“Inès, I’m so sorry,” Céline whispered. The concern etched on her face was so deep that Inès began to sob again. After an awkward pause, Céline put an arm around her. Inès cried into the other woman’s shoulder briefly before gathering herself and stepping back.

“Thank you,” Inès said, “for being so kind. I don’t deserve it.”

By the time Michel arrived home an hour later, his hands and face streaked with vineyard dirt, Inès had made herself a promise. Things would be different from now on. She would break things off with Antoine the next time she saw him. It was the only thing to do. Antoine might have given her attention, but good men didn’t choose the wrong side in a war like this, and Inès was horrified that it had taken so long for her to realize that. She needed to give Michel—and their marriage—another chance.

“Welcome home, my love,” Inès said as Michel hung his coat by the door.

He turned to her with a frown. “Hello.” He bent to untie his boots, and when he straightened and found her still standing there, his eyebrows drew together in confusion. “Is there something else, Inès?”

“Yes. I—I want to apologize. I want to be a better wife to you. You’re a good man, and I don’t think I’ve given you enough credit for that.”

“Oh.” He stood and eyed her. “Well, thank you.” He hesitated. “You are a good woman, too.”

The exchange felt awkward, like they were two near strangers. The distance between them gaped wide. “I—I love you,” Inès said, stepping closer, and as she said the words, she felt certain they could be true again. She had loved him when she’d married him. She tried hard to remember what that had felt like, the electric feeling that had coursed through her each time he looked her way.

“Well. I love you, too.”

“Come to bed, Michel,” she murmured, standing on tiptoe to press her lips against his. She moved into the familiar arc of his body, which now felt foreign to her. Where Antoine was sinewy and narrow, Michel was solid and strong.

“Inès—” he began, but she cut him off with a kiss.

“Make love to me, Michel,” she whispered. “Please. I am your wife.” She knew she sounded desperate, but she was. She needed this, something to pull her back from the edge, something to redeem her.

“Inès—”

She kissed him again, and this time, he kissed back. When he finally pulled her into his arms, she sighed with relief.

She led him to the bedroom and slipped out of her dress, tugging at his belt before he could change his mind. As they fell into bed, it felt as if they were doing a well-rehearsed dance, and when Michel’s touch felt mechanical, Inès told herself that it had merely been a long time since they’d made love.

When it was over, he held her briefly before pulling away. “I need to inspect some things in the caves. You’ll be all right?”

It wasn’t quite the pillow talk she’d been expecting, and she tried not to compare his abruptness to the gentle care Antoine always took with her after they’d been together.

“What about dinner?”

“I’m not hungry, Inès. Thank you.”

“Will you stay for a little while, Michel? Here? With me?”

He was already pulling his clothing back on, reaching for his boots. “I need to get to the bottles.”

“Bottles?” she couldn’t resist asking. “Or guns?”

Something flickered in Michel’s eyes, and when he spoke again, his tone was cold, terse. “Bottles. Like I said. Get some rest, Inès.”

Inès was still awake when Michel returned to bed hours later, smelling of chalk and night. She closed her eyes and pretended to be asleep as he slipped beneath the covers beside her, his back turned, as far away from her as he could possibly be.

nineteen

OCTOBER 1942

CéLINE

After the troubling conversation Céline had with Inès about the other woman’s marriage, her stomach fluttered with guilt for the rest of the day. Inès was a better person than Céline gave her credit for, wasn’t she? Some of their conversations earlier in the war had made Céline believe that Inès didn’t grasp the plight of the Jews, but last week had proven otherwise.

Céline wondered if she had been too eager to join Michel in treating Inès as if she were a naive simpleton. If she had taken the time to be kinder to Michel’s wife, to talk to her, would Inès have gotten things so wrong all those months ago? Inès wasn’t stupid. She was young, and she’d turned her back on most news of the war.

Michel had been frustrated about that, angry that Inès didn’t understand the stakes, and he’d stopped talking to her about anything serious because of it. But he’d been wrong to assume it was because Inès was incapable of grasping the situation. No, like Theo, Inès had closed her eyes to something terrifying, finding comfort in easy explanations. It was what so many people were doing, and Céline understood that now. She wished that she, too, could pretend that none of this was happening. What if she lived in a world in which her biggest problem was that she was feeling things for Michel that she shouldn’t have been—not that she was terrified every day that her father and grandparents were being carted off to their deaths, and that she would be next? It was all too much.