The Last Time I Saw Paris (24 page)

“Who was it?”

He shifted the bag in his hand and cleared his throat. “His name was André Paldiel. Our forger. He made identification cards.”

Claire’s breath caught in her throat. “The boy? The teenager?”

“Yes.” His gaze held hers, his eyes dark with pain.

The constriction in the bottom of her throat choked her. She fought the urge to reach for his bruised cheek and instead stroked the rose’s soft petals with the tips of her fingers.

“Alright, then.” Claire tucked the blossom in her lapel and led Grey out. Locking the door behind them, she shoved the shop keys through the mail slot.

They clattered as they hit the stone floor.

“This way.” Grey slipped into the darkness against the building.

They kept to the shadows for several blocks and found a car idling in an alley. Grey opened the door and they got in the back. The car was old, torn seats scratched the back of Claire’s legs. It smelled of stale sweat and cigarette smoke.

The driver glanced back at them in the mirror. He pulled the car into the street and turned into another alley. Claire studied him in the rearview mirror as he drove. He was short and stocky, his face set in a resigned frown. His beret was pulled down low; a handmade cigarette smoldered between creased lips.

Claire held her bag on her lap, her gaze outside. In the narrow alleys, it was as if they were gliding down dark, sinister canyons, neither the Arc de Triomphe nor the tower was visible. She brushed her hair from her face. Her fingers smelled of roses. She closed her eyes and let the empty darkness swallow her.

C
laire awoke to tapping on glass. The car was parked, engine silent. Grey was gone and the driver was peering in at her through the passenger window. He jerked his thumb toward the building next to them.

Body stiff and eyes gritty, Claire climbed out of the car. The brightening sky revealed a row of warehouses. She picked up her bag and walked through an open door. The dusty building was empty but for one beaten-up old farm truck. Smoke-green, a bent radiator grill, and wooden slats over the truck bed.

Grey slammed the truck’s back gate closed and walked around. “Your case,” he said, reaching for her bag then dropping it in the cab behind the seat. He held the door for her and offered a hand. “Ready?”

Claire hitched her dress up above her knees and scrambled up into the cab. She slid back into the seat and stared down at Grey, one eyebrow raised.

The edges of his lips turned up as he swung into the cab and turned on the ignition. With a coughing rumble and a black cloud of smoke, the truck came to life. Grey needed both hands to shove the shift lever into first.

“Where are they?” Claire turned to look behind the seat for the escapees.

Grey let out the clutch to the sound of grinding metal. They rolled through the doors. “Safe.”

Fifteen minutes of steady driving took them to the northern edge of town. It was the industrial side of Paris Claire had never seen. Smokestacks, factories and cavernous warehouses. Claire rolled down the window to weaken the smell of burning oil inside the cab, but here the air was a mix of smoke, oil and acrid chemicals. Hunched men and women hurried like ants to join the morning shift.

The air tasted metallic on her tongue. “What is this place?”

“Paris’ war effort for the
Vaterland
,” Grey said, his mouth twisted. “Ironworks, steel, pharmaceuticals.”

They pulled over at a checkpoint, north of Saint-Denis, where a few cars and trucks waited off the road’s edge. A gendarme stepped up to the window, scrutinized their permit and listened to Grey’s story.
Sold all the season’s beets, going home to the farm north of Beauvais.
Claire was amazed by Grey’s perfect farmer’s French. He was as English to her as Prince Edward. Hell, even more so. But today, just a simple French beet farmer.

A second gendarme opened the back of the truck. His heavy boots thumped around the empty truck bed. After a moment, the truck shook as he jumped to the ground. The gendarme at the window motioned them forward. Claire sat back and exhaled as Grey accelerated back onto the road.

The sun broke free from the horizon as they pulled onto a smaller road and headed northwest. She kept her gaze out the window. Open farmland, giant strands of heavy trees, a small village in the distance, church spire puncturing the sky. Madame Palain would have arrived at the shop by now. Claire rubbed her burning eyes.

The engine growled as they lumbered over hills. They turned onto a hard-packed dirt road. The truck jumped and swayed as they bottomed out over a deep hole. Grey flinched and cursed. After the truck righted itself, he stretched an arm behind to the back wall of the cab and rapped hard twice.

