A dress. Not hers.

She clutched it to her bare breasts and looked up.

“Put it on,” he said.

Her hands were shaking as she stood and stepped awkwardly into the wrinkled, shapeless blue linen dress that was at least three sizes too large. It took forever to button the sagging bodice.

“The Nightingale,” he said, taking a long drag on his cigarette. The tip glowed red-orange and Isabelle instinctively shrank into the chair.

Schmidt. That was his name. “I don’t know anything about birds,” she said.

“You are Juliette Gervaise,” he said.

“I have told you that a hundred times.”

“And you know nothing about the Nightingale.”

“This is what I’ve told you.”

He nodded sharply and Isabelle immediately heard footsteps, and then the door behind her creaked open.

She thought: It doesn’t hurt, it’s just my body. They can’t touch my soul. It had become her mantra.

“We are done with you.”

He was smiling at her in a way that made her skin crawl.

“Bring him in.”

A man stumbled forward in shackles.

Papa.

She saw horror in his eyes and knew how she looked: split lip and blackened eyes and torn cheek … cigarette burns on her forearms, blood matted in her hair. She should stay still, stand where she was, but she couldn’t. She limped forward, gritting her teeth at the pain.

There were no bruises on his face, no cuts on his lip, no arm held close to his body in pain.

They hadn’t beaten or tortured him, which meant they hadn’t interrogated him. “I am the Nightingale,” her father said to the man who’d tortured her. “Is that what you need to hear?”

She shook her head, said no in a voice so soft no one heard.

“I am the Nightingale,” she said, standing on burned, bloody feet. She turned to the German who had tortured her.

Schmidt laughed. “You, a girl? The infamous Nightingale?”

Her father said something in English to the German, who clearly didn’t understand.

Isabelle understood: They could speak in English.

Isabelle was close enough to her father to touch him, but she didn’t. “Don’t do this,” she begged.

“It’s done,” he said. The smile he gave her was slow in forming, and when it came, she felt pain constrict her chest. Memories came at her in waves, surging over the breakwater she’d built in the isolated years. Him sweeping her into his arms, twirling her around; picking her up from a fall, dusting her off, whispering, Not so loud, my little terror, you’ll wake your maman …

She drew in short, shallow breaths and wiped her eyes. He was trying to make it up to her, asking for forgiveness and seeking redemption all at once, sacrificing himself for her. It was a glimpse of who he’d once been, the poet her maman had fallen in love with. That man, the one before the war, might have known another way, might have found the perfect words to heal their fractured past. But he wasn’t that man anymore. He had lost too much, and in his loss, he’d thrown more away. This was the only way he knew to tell her he loved her. “Not this way,” she whispered.

“There is no other. Forgive me,” he said softly.

The Gestapo stepped between them. He grabbed her father by the arm and pulled him toward the door.

Isabelle limped after them. “I am the Nightingale!” she called out.

The door slammed in her face. She hobbled to the cell’s window, clutching the rough, rusty bars. “I am the Nightingale!” she screamed.

Outside, beneath a yellow morning sun, her father was dragged into the square, where a firing squad stood at the ready, rifles raised.

Her father stumbled forward, lurched across the cobblestoned square, past a fountain. Morning sunlight gave everything a golden, beautiful glow.

“We were supposed to have time,” she whispered, feeling tears start. How often had she imagined a new beginning for her and Papa, for all of them? They would come together after the war, Isabelle and Vianne and Papa, learn to laugh and talk and be a family again.

Now it would never happen; she would never get to know her father, never feel the warmth of his hand in hers, never fall asleep on the divan beside him, never be able to say all that needed to be said between them. Those words were lost, turned into ghosts that would drift away, unsaid. They would never be the family maman had promised. “Papa,” she said; it was such a big word suddenly, a dream in its entirety.

He turned and faced the firing squad. She watched him stand taller and square his shoulders. He pushed the white strands of hair from his dry eyes. Across the square, their gazes met. She clutched the bars harder, clinging to them for support.

“I love you,” he mouthed.

Shots rang out.

*   *   *

Vianne hurt all over.

She lay in bed, bracketed by her sleeping children, trying not to remember last night’s rape in excruciating detail.

Moving slowly, she went to the pump and washed up in cold water, wincing every time she touched an area that was bruised.

She dressed in what was easy—a wrinkled linen button-up dress with a fitted bodice and flared skirt.

All night, she’d lain awake in bed, holding her children close, alternately weeping for what he’d done to her—what he’d taken from her—and fuming that she couldn’t stop it.

She wanted to kill him.

She wanted to kill herself.

What would Antoine think of her now?

Truthfully, the biggest part of her wanted to curl up in a ball in some dark corner and never show her face again.

But even that—shame—was a luxury these days. How could she worry about herself when Isabelle was in prison and their father was going to try to save her?

“Sophie,” she said when they’d finished their breakfast of dry toast and a poached egg. “I have an errand to run today. You will stay home with Daniel. Lock the door.”

“Von Richter—”

“Is gone until tomorrow.” She felt her face grow hot. This was the kind of intimacy she shouldn’t know. “He told me so last … night.” Her voice broke on the last word.

Sophie rose. “Maman?”

Vianne dashed tears away. “I’m fine. But I must go. Be good.” She kissed both of them good-bye and rushed out before she could start thinking of reasons to stay.

Like Sophie and Daniel.

And Von Richter. He said he was leaving for the night, but who knew? He could always have her followed. But if she worried too much about “what ifs” she would never get anything done. In the time she’d been hiding Jewish children, she had learned to go on despite her fear.

She had to help Isabelle—

(Don’t come back.)

(I’ll turn you in myself.)

—and Papa if she could.

She boarded the train and sat on a wooden bench in the third-class carriage. Several of the other passengers—mostly women—sat with their heads down, hands clasped in their laps. A tall Hauptsturmführer stood guard by the door, his gun at the ready. A squad of narrow-eyed Milice—the brutal Vichy police—sat in another part of the carriage.

Vianne didn’t look at either of the women in the compartment with her. One of them stank of garlic and onions. The smell made Vianne faintly sick in the hot, airless compartment. Fortunately, her destination was not far away, and just after ten o’clock in the morning, she disembarked at the small train station on the outskirts of Girot.

Now what?

The sun rode high overhead, baking the small town into a stupor. Vianne clutched her handbag close, felt perspiration crawl down her back and drip from her temples. Many of the sand-colored buildings had been bombed; piles of rubble were everywhere. A blue Cross of Lorraine had been painted onto the stone sides of an abandoned school.

She encountered few people on the crooked, cobblestoned streets. Now and then a girl on a bicycle or a boy with a wheelbarrow would thump and rattle past her, but for the most part, what she noticed was the silence, an air of desertion.