“What did she ask you?” Eva whispered to her mother.

“I have no idea,” Mamusia replied softly. They exchanged wide-eyed glances and followed the woman inside, shutting the door behind them.

In the parlor, the woman was rummaging around inside a small desk when they entered. She emerged with a thin ledger bound in burgundy leather. “Here it is. The guest book.” She opened it up and gestured to Eva with an upturned palm. “Come then, let me see your documents. I haven’t all day.”

Eva and her mother handed over identification cards and stayed silent as the woman examined them with narrowed eyes, nodded to herself, and filled in their details in her guest register. Eva didn’t allow herself to exhale until the woman handed the documents back.

“Very well,” the woman said, holding out her pen and turning the book around for them to sign. “Madame Fontain. Mademoiselle Fontain. I am Madame Barbier, the proprietress here. There are few frills, but it is a safe place to stay, as long as you can pay. Speaking of which, you have money?”

Eva nodded.

“Very well. You’ll be in room two, end of the hall, though there’s just one bed, I’m afraid. There is a key to the front door on your dresser. How long will you be with us?”

“We don’t know yet.” Eva hesitated. “Are there other tenants here, too?”

Madame Barbier raised both eyebrows. “You two are the only ones foolish enough to take a mountain holiday from Paris in the middle of a war.”

Eva forced a smile. “Very well. Thank you, Madame Barbier. Good night.”

“Good night.” Madame Barbier turned to Mamusia. “Spokoynoy nochi.”

“Spokoynoy nochi,” Mamusia replied politely, but she wasted no time in hurrying down the hall toward room two. Eva followed as Madame Barbier’s gaze burned into her back.

Once alone in their room, Eva changed her traveling clothes for a nightgown and slipped wearily into bed. Exhaustion soon overtook her, and she slept soundly that night, curled up against her mother.

* * *

“Do you think she believed us?” Mamusia asked as Eva awoke the next morning, blinking into a room filled with sunshine. The light seemed clearer here, brighter than it was in Paris.

“Madame Barbier?” Eva yawned and rolled away from her mother, finally releasing her hand. They hadn’t let go all night. “She must have. She took our details and let us stay.”

Mamusia nodded. “You told her we had money, Eva. What will we do when she realizes we don’t?”

Eva gave her a guilty shrug. “We do.”

“What?”

“I, er, liberated some francs from the kitchen drawer in Madame Fontain’s apartment.”

“You what?”

“I was looking for pens. There just happened to be some money there, too.”

“Eva Traube! I did not raise you to be a thief!”

Mamusia looked so indignant that Eva had to stifle a laugh. “I know, Mamusia, and I’ve never stolen a thing in my life. But we needed it, and let’s be honest, she would have sold us out to the authorities in an instant if she hadn’t been so busy worrying about her mother.”

Mamusia’s expression softened a bit. “Eva, if she calls the police because she realizes we stole from her…”

“Mamusia, we’re long gone. And what will the police do, add us to their list for a second time?”

When they emerged from their room thirty minutes later, Madame Barbier was waiting for them in the parlor, a bowl of plump red strawberries in front of her. She gestured to seats across from her, and after exchanging nervous glances, Eva and her mother sat down. My God, Eva hadn’t seen a strawberry since before the war.

“Eat,” she said simply, and Eva’s stomach growled so loudly that Madame Barbier raised an eyebrow.

“We couldn’t possibly,” Eva said. “We don’t have ration cards, and—”

“I grow these in my garden,” Madame Barbier interrupted. “And you both look—and sound—famished. So have some food. I won’t ask again.”

Eva hesitated before nodding and reaching for a berry. She bit into it and had to stop herself from moaning with pleasure as the sweet juice filled her mouth. “Thank you,” she said after she’d swallowed. She reached for another berry, already wondering what the price of these would be.

However, after Eva and her mother had polished off the bowl, Madame Barbier merely nodded. “Good,” she said, standing. “There will be potato soup for dinner at seven sharp.”

“But we can’t—” Eva began, but Madame Barbier held up a hand to stop her.

“We can’t have you going hungry. How would that look for my business?” And then she was gone, striding purposefully out of the room, the floorboards trembling beneath her.

“Well, that was kind,” Mamusia said after a long pause.

Eva nodded, but she was troubled. Madame Barbier had been looking at them like specimens in a jar while they ate, and she had the feeling that her mother’s attempt at Russian conversation last night had failed miserably. So what was their hostess up to? Still, they couldn’t afford to turn down free food. “I think you should stay in the room today, Mamusia,” she said softly. “Just let me go out for a bit on my own. I don’t have an accent, so I’ll attract fewer questions.”

“My accent isn’t that strong,” Mamusia said defensively.

“Mamusia, you sound like W?adys?aw Sikorski.”

Mamusia made a face. “Gdy s?oneczko wy?ej, to Sikorski bli?ej.”

Eva rolled her eyes at the popular saying exalting the Polish prime-minister-in-exile: When the sun is higher, Sikorski is near. “Just stay inside, Mamusia. And keep the window unlocked in case you need to flee quickly.”

“Now you want me to leap out the window?”

“I’m just being cautious, Mamusia. You must always be thinking two steps ahead.”

“You speak as if I’m another Mata Hari, but look what happened to her,” Mamusia muttered, though she stood and shuffled back toward their room anyhow. Eva waited until she heard the lock click before heading toward the front door of the boardinghouse.

Chapter Six

In the full light of day, Aurignon looked even more glorious, the sun pouring honeyed rays over the narrow lanes and buildings, washing the stone in a warm glow. The flowers that had colored the window boxes the previous afternoon were brighter now in the morning light, painting the town in brilliant pinks, purples, and reds. The fresh air here, more than a hundred kilometers south of the occupied zone, tasted to Eva like freedom.

But she and her mother couldn’t leave France without Tatu?. He had wanted her to flee, but she couldn’t, not if she had the means to free him. And she did, she was sure of it. She still had the blank identity documents Monsieur Goujon had given her, as well as her father’s photographs, all sewn hastily this morning into the lining of the jacket she had packed in the suitcase. It was nearly everything she needed to craft a new identity for her father, too, to demonstrate to the authorities that his arrest had been an error. However, she had left the art pens behind in Paris—they would have been a sure sign to any inspector that she was carrying tools of forgery. She couldn’t risk bringing them onto the train.

The problem was that she couldn’t replicate the same sort of documents she had made for herself and her mother without the right kind of ink, and normal pens used for writing wouldn’t do. She needed art pens in red, blue, and black. But Madame Barbier was already suspicious of Eva and her mother; no amount of free strawberries could convince Eva otherwise. So it would be too risky to ask her for the location of a store that sold such things. Eva would have to find one on her own.

As she walked briskly up and down the narrow lanes leading away from the town’s main square like crooked spokes of a wheel, she peered into every window, hoping to find a shop that stocked art supplies. The town was so quiet that Eva could almost believe she had the streets all to herself, a feeling she could never imagine experiencing in bustling Paris. Away from the square, the town was even more beautiful, with some of the stone structures giving way to half-timbered buildings that reminded Eva of the pictures in fairy-tale books she’d read as a little girl. By the time she’d turned onto the fourth lane, she had begun to relax, lulled into a sense of peace by this idyllic town that didn’t seem to know it was in the midst of a war. In fact, she was feeling so at ease that she almost didn’t notice the tall, slender man at the end of the lane, dressed in a trench coat that was far too warm for the summer day, the lapels pulled up. He was walking with a slight limp, his right leg stiff.