t sure whether to laugh or cry, so just gave up and ate soup instead.

It was only nine o’clock when they finished their meal, but it felt like midnight. Outside, the rain continued to sluice down. As she left the table, Kate found Mrs. Rutherford sitting in a tiny circle of light in the sitting room of the inn, surrounded by papers.

“I’m working out schedules,” she said. “We’ve so much to do that we’ll accomplish it best if we’re all divided into committees.”

“I had thought committees were a sure way to ensure nothing actually got done,” said Kate, too tired to mind her words.

Mrs. Rutherford didn’t look up from her charts. “That depends on the committee. Of bored society women, yes. Here, it simply means that those who can will. It’s much more effective than one woman trying to oversee everything, especially when we’re undertaking so much, so quickly.”

There were six categories on the page: House, Social Services, Nursing, Supplies & Stores, Motor, Children.

“But none of us are nurses,” Kate said. “How can we have a nursing committee?”

“None of you were trained mechanics either,” said Mrs. Rutherford imperturbably. “And yet our trucks still run.”

“When they run.”

“A puncture is an act of God—or of the French roads, which is much the same thing,” said Mrs. Rutherford, writing busily. “You can’t blame yourself for it. You aren’t responsible for everything, Miss Moran.”

Based on the list, Kate wasn’t responsible for much. She had been put down to serve on two committees: Motor and House. That was good, she told herself. She wouldn’t know how to do any of the rest of it. She supposed she should count herself lucky there wasn’t a separate category for instruction in the French language.

There also wasn’t a category for farm labor. She thought of Emmie’s earnest study of chickens. “But what about the farm animals? There’s no category for agricultural endeavor.”

“That comes under Supplies and Stores,” said Mrs. Rutherford. “You didn’t think we’d be caring for the animals ourselves, did you?”

“I’m not sure what we’re meant to be doing,” said Kate honestly. She wouldn’t ordinarily have admitted as much, but she was so tired, and the little circle of lamplight felt like an island in the middle of stormy seas, a space out of time.

Mrs. Rutherford looked up from her work, surprised. “I’d thought I’d explained. It’s really very simple. What we’re trying to do for them is give them the means to rebuild for themselves. We don’t want to beggar them or make them feel the objects of charity. What we do is give them the materials to work: rags for braiding, yarn for knitting, straw for weaving. We’ll run a store with food and supplies below cost—but not for free. Pride can be as important as bread. They’ve lost so much, these villagers. Many of them were once prosperous farmers, storekeepers, innkeepers, and now they’re living in holes in the ground, sharing one sheet. We need to leave them their pride.”

Pride. Kate remembered being six, and the well-meaning social worker who had singled her out at school. That had been during the lean years, when her mother had done her best, but that best hadn’t extended to new coats or shoes. And Kate had grown so terribly fast.

“That poor child,” the woman had said. “Doesn’t her family care?”