The only place Eva could think to go was back to the church. She was still reeling from the betrayal, which had knocked her sideways with confusion and guilt. How could Joseph have turned against them? Against her? Obviously, she had never really known him at all, the charmer with the dark good looks and a heart of stone. Fury churned within her—at Joseph and at herself. How had she been so blind, so quick to believe in him just because she’d known him in her previous life?

She had to warn Père Clément. But how would she stop Joseph if he was already here? He had a gun, and Eva had only… what? Her righteous anger? Her crippling grief? Still, it would have to be enough. She had failed her mother and Geneviève. She couldn’t fail the kindly priest, too.

She stopped only long enough to wash as much of Geneviève’s blood from her hands and face as she could, and then she grabbed Geneviève’s bicycle and set off toward town. She had to walk it through the snowdrifts until she reached the main road, which had been cleared. She climbed on and rode the rest of the way as the sun sunk toward the horizon and the wind froze her tears.

The church was dark and silent, though the front door was unlocked. This is God’s house, Père Clément had once told her. The doors will never be closed to a soul seeking God’s peace. It wasn’t peace Eva was seeking today, though.

She checked Père Clément’s office, the confessional, and the secret library, but the church was deserted. A quick check of his small apartment behind the church came up empty, too; the doors were closed and locked, the windows dark. Eva retreated back to the library, though she knew as long as she remained there, she was a sitting duck. Joseph knew about it—and about Père Clément’s key to the room—and sooner or later, he might come looking.

But there was something she had to do.

In silence, she lit a few lanterns and pulled the Book of Lost Names from its innocuous place on the shelf. It was the one thing Joseph wouldn’t be able to take from her; she thanked God she had shared the secret only with Père Clément and Rémy.

She stared at the book for a moment as she held it in her hands. The brown leather was even more worn than it had been when she first held it, the spine more creased, two slight faded spots on the back of the book now and one on the front from her own fingertips, from the number of times she had held it without fully removing the chemicals and ink from her fingers first. She was only the latest person to put her mark on it, though. How many Catholic worshippers had held this book in their hands over the past two centuries before it found its way to her? It had existed before the French Revolution, before Napoleon had been born, before Louis XVI and Marie Antoinette had lost their heads in the name of liberty, before Eva’s parents had come to France believing that doing so would give them a life of freedom and opportunity. And here it was, in the hands of a proud Jew, in the back of a church where God had seen evil and treachery unfold.

Eva blinked back tears and opened the book to page two, Rémy’s page. She knew exactly what she wanted to tell him, what she should have said in that cottage on the edge of France just a few days earlier. On the first line, her hand trembling, she marked a tiny star over the é in étoit, then a dot over the p in prions. On the next page, she added another dot over the o in recevoir, and on page four, a dot over the u in leurs. She continued like that on Rémy’s pages—six, nine, fourteen, twenty-two, thirty-five, and so on—until she had said what she wanted to say: épouse-moi. Je t’aime.

She closed the book after drawing a dot over the first m on page 611; there weren’t enough pages left for the final e, but it would be enough to piece together the message: Marry me. I love you. As she slid it back into place, she let her hand linger on its spine, just for a second. Would Rémy find it? Would he know she loved him? Or would the book mean nothing in the end?

Just then, there was a noise at the door, and she jerked her hand away from the bookshelf. It was too late, she realized, too late for everything. As Joseph moved into the room, clutching a handgun, Eva shrank back against the wall. She had nothing to defend herself with, nothing but books. She groped behind her, and closed her hand around the spine of a heavy Bible. He would shoot her, she knew, but she didn’t want to go without a fight.

“Joseph,” she murmured.

His face twisted as he moved into the space she had once shared with Rémy. “Eva, you’re even more foolish than I thought. You came back? To the one place you knew I could find you?”

She took a deep, trembling breath. “I had to.” Even if she died here today, which she almost certainly would, Rémy would know she had loved him.

“You know, I’ve never understood you, Eva Traube, even in Paris, with your wide eyes and your nose buried in books like the world outside the pages didn’t matter. You were always an odd bird, weren’t you? And you think I didn’t see the way you looked at me? Just like all the others. I could have had you if I wanted, anytime.”

She ignored him. “What have you done, Joseph? To Geneviève? To my mother?”

There were tears in his brilliant blue eyes, just for an instant, as he looked away. “I didn’t want to hurt them, Eva. It got away from me.”

“What did? How could you do any of this, you bastard?”

When he turned back, the tears were gone, replaced by a look of steely resolve that sent a chill down her spine. “I had no choice. The Germans knew I was part of the underground. They were going to execute me, so I offered them a deal.”

“It was your idea to work for the Germans?”

“You would have done the same to save yourself.”

“No, Joseph, I wouldn’t have. Not in a million years.”

He narrowed his eyes. “They wouldn’t have offered you the chance anyhow. You’re a Jew.”

“You are, too!”

He shook his head, the traces of a smug smile playing across his lips. “My father was Catholic. My mother was only half Jewish. The Germans said I was lucky; one more drop of Jewish blood, and I would have been doomed.”

“You’re doomed anyhow, Joseph. You really think there’s a place for you in Germany if they win the war? They’ll never be able to see past your Jewish blood. And if France wins instead, well, they execute traitors.”

“You think I haven’t thought things through? The Germans have promised to pay me, enough so that I can disappear after the war and live my life.” His expression hardened. “Besides, there won’t be anyone left to tell them what I’ve done, Eva.”

She swallowed hard. “So you’re going to kill me, too, then. Just like you killed my mother.”

His face fell. “I didn’t mean for that to happen. I cared about your mother, Eva, I did. She was always kind to me. She was just in the wrong place at the wrong time. They were there for Madame Barbier, and after they arrested your mother, too, they asked me if I knew her. I was going to deny it, but she begged me to help her. She even used my real name, the old fool! After that, I couldn’t deny that I knew who she was, especially because it was obvious by then that she was your mother. And she refused to tell the Germans what she knew, Eva. They might have sent her east rather than executing her if she’d told them where you’d gone. It’s her own fault.”

“None of this was her fault.” Eva choked back the lump in her throat. “And Geneviève?”

He flexed his jaw. “If things were different, maybe we would have had a chance. But I needed to know where you were. You’re my ticket to a new life, Eva. I gave them Gaudibert already. You’re the second half of the bargain. If I turn you over to the Germans, give them the Jew behind the largest forgery operation in the area, I get to live. You can see my dilemma, yes? Geneviève had information, and she refused to give it to me. I only meant to threaten her, Eva, but she was selfish. I told her that giving you up was the only thing that could save my life, and she wouldn’t do it.”

“So you shot her in the stomach and left her to die?”

“It truly is a shame that things had to end that way.”

“You’re a monster.”

He looked away. “I knew you wouldn’t understand. How could you? You Jews don’t have a future in France, but I do. Surely you see that.”