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I wave back and attempt to stretch my lips into a smile.
I give Bailey another reward and do my shopping while continuing our training session.
I don’t run into Violet again in the store. I can’t text or email or phone her. If her husband is anything like mine was, he’ll be monitoring all that.
Like what usually happens when I walk with Bailey, I feel the gazes of the people who spot her vest as we walk around the store. Their curiosity about it prevents me from being invisible like I was before she came into my life.
I keep my head down, hiding my face.
I pay for the groceries, and Bailey and I walk back to the building where my bike and trailer are parked.
Taking care not to aggravate my ribs, I pedal home, thankful Iris’s bike is a comfort bike instead of a regular one. The higher handlebars put less strain on my ribs than a regular bike would. But even then, I have to pedal slowly and walk up any slopes that are too much for the healing cut on my thigh to manage.
I park the bike and trailer in the garage and unlock the back door to the house. Bailey walks past me as I punch in the alarm code. I shut the door, lock it, and reengage the alarm.
It’s only then I let what happened in the store with Violet replay in my head. The bruises. The denial. The shell-shocked voice. And my mind slips to another time and place, when my husband had accused me of cheating on him. I had taken a beating for that lie. I tried to escape with Amelia the next night, promising her we would go somewhere he wouldn’t find us. But that didn’t happen. A cop pulled my car over while I was driving to a motel.
And all the comments from the few months prior had returned in droves. Comments from my husband’s colleagues about postpartum depression. Recommendations that I get help. All part of his plan to manipulate me. To make sure I couldn’t get custody of Amelia.
I shake the memory away. My husband is dead. He can’t hurt me anymore.
Unfortunately, my life didn’t start over once he died—not in the way I had dreamed of so many times.
But now, I’m finally getting my new start. In Maple Ridge. With a man who makes me feel happy, appreciated, safe. I’m getting the chance at the life I’d once dreamed of.
A life minus my daughter.
That part hurts.
Robyn feels I’m not ready yet to be in Amelia’s life again—I’m still too much of a mess. Grace doesn’t trust me enough because of where I spent the past five years. Which I get. I really do.
Maybe one day soon Violet will get to live the life she dreams of and share it with her daughter.
And I hopefully, by then, won’t still be trying to prove myself worthy of seeing Amelia.
17
Angelique
July 1943
France
* * *
The late afternoon breeze brushes strands of hair into my face as I pedal towards Jacques’s vineyard. But the breeze isn’t enough to cool my heated body.
Baker Street recently approved a new drop zone, so while Johann was away, I’ve been busy recruiting safe houses. My body is ready to call it quits after I spent the past two days cycling almost non-stop.
Johann is due back this evening, and then I’ll have to explain to him about Oskar and his family’s disappearance. It’s a conversation I’m not prepared for. No matter how many times I’ve thought it through, I haven’t been able to think of a way to break the news.
I steer down the driveway and approach the barn. The door is wide open. I know I closed it when I left this morning. Jacques must have forgotten to shut it after retrieving some equipment. Or perhaps he is still in there.
Or…or the Nazis decided to search the property. A collaborator reported us. Someone from the local resistance group was captured and pointed a finger at me.
Anything is possible.
But if that were the case, the Gestapo or SS would still be here. Unless they didn’t find the hidden cellar in the barn or any of my SOE-related items hidden in my room.
