The Girl You Left Behind

unsteadily back across the square, her husband
     supporting her by the elbow.
    At half past four the last customers left
     for the day, and I knew, with dusk falling, that there would be no more, even though we
     were open for another half-hour. I walked along the dining-room windows, pulling down
     each blind so that our interior was again obscured. In the kitchen Hélène was
     checking spellings with Édith, and occasionally breaking off to sing songs with
     Mimi and Jean. Édith had taken a fancy to little Jean, and Hélène had
     remarked several times what a help the little girl was, playing with him so much.
     Hélène had never once questioned my decision to bring her into our home; it
     would not have occurred to her to turn a child away, even though it meant less food for
     each of us.
    When I went upstairs, I pulled down my
     journal from the rafters. I made as if to write, then realized I had nothing to say.
     Nothing that would not incriminate me. I tucked the journal back into its hiding place,
     and wondered whether I would ever have anything to say to my husband again.
    The Germans came, without the
Kommandant
, and we fed them. They were subdued; I found myself hoping, as I
     often did, that this meant some terrible news on their side. Hélène kept
     glancing at me as we worked; I could see her trying to decide what I was going to do. I
     served, poured wine, washed up, and accepted with a curt nod the thanks of those men who
     congratulated us on the meal. Then, as the last of them left, I scooped up Édith,
     who was asleep on the stairs again, and took her to my room. I laid her in the bed,
     pulling the covers up to her chin. I gazed at her for a moment, gently moving a strand
     of hair away from her cheek. She stirred, her face troubled even in sleep.
    I watched to make sure she wouldn’t
     wake. Then I brushed my hair and pinned it, my movements slow and considered. As I
     stared at my reflection in the candlelight, something caught my eye. I turned and picked
     up a note that had been pushed under the door. I stared at the words, at
     Hélène’s handwriting.
Once it is done, it cannot be undone.
    And then I thought of the dead boy prisoner
     in his oversized shoes, the raggle-taggle men who had made their way up the road even
     that afternoon. And it was suddenly very simple: there was no choice.
    I placed the note in my hiding place, then
     made my way silently down the stairs. At the bottom, I gazed at the portrait on the
     wall, then lifted it carefully from its hook and wrapped it in a shawl, so that none of
     it was exposed. I covered myself with another two shawls andstepped
     out into the dark. As I closed the door behind me, I heard my sister whisper from
     upstairs, her voice a warning bell.
    Sophie.

9
    After so many months spent inside under
     curfew it felt strange to be walking in the dark. The icy streets of the little town
     were deserted, the windows blank, the curtains unmoving. I walked along briskly in the
     shadows, a shawl pulled high over my head in the hope that even if someone happened to
     look out they would see only an unidentifiable shape hurrying through the
     backstreets.
    It was bitterly cold, but I barely felt it.
     I was numb. As I made the fifteen-minute journey to the outskirts of town, to the
     Fourrier farm where the Germans had billeted themselves almost a year earlier, I lost
     the ability to think. I became a thing, walking. I was afraid that if I let myself think
     about where I was going, I would not be able to make my legs move, one foot placing
     itself in front of the other. If I thought, I would hear my sister’s warnings, the
     unforgiving voices of the other townspeople if it were to emerge that I had been seen
     visiting Herr Kommandant under cover of night. I might hear my own fear.
    Instead I muttered my husband’s name
     like a mantra:
Édouard. I will free Édouard.
I can do this.
I held the painting tight under my arm.
    I had reached the outskirts of the town. I
     turned left where the dirt road became rough and rutted, the lane’s already pocked
     surface further destroyed by the military vehicles that passed up and down. My
     father’s old horsehad broken a leg in one of these ruts the
     previous year: he had been ridden too hard by some German who hadn’t been looking
     where he was going. Aurélien had wept when he heard the news. Just another
     blameless casualty of the occupation. These days, nobody wept for horses.
    I will