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How could it all have gone so wrong?

I think back to April, when Jeannette left. Lucien and Charlotte didn’t have passports, so I couldn’t have gotten them to England, but we could at least have headed south to the free zone before the bombing started, back before there were zones at all, back before travel papers were required—travel papers denied to Jews. Except I was so certain that if I called Jeannette’s mother enough times, someone would pick up. I even considered going back a few months to get the address from Jeannette, so I could leave the children there. And then, one day, I found the address on a letter tucked in a book, and discovered the entire block was now rubble. Which meant that, had I time traveled to get the address, the children would be dead. Because of me.

If the Germans come for them in Saint Antoine, that will be because of me too.

What I might do, and what I might do wrong. The topic consumes me. I could go back to the days when Jeannette first disappeared, and tell my previous self to take the children to the free zone—but now fear holds me in place. Anything could go awry on the way and I wouldn’t be able to fix it, not if it meant leaving three young children out in the open, without supervision. We are alive now, and I’m terrified I might change that, the way I nearly did once already. I could travel back to the day before Marie ran off and explain to her why she shouldn’t leave—tell her I need her to take Cecelia to England so at least one of the children is safe—but if I do, I may be stripping her of a life with Edouard. And who knows what might go wrong instead?

The questions make my gift feel more like a curse, and I’m angry about all of it. We shouldn’t be trapped. Lucien and Charlotte, children who’ve just lost their mother, shouldn’t have to live like fugitives. Charlotte shouldn’t have to stare out the window each day, hoping her mother might come back. I shouldn’t need to sleep with an ear open each night—waiting for the Germans or the constant threat of intruders, those who escaped Paris on foot and come through the farm now stealing chickens and fruit.

I shouldn’t have to fight off this black-heartedness all over again. I don’t want to let the ugly piece of me back into the light, and I worry with every day that passes I’ll eventually have no choice.

* * *

Early in September, Charlotte stops staring out the window. For days she is quiet, her small face unreadable. I try to draw her out, bribe her with bits of rationed chocolate or a game, but nothing quite works. Then one afternoon, while Cecelia is pulling herself up on the bench, and Lucien marches around the room chanting some nonsense rhyme he’s made up, Charlotte climbs into my lap and presses her head to my chest. “Are you going to be my mother now?” she asks.

I hesitate. In a way it feels like a bigger promise than I should make—if a relative appears I might be forced to give the children up, and I don’t want her to count on me if she can’t. But what does she need most? Does she need some tenuous promise of care until a better option arrives, or does she need to believe there is someone in the world who will always love her? Agreeing means far more than she could ever realize: it’s an unholy alliance with that dark piece of me. The one that will kill what stands in my way, including anyone who tries to take her from me, even if their right to her is greater than my own.

“Would you like me to be?” I ask. Charlotte will be eleven when the war ends, and Lucien will be seven. He won’t even remember another mother but me. I picture some hapless, well-intentioned relative finding us and trying to take them from me and taste metal in my mouth, blood pumping heavy and fast in my veins, surging with that desperate need to destroy.

She nods, and I squeeze my eyes shut.

“Then yes,” I say, pulling her close. It feels like the right decision, and the worst choice I’ve ever made, all at the same time.

* * *

A week later the Germans come. There isn’t enough time to hide Charlotte and Lucien in the barn, and Lucien is still too young to stay quiet when asked. As the Germans are pulling up in front of the house, I rush the two of them to my room and lower them out the window closest to the woods.

“Run to the end of the vineyard and wait for me,” I tell them. “Hold hands, and don’t make a sound.”

I climb back in and head toward the door, placing the gun under a dish towel on the table. That dark piece of me doesn’t want to hide the gun at all. It wants to hurt them for doing this to us, for scaring me, for forcing me to tell a two-year-old and a five-year-old to run for their lives.

I open the door and find two soldiers there, boys themselves. They both look embarrassed.

“Good day, madame,” one of them says politely. “I apologize, but I’ve been sent to retrieve your cow and your chickens.”

I swallow hard. I’m not a citizen, and no one knows Lucien and Charlotte are here, which means Cece is the only person in this house who receives a ration card, and it’s a half-ration at that. Without the cow and chickens, we will lose our eggs and milk and cheese. The vines and trees will soon be bare, so we’ll be left to subsist on tinned food and nothing more.

I could kill them both in a heartbeat and be done with it, I think. Except they are barely children themselves, doing a job they don’t want to do. And killing them will only bring questions that will cause more trouble.

“I need eggs and milk for my daughter,” I reply. I want to wince at the sound of begging in my voice.

He frowns. “I’m sorry, madame.” He flushes and looks at the soldier beside him. “Perhaps you might be allowed to keep one of the chickens?”

He’s asking the other soldier more than he’s asking me, and taking a risk. His compatriot’s eyes widen and then he gives a small, terse nod.

I watch as they load the chickens into a cage, leaving me one, and then drive away at a snail’s pace, the cow tied behind them.

Once they’re out of sight I place Cece in her crib and run as hard as I can to Lucien and Charlotte. I fall to the ground when I find them, pulling them against me tighter than I should.

I can’t lose them. I can’t lose Cece. The thought terrifies me.

And the terror makes me angrier than I’ve ever been. Angrier than is probably safe.

35

SARAH

November.