56.

ANNETTE AWOKE LIVELY AND PLAYFUL, RISING SWIFTLY FROM the bed to throw open the shutters.

“How did you sleep?” he asked.

“I slept completely,” she said, smiling.

Marshall had slept little. He hadn’t thrashed and flailed as he often did. Instead, trying not to wake Annette, he had lain quietly, trying to capture his runaway thoughts.

Coffee and croissants arrived. Annette hurried to the door to accept the tray from the young woman in a blue smock. A flurry of bonjours and mercis followed. Marshall was glad to see the large pot of coffee.

“I really should try to find Robert,” Annette said later, emerging from the bathroom with a towel on her head. “For the sake of Father Jean.”

“I believe you could march over the Pyrenees and then get right to work.”

She laughed. “It would be necessary to march back across the border first.

“I don’t know,” she said after a minute, falling into doubt. “Perhaps Robert is beyond rescue. Since the war, he has led a life of dissipation and irresponsibility. I don’t know if his true nature can be reawakened.”

Marshall was suddenly tired of hearing about Robert.

“Maybe we’ll find him behind a bush in the mountains.” His attempt at humor fell flat, he saw by the startled expression on her face.

He touched her moist cheek. “I’m sorry. But I have to point out that I feel insanely jealous.”

“Peuh! Do not think that way.” She was combing her hair, carefully easing a fine-toothed comb through her wet curls.

“I’m sorry.”

“I have the idea that someone sympathetic should go to him, with something from the past. I will take you. You are a success story. A success for him. And for me,” she added quickly. “Everything we did—we are confirmed, in seeing your success.”

He was embarrassed. “You and Robert, both of you, made a terrible sacrifice,” he said.

Annette would not accept such thinking.

“What were we to do?” she asked. “Just sit there and let our country be stolen? Not just our buildings and our churches and our lives, but the very culture that is our life! To see it all replaced by German beer and sausage? My family could not abide it. Whatever we did, regardless of the risk, we had to do it. For my parents, it was automatic. For me also. We simply did it. You would too! Absolutely.” Her voice was vigorous, almost shrill.

Not every Frenchman had taken such chances, Marshall thought. Would he have taken them? He had been willing to bomb Germany—not only factories but, inevitably, citizens—and then to sneak through Occupied France, thinking only of his own survival. But Annette …

She twisted the towel around her head and placed her hands on his shoulders. Gazing into his eyes, she said, “Once, during the war, from our window in Saint-Mandé, we saw two parachutists. An Allied plane was shot down. I think the target was a factory at Pontoise. The plane was far away and we didn’t see it fall, but we could see the parachutes in the distance. Then we saw the men being shot as they drifted down. German soldiers on the ground shot them as they descended. We were hiding a pilot, and he watched this with us, and he began to cry when he saw the shooting of his comrades.” She paused, as if replaying the scene in her mind. “ ‘Poor men!’ he said. ‘Poor men.’ ”

“My God.”

“Yes,” she said.

“I’ll cry now,” he said.

“No, you will not do that.”

“Did Monique—”

“Yes, Monique saw it.”

Annette touched his cheek. “You have encouraged me so much,” she said, waving her hands for words. “I cannot explain how your return has affected me. What I just said about France—that is what I should tell my students. Maman wants me to make a scrapbook for them.” She smiled. “Do I make sense? I could make an exhibit of you for the students—my aviateur!”

“Would I have to wear my old flight suit?”

“For us, this project could be jubilatoire!”

“Come here,” he said. “If you’re not careful, I’ll fall in love with you for sure.” He lifted her hand and kissed her palm.