The hospital gown was a crumpled pile on the floor. She left it where it lay and strode from the room, looking more like a visitor than a patient. She kept her gait slow to avoid calling attention to her limp and strode from the hall leading to the rose garden outside. No one stopped her as she pushed on the door and walked into the heat of the summer sunshine.
Etienne was at her side immediately. He took her arm and guided her down a path to where a white van idled with its gasogene tank jutting awkwardly from its rear, a necessity to turn wood into fuel when only Nazis had access to petrol. Elaine immediately recognized it as the one sometimes used by Marcel to transport large deliveries for their false geological company.
“Marcel?” She quickened her pace, her pulse racing with the hope of seeing him once more. If she had been fortunate with her injury, perhaps the gun had delivered a similar blow to him as well.
But as Etienne caught up to her, he gently shook his head.
“Jean?” she asked, her voice pitching with a note of desperation.
His gaze lowered as he opened the van to reveal a young man with blond hair, someone Elaine had never seen before. Etienne helped her climb into the seat before jumping in beside her and slamming the door closed.
Marcel was dead. Sixteen bullet wounds had seen to that, the last of which being inflicted by his own hand. Finally, after three rounds of arrest, he had made sure they would never capture him again.
Jean was arrested and interrogated. But despite the torture, he did not speak against his fellow comrades. He died by firing squad, refusing the blindfold, opting instead to face the men who would end his life. Where once he had doubted his strength to remain silent, he had now proven himself more than capable, dying a hero.
The automatic printing press that Marcel had painstakingly transported across France and spent months assembling was now destroyed, but the old Minerva had been salvaged. It was on that archaic press that Elaine would eventually return to her work several weeks later in a new location. The warehouse was destroyed by a vengeful Werner, and the operation was forced to move to a narrow, insulated basement without windows and only one door.
As soon as she was able, she went to Nicole’s apartment and found the address of the camp where her friend’s brother and father were located, resuming the task of sending supplies. It was the least Elaine could do for Nicole and wished there could have been more.
Two months later, the Allied forces surrounded Lyon. Rather than consider a tactful strategy for exit, Klaus Barbie ordered the execution of hundreds of Montluc’s inmates. Now backed with the power of the oncoming army, the Resistance rose up against their oppressors and managed to retake the prison before more French blood could be spilled. By August 25th, the tricolor flag flew over Montluc Prison once more. It was a victory Elaine had almost lost hope of ever witnessing.
There were other accounts of the Germans fleeing in those next ten days, abandoning their posts and scattering like vermin when a light was flipped on. They inflicted their extreme cruelty to the very end, even firing upon women and children scavenging after a Nazi infirmary was abandoned on Tête d’Or and left precious commodities like blankets, sugar, and soap scattered in the street. Forty-six were slain that terrible day with over one hundred left wounded.
It was that particular story Elaine was writing the first day of September when Etienne entered through the solitary door and slowly approached, his stare bright. She pushed up to her feet as he stopped before her desk, his hands folded together in front of him.
“Etienne.” A million thoughts crowded her mind. But one more than all the rest. “Is it Joseph?”
It was in that knee-jerk reaction, that ready question on her lips and in her heart when she realized she had never truly abandoned the hope he might have somehow survived this terrible war.
Etienne shook his head slowly.
Elaine exhaled a pained breath, hating herself for having hoped for the impossible. After all she had lived through, she was far too much of a realist to entertain such whimsy.