“Inès, why have you come?”

The words wounded Inès. There’d been a time not so long ago that she’d been welcome without question. “To see you, Edith.”

Edith squeezed Inès’s hand. “Please, Inès, stay here until the dinner service is over. Edouard and I will explain.”

? ? ?

Inès settled onto Edith’s worn blue sofa to wait, but soon she found her eyelids growing heavy. She didn’t realize she had dozed off until Edith shook her awake sometime after eleven, long after the restaurant should have closed for the curfew.

As Inès came to, she saw Edith sitting beside her on the couch and Edouard frowning at her from an armchair across the room. “Did someone send you, Inès?” Edouard asked before she’d had a chance to get her bearings.

“Send me?” Inès laughed in disbelief. “My own husband won’t even trust me to help with the bottles. I’m too clumsy, too careless. I’m unreliable. He doesn’t say it, but I know he thinks it. So no, Edouard. No one sent me.”

“Then what are you doing here?” Edouard’s mouth was set in a narrow line beneath his mustache, which was thinner than it had been the last time Inès had seen him. Come to think of it, he looked different in other ways, too, with slicked-back hair, a pallid cast to his skin, and a sharp black suit. He was almost a caricature of a French ma?tre d’.

“I—I needed my friend.” Inès glanced at Edith, who seemed different to her now, too. Edith was paler, her hair shorter, her fingernails bitten to the quick. “But I didn’t expect to find the two of you in a room full of Nazis.”

Edouard and Edith exchanged glances. “I need to tell her,” Edith said softly.

“I disagree.” Edouard glanced once more at Inès, his gaze hard.

“Tell me what?” Inès asked, but it was as if she hadn’t spoken.

“We can trust her,” Edith said to Edouard. “I’m sure of it. She would never betray me. She’s my dearest friend.”

Edouard frowned at Inès for a long time before finally turning to Edith. “Very well.” He stood and nodded to Inès. “It has been a long day. I’m going to bed.” He didn’t glance in her direction again as he left the room.

Silence descended, and slowly, Edith turned to Inès. They looked at each other for a long time, and Inès told herself she wouldn’t be the one to speak first.

“You have heard of Jacques Bonsergent?” Edith asked abruptly, breaking the laden stillness.

Inès frowned. “Was he in school with us in Lille?”

“No.” Edith glanced down at her hands. “In November he was with some friends in Paris when a German officer, very drunk, staggered out and grabbed one of the women in his group, a new bride who had married just the day before. The new husband defended his wife by hitting the German officer, and then he ran. Bonsergent stayed and tried to help the German up.”

“Goodness! You know this Monsieur Bonsergent?”

“I never met him. Please, just listen. Though Bonsergent denied being the one to strike the officer, he refused to give up the name of his friend. Just a few weeks later, he was sentenced to death.”

“Just to frighten him, yes?”

“No. He was executed by a firing squad two days before Christmas.”

Inès swallowed hard. Why was Edith telling her such things? “But . . . that’s horrible.”

“It was a turning point for many of us who had stayed quiet, who had tried not to become involved.” Edith met Inès’s gaze at last. “Can I trust you, Inès?”

“Edith, we’re like sisters.”

“I know. I know.” Edith examined her hands again. “You see, Edouard and I knew that we could not stand by and do nothing. And it has gotten worse, Inès. Did you hear of the German officer who was killed in the Paris Métro last month? They didn’t catch the man who committed the assassination, and so the Germans simply chose three men at random to be executed instead.”

“What?”

“You do not listen to the BBC, I see.”

“It’s forbidden.” The truth was that Inès didn’t even follow the news that the Germans distributed; it was all too depressing. What else had she missed?

Edith’s smile was sad. “?‘A nation is beaten only when it has accepted that it is beaten.’ A quote from Marshal Foch. If we accept the things the Germans are doing to us, Inès, it is the beginning of the end. We must fight back.”

“Fight back? But what can we do? The Germans are in control now. It’s better to just keep our heads down and—”

“And what?” Edith interrupted. “Let them murder innocent people?”

“But those are isolated incidents.”

“No, they aren’t. Nor are the Jewish regulations coming down from Vichy. Do you understand what is at stake?”

“Of course I do.” But the truth was, Inès felt lost. What could she or Edith—or even Edouard—do to stop a war?

“So then you understand why we felt we had to do something.” Edith leaned forward and grasped Inès’s hands. “If you breathe a word of this—to anyone—Edouard and I will be arrested, probably even killed.”