The tension drained from Marcel’s shoulders as he relaxed into the seat, and everyone left Jean to tend to him in peace. Antoine had already returned to his work, his brow pinched in a forced concentration Elaine knew well, one that was meant to push away the horror of what lay before them.
Nicole followed Elaine to the stack of papers.
“Have you heard anything of Josette?” Elaine asked. The short window of time they saw one another every other week for newspaper deliveries was their only opportunity to discuss what the other knew.
Nicole’s pale eyes darkened as she shook her head.
Josette’s nerves had unraveled and torn away at something vital within her. Her parents, in their fear for their only child, kept her locked within their home lest the Nazis detect whatever had broken, and finished the job.
“Denise?” Nicole asked.
“Nothing new.”
Nicole nodded slowly as her gaze wandered back to where Jean leaned over Marcel. A sharpness took hold of her eyes, imbued with scalding vengeance and rancor. “I wish I could kill Werner myself.”
The look was visceral, an enmity simmered in Elaine’s own soul like a pot ready to boil over. They all were in a state of agitation, their bodies exhausted but keenly alert, their empty stomachs filled only with acid that churned and roiled. And burning beneath it all was the raw hatred for the Nazis.
Either the Resistance would gain an advantage over their oppressors, or every one of them would die trying.
A month later, Elaine leaned over the desk, her pen poised over a notepad, body tensed like a horse at the races, waiting for the gate to spring open and reveal the stretch of track.
The opening notes of Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony tinkled to life; the short-short-short-long notes were Morse code for V—symbolic of the Victory they all prayed to see realized. And now, after poignant loss and powerful suffering, that time might finally be coming to fruition.
Elaine was not alone as she leaned over the radio, ears straining to listen behind the pierce of whining and cracking static meant to jam up the message. Nothing could keep them from gathering the codes that had been rattled off in a seemingly endless stream in the last week. On June 1, there had been over two hundred messages.
Marcel had translated them with tears shimmering in his eyes. The Allies were coming.
He was beside her now along with Antoine, each with their own pad and pen to ensure nothing was missed.
“The long sobs of the violins of autumn,” the broadcaster’s voice said in French.
Antoine, a man never given to emotion, sucked in his breath.
“It is happening,” Marcel said with reverent awe. In the month since his escape from the Nazis, his bruises had all healed and he was left with only a limp and ten patches of unnaturally smooth skin where his fingernails once grew.
Before Elaine could ask what he meant, the second message came. “Wound my heart with a monotonous languor.”
Marcel looked to Antoine and nodded. “Go.”
Antoine was already halfway from the chair when he received the order.
“The Allies will be here in less than twenty-four hours,” Marcel said swiftly in the breath between messages.
A tingle of excitement had but a second to prickle through Elaine’s veins before the next code came, its swift delivery demanding her full attention. But as she wrote down line after line of seemingly nonsensical statements, that fledgling tingle blossomed into the tangible flare of hope.
Once the stream of messages concluded, Marcel turned to Elaine, a smile spreading over his healing face. “Sarah and Noah are safe and will hopefully depart for America soon.”
Elation soared through Elaine. “Is it really true?”