A moment and two raps back.

“You still don’t trust me?” Claire said.

Grey could only spare her a glance; he struggled to keep the truck on the road. “If we were searched, it would be better for you not to know.”

Claire tightened her lips; she stared back out the window. They’d squandered her life, and still, she wasn’t trusted.

“Claire—” Grey cleared his throat, let the truck coast to a stop. “I, we, didn’t expect you would be questioned. There was no reason for them to suspect you.”

“So what happened, then?”

“You caught somebody’s eye. It wasn’t your fault.” He shoved the shift stick forward, the gears ground. “I’m sorry I ever got you involved in this.”

“In rue Saussaies?”

“In everything.”

Claire leaned back in her seat, settled her chin in her palm, her elbow wedged against the door. “Thank you.” She stole a glance at him out of the corner of her eye when she realized what he meant. Grey was the
who
Odette referred to that believed in Claire, but never named. Not Laurent. Well, damn.

 

 

T
he truck bucked over a road that grew more narrow and rutted. They entered a dense forest, towering trees cut out the sky. A steep climb, the engine protested and they crested the top of a hill. For a moment they were above the trees in the bright summer sun. Before them lay more woodland, then open farmland and orchards. In the distance a small village was tucked inside a thick forest.

“Lyons-la-forêt. But we are going there.” Grey pointed toward a dense grove to the north.

“Secluded,” Claire said.

Grey grinned. “No formal balls for you.”

Claire threw him a dark glance. She had the awful feeling she was being hauled back to the French version of the farm she had escaped from long ago, the rebellious pig being dragged to slaughter.

They descended back into the forest and its shade, crossed over a heavy wooden bridge, then turned onto rutted tire tracks. Another half hour of bucking, and they pulled into a dirt farmyard. The house was a ramshackle thing backed up to the trees, constructed from bricks and heavy timbers in the Normandy tradition. Heavy dark beams crossed the walls; too many hard seasons had made the high-peaked wooden roof cant at an awkward angle.

A tilting barn of the same construction sat across the yard. A small orchard on one side, surrounded by a half-fallen fence. Many of the trees had broken branches or leaned wildly. It must have been years since this place was guided by a human hand.

They parked next to a rusted wooden wagon, listing wheels half-buried in farmyard muck. Claire slid out of the truck, dropped to the ground and glared at the dust that swirled over her legs. She struggled to swallow, her mouth suddenly dry. She could taste the weariness and despair in the dirt.

“Never been off the pavement before, princess?” Grey said.

Her ears buzzed and eyes ached. “Never,” she said, venom lacing her tone. She slammed the passenger door closed.

Grey grabbed a crowbar from behind the seat and clattered into the back of the truck. Claire watched him pry at a thin board on the floor against the cab. A snap and an entire section of floor gave way, leaving an opening just large enough for a body to wriggle through.

Out of the darkness slid a slender teenaged girl, dark haired, a prim grey dress, ruffled at the neck. She held a leather monogrammed duffel and a wide briefcase. She turned around and reached in behind her. A small girl, maybe four, scrambled out. Her hair was the color of wheat, her face tear-streaked and her blue eyes red. A hand was shoved against her mouth, small sniffles escaped. She wore a blue dress that ended in ruffles above her knees; the fabric was wet below her waist.

The dark-haired girl scooped the young one up and strode across the truck bed. She ignored Claire’s outstretched arms as she clambered down and hefted her bags.

Grey reached deeper into the opening, turned back to Claire. “A bit of a hand here?”

Claire scrambled to his side. When her eyes adjusted to the darkness, she could see the compartment was just bigger than a bathtub. It smelled of sweat, urine and blood. Blankets had been tacked up along every surface. A man lay stretched on his back, his arm and shoulder swathed in bandages. His eyes were closed.

“He’s passed out. We need to get him inside.”

Claire shimmied inside the opening and reached for the man’s shoulders. With Grey half in, tugging on the man’s legs, and Claire at his head, they slid him out feetfirst.

Grey handed her a key and motioned toward the house. A medieval looking thing, but the heavy front door screeched open. The small windows next to the door didn’t offer much light. Claire lit the nub of a candle that sat on a table near the door.

