Nanée wanted to object, to say she hadn’t been doing exactly that, saying goodbye to the zinc tub and the little chair in the greenhouse where she liked to read, the clock on the mantel that refused to recognize the passage of time, the pond they’d rescued from ruin, and the view from the belvedere to the sea, the trees so often hung with art.
“In case,” she admitted. “In case I decide to go . . .” Not home. This villa was more home than anywhere she had ever lived, their makeshift family more family to her than anyone back in Evanston. “In case I decide to go back.”
T wiped away a tear. “How will I bear it here without you? I know you should go. I want you to. But I want you to stay too. Selfishly, I want you to stay. I ask myself, Who could get away with all you get away with? Who will manage the money exchanges? Who will glide through the Marseille streets to deliver messages? But in my heart, it’s, Who will light the fire every night and start us singing? Never mind that you can’t carry a tune. Who will make Danny laugh?”
“I can too carry a tune.”
“You can’t, but I love the way you sing anyway. We all love the way you sing.” T smoothed the suit still in her hands. “I can let you go, but I can’t lose you. And this is . . . You might . . . You’ll need to appear as convincing as you possibly can. A woman of substance. A woman no one would—”
“I don’t have any stockings.”
“Nan, nobody has stockings anymore.”
“That suit would hardly be appropriate for hiking over the Pyrenees.” Again with a lightness she didn’t feel.
“It’s not Aero-Chanel, I’ll give you that. But you’ve never been one for dressing appropriately. You just like to pretend you are.”
How comfortable she’d felt in that Chanel dress and flight jacket, even at the Surrealist exposition that had so discomfited her. And of course T was right. The skirts Nanée wore to deliver messages in the Panier were not appropriate for a wealthy American woman traveling first class. Her trousers, elegant enough, would draw the wrong kind of attention. And she was too big to borrow anything of T’s, too small for Jacqueline’s.
She walked away from the damn suit in T’s lap, to the window. It was dark outside and light in the bedroom, so that the windowglass reflected a dim version of her own face back at her. “I didn’t even free him,” she said.
“Edouard?” T’s voice turning toward her. “But you had no way to know he wasn’t at that camp.”
“I didn’t even free him,” she repeated.
“It was still a brave thing you did, Nan. Brave and selfless. Giving yourself to that man there. You were saving a man’s life.”
“I didn’t give myself to him.” Wanting to tell T, to set down her anger and her shame.
“But . . .”
Nanée watched as T, reflected in the window, held the suit to her chest.
“I don’t mean to . . . I’m sorry. I just . . . I thought you had sex with him. I thought that’s how you got Edouard’s release.”
Nanée kept her gaze focused on their reflections as T stood, looking from the suit jacket in her hands to the cold fireplace where it might have burned. “Pffft,” she said after a moment, that handy little noise she’d learned from the French girls, a way to dismiss something you lacked the words to address.
T set the suit on the bed, came to stand beside her, and put her arms around her. “Oh, Nan,” she whispered.
Her body felt so slight, her friendship so warm.
“I’m sorry,” T said. “I’m sorry. I didn’t . . .”
She put one hand on each cheek then and made Nanée meet her gaze, the way she had done with Peterkin when she said goodbye to him in Brive, when she needed him to know how much he was loved.
“I promise you, Nan, that isn’t your shame.” She wiped a tear from Nanée’s cheek. “That’s his shame. It’s all his.”
Saturday, December 7, 1940
VILLA AIR-BEL
Nanée stood at her bedroom window, staring out into the moonlight on the plane trees and the belvedere and the garden, trying not to think of the Robert Piguet suit in her armoire, her suitcase packed now with her own things and Luki’s, which would be less dangerous in her possession than in Edouard’s. In the quiet of the late night, she remembered that first time she’d listened to the quiet here, out on the belvedere with Miriam and T.
If Edouard didn’t come tonight, that would be his choice. His daughter. His decision. Luki still wanted her mother to return from heaven. He would have to decide what was right for them all.