She looked to Edouard: his square face, the mole at the end of his left brow, the startling willow-green eyes as steeped in sadness as they had been the night she first met him, at that exposition she hadn’t wanted to attend. His Leica, slung by its strap around his neck, hung at his side. He nodded as solemnly as his daughter had. His suitcase, the negatives hidden in the baguette inside it, sat on the floor by the door. No rucksack. Only Germans carried rucksacks, and he would need to pass as anything but German on the path over the Pyrenees.
Edouard said he’d like to take a group photograph to remember everyone by, so they gathered on the belvedere for the natural light, arms around one another to fit more tightly together. Nanée scooped Dagobert up and held him, then set a hand on Luki’s shoulder and looked out to the long, wide stretch of France framed by the neat row of boxwoods and the tree trunks and the lacy branches: the pine and olive trees, the red-tiled roofs, the paths of the railroad and the trolley, and, this morning, a gorgeous blue sea. It was somehow easier to imagine leaving it in the bright light. She loved France, but she could leave it, if only she could take Danny and T and Dagobert with her, if only she could take this feeling of being useful, of being intrepid, of doing good.
Edouard set his camera on the tripod he would leave behind. He framed the shot, adjusted the settings, and showed Madame Nouget what to press. He joined them then, sliding one arm around Nanée’s waist and setting his free hand on Luki’s other shoulder. Nanée let go of Luki now that her father was beside her, to get Dagobert to look toward Madame Nouget as she pressed the shutter release.
Edouard took back the camera and slung it around his neck, then put on his gray felt fedora. “All right then,” he said.
“Wait.” Nanée set Dagobert down, took the hat from Edouard’s head, and looked at the leather sweatband inside, his initials there, ELM. He was to be traveling as Henri Roux.
She took the fountain pen that had been her father’s from her coat pocket and used the nib to scratch Edouard’s initials out.
“I’m obliged to act the criminal,” Edouard said.
At the pain in his voice, Nanée lifted hers. “Misbehavior can be awfully fun if you embrace it,” she said. She wanted to set the hat on his head and kiss him, but she only handed it back to him and slid the pen into her coat pocket.
“I almost forgot, I have something for Pemmy,” she said, pulling out the oversize safety-pin brooch, silver and Bakelite red, she’d tucked in her pocket first thing that morning. She knelt in front of Luki the way she’d knelt that night to clean up after Rose, and she pinned the baby kangaroo safely to his mother. “So Pemmy won’t lose Joey on her way to America.”
This is real, she thought again. They were leaving.
“That makes Joey so happy that he wants to sing for you,” Luki said, and she wound the key on the baby kangaroo and let it go so that the little music box buried inside him played “The Waltz of the Flowers.”
Nanée smiled at Edouard, wishing she had a way to similarly connect him and Luki. “It makes Pemmy happy too, I bet.”
“Yes, Pemmy too,” Edouard agreed.
“Except Pemmy doesn’t sing,” Luki said. “Only Joey sings.”
They began the goodbyes again, all of them hugging Edouard and Luki and wishing luck to Nanée, no one but T and Varian with any idea that she might not return.
“I’ll see you in New York, then,” Varian said, the send-off Nanée had come to see less as a sign of Varian’s optimism than as a way for him to inspire confidence in his protégés as they embarked on this perilous journey.
Only T hugged her. T hugged her and whispered, “Ask Lisa to send the suit back to me if she can. It will remind me to be selfless and brave.”
“Now remember,” Edouard said to Luki, “Nanée is going to hold your hand the whole way. I’ll be with you, just behind you or just ahead.”
“But I want to go with you, Papa. I want to be on the train with you.”
“I’ll be in the compartment just next to you. You’ll follow me as we board so you can see where I am. You can knock on the wall anytime, and I’ll knock back.”
Luki looked dubious, but she turned to Nanée. “Can we read together, like we did on the train before? Will you teach me the words?”
“I would like that,” Nanée said.
She stooped down to Dagobert’s level. He licked her bare wrist, then her face. This is real, she thought once again. They were leaving. She would go with them to a place that didn’t feel like home. She would leave Dagobert here in France, which wasn’t her home and yet felt more like a home than anywhere she had ever lived.