The inside wasn’t nearly as decrepit as the outside. Not too long ago, someone had taken a stab at making it livable. A small front room, chairs along the wall. One doorway opened up to a kitchen with a wood-burning stove and a cupboard, the other to a small bedroom, empty but for a low cot along the wall.

Claire turned back to the girls, created her most reassuring smile and waved them in, the little one still sniffling. She handed the candle to the oldest and hurried back outside to Grey. Between them, they hauled the man inside, depositing him on the cot.

He was surprisingly heavy. Stocky but not fat. His cheeks were drawn, but his face was young and strong and reminded her of her brother, Willy.

“I’ll try to help him if you’ll bring in the box of supplies and settle the girls in.” Grey started to peel away the bloodied bandages. He was unbuttoning the man’s shirt as she left him.

Claire pulled closed a tattered curtain across the doorway. The two girls faced her, hands gripping each other. A united front against, it must seem, most of the world.

“Hello, I am Evelyn,” Claire said with her warmest smile.

The older girl scrutinized Claire before she spoke. “I am Marta Decler. This is my sister, Anna.”

Marta was slender, almost fragile. Her lips were the only part of her that looked soft. They turned down into a pout. Her eyes were guarded and dark. She stared up at Claire through thick coal black eyelashes.

Anna was soft where Marta was thin. Plump pink cheeks, round dimpled knees, her big blue eyes dripped tears. She sniffled again. “I’m hungry.”

Claire shut her eyes, steeling her nerve. Pa must be snickering in his grave, she thought. “Well, then. Let’s see what we can find.”

Marta changed Anna’s dress while Claire brought in a wooden crate from the truck. It held small tins of chicory, flour, sugar and salt, a bag of potatoes and a jar of brined eggs. Claire gave each girl an egg then went outside to the orchard, filling the front of her dress with apples. She found a knife and arranged slices on a chipped plate for dessert.

Grey shook his head when she offered him food. He lit a cigarette and smoked it on the doorstep as the sky darkened, then returned to the bedroom. Exhausted from the drive, they all sought sleep. The men got the bedroom, the girls the living room and Claire the kitchen.

She rolled up in a blanket on the kitchen floor, her back to the stove, an arm folded under her head. It was musty inside; the air had been cooped up too long. Claire felt the weight of it, like history, bearing down on her, pressing her into the floor. When she closed her eyes, she could smell the Oklahoma dirt and feel the weight of her mother’s wasted body in her arms.

Anna cried out in her sleep like a wounded animal. Marta soothed her in a low voice that sounded like a song. Claire rubbed her eyes, pulled back to the present. She fingered the rose she’d taken from the shop, the dying petals limp against her skin. She swore long ago she damn well wasn’t going to end up faded and broken, surrounded by dirt. Paris was her life, never a place like this.

 

 

T
he next morning Claire woke to the golden red light of a promised sunrise tracing patterns in the window’s wavy glass. She passed the girls wrapped in a blanket on the floor. Anna was curled against her big sister’s stomach. Her baby face innocent, a thumb inches from her mouth, poised to be sucked. Marta’s arm was wrapped protectively around her. Even in slumber, Marta’s face was serious.

Tired hinges creaked as Claire stepped through the door. She sat on the worn boards of the bottom stoop and watched the sky shift from indigo to pale blue. The farm was bordered on the north and west by dense forest. To the east and south, open farmland rose into rolling hills. The morning air was fresh and smelled of damp earth. A flock, a murder, of crows flew overhead. A breeze cooled her and nuzzled the trees, leaves whispering softly.

She knew this time of day, how it felt. It had been her chore to haul in water from the well, to milk the cows and let the chickens from the coop before she sat down for breakfast with Mama. By then Pa, Willy and Hank would be in the pastures or fields, and she wouldn’t see them until nightfall.
Stop dawdling, you worthless thing,
she heard Pa say.
Get something done.
She was glad the bastard was dead. Her seeking eyes found the well, tucked up around the corner from the house, and her feet began moving toward it, stirring up little puffs of dirt with each step. You think you’ve won, she whispered to him. You haven’t.