“East,” repeated Julia grimly. “She said something about going to Moyencourt after a lost child and a goat.”
A lost child. And a goat.
“Zélie? It has to be Zélie. But they all arrived. . . .” Emmie tried desperately to remember who she’d seen at the refugee center. She could picture Marie’s son Yves, the nine-year-old girl who helped milk the cows, and Mme Lenois’s toddler, of course—but not Zélie. She stared at Julia, feeling a growing sense of horror. “Oh no.”
Moyencourt. Three miles from Grécourt. It was where Florence had sent their animals. Including the goats. What had Kate told her yesterday? Zélie had been devastated. She was only five. A five-year-old with no family. With nothing but that goat.
“Oh no,” Emmie said again, feeling the guilt all the way down in her bones. “I never realized—I just assumed she was with the others. But Kate—”
“It’s been four hours,” said Julia remorselessly. “Even on these roads, it shouldn’t have taken more than an hour each way.”
“If something happened to her, we need to find her.” Emmie started the White, praying the engine would catch.
“We don’t know how far the Germans have come.”
The night was terrible with the sound of battles being fought to the east, the crack of rifle fire, the rumbles of explosions, the sound of booted feet marching, the whine of airplanes overhead, as the Germans tried to bomb the railways and the roads, and their boys, American and British and French and Canadian, took to the skies to stop them. The Germans could be anywhere, crossing the canals at Canizy, fighting hand to hand in the woods near Offoy, creeping through the fog toward Moyencourt.
It was madness to go forward, into goodness only knew what.
“We can’t leave her,” Emmie said stubbornly. “If you want to wait for me here, you can. But I’m going.”
Julia leaned back with something of her old air of insouciance. “Lead on, MacDuff.”
“It’s lay on,” said Emmie, her breath catching on a sob.
“I don’t think it matters,” said Julia, picking up a gas mask and setting it down next to Emmie. “Do you?”
The sentry wasn’t pleased with them. “What are you doing?” he demanded as Emmie accelerated past, as fast as the White would go, dust rising in her wake. “Miss! Miss! You don’t want to go that way!”
Emmie ignored him, bumping the car down the rutted road, trying to remember the way to Moyencourt.
“Left,” said Julia. “Your other left. We need to go north.”
Emmie wrenched the truck left, trying to keep her eyes on the road and search the verge at the same time. “When she left, I never thought—I was so busy—there were so many people to feed—”
“Spilled milk,” said Julia succinctly. “Think. Which way would she have gone?”
Emmie took a deep breath. “The road to Ercheu.”
There were side roads, cart tracks, really, but Kate was more likely to have stuck with the road she knew. She’d been back and forth on the road to Ercheu for a good part of the day.
They had come down this same road only this morning, on the way from Grécourt. In the last eighteen hours, the landscape had grown infinitely more desolate, with wheelbarrows and luggage abandoned by the side of the road and a downed German plane smoldering in a field. Emmie could smell burning metal and acrid smoke.
There were signs of accidents everywhere, twisted bicycles and burned-out trucks. Emmie thought of the woman whose husband had been run over by a cart, and wondered if Kate was lying somewhere, broken and lifeless.
She hunched over the wheel, drawing as far to the side as she dared to avoid an army camion. “It’s my fault Kate’s here. I made her come.”
“Ha,” said Julia roughly. “Have you ever seen anyone make Kate do anything?”
The driver of the camion braked, leaning out the window. “It’s the Smith Unit, isn’t it? There’s no one here to collect. Go back. It’s not safe anymore.”
“We’re looking for one of our own.” Emmie wished her voice sounded less wobbly. “Have you seen a Ford jitney?”
There was a brief consultation. The head reemerged. “There was a truck abandoned by the road at the crossroads just east of Ercheu—it might have been a Ford.”
Emmie appreciated that he didn’t try to stop them, just gave them a quick précis of everything he knew of current troop movements, which wasn’t much.