Chapter Thirty-One #2
Marcel couldn’t speak past the burn in his throat and didn’t know what he would have said anyway.
Zelie squeezed his fingers and tugged on them. Stepped toward the idling Renault. “What do we have to lose, Marcel? This is our only chance.”
Marcel shook his head, barely able to pry his jaw open enough to say, “You just happened by at the right moment?”
“Happened by?” Emile’s face somehow went both cloudy and amused.
“I’ve been driving around this place for hours, you numbskull.
Making circle after circle, trying to get a feel for the joint.
As Marie’s father kicked us out, he mentioned where you’d be taken, boasting that it was a fortress you’d never get out of. So I took it as a challenge.”
That sounded like Emile, the cousin he’d known all his life. The one who, yes, had always turned over the game board or stolen the ball when it looked like he was about to lose.
But the cousin who always, always came back later. Apologized, and offered a rematch. Something Marcel hadn’t even let himself remember when the situation was so much more than a game.
Something that now seemed to say, in that Voice he’d learned to obey, Even this can be redeemed. If you aren’t afraid to trust, to risk, to go.
He dragged in a breath, let the truth settle. This couldn’t be part of some scheme. The Germans hadn’t let them out. And Zelie was right. If they tried to run on foot, they were sure to be caught.
One brisk nod, and they propelled themselves into action. Marcel helped Zelie into the back of the truck with the others and then climbed into the cab with Emile. Risk was one thing—but if his cousin planned anything, he wanted to be there to try to stop it.
Emile was soon in, door closed and lorry back in gear. They trundled off, Marcel glancing back every moment. So far, no other vehicles, no spotlights. They must be searching the fortress first.
“You’ve really been driving around all afternoon?” His voice came out hoarse, tight.
Emile’s enthusiastic nod looked . . . well, like Emile.
Like childhood and memories and days when they were on the same side.
“Thought I’d get the lay of the land tonight and then tomorrow start asking around the villages nearby to see who knew a way in.
” He flashed Marcel a grin. “You know some group of boys had to have investigated that place after it shut down.”
Marcel couldn’t manage a smile in return. “Happily, some old gendarme knew a way out. They were going to kill me tomorrow.”
Emile’s smile faded too. “I’m sorry, Marcel.”
Silence pulsed, and he let it rest there between them for half a bar, a full one. “It wasn’t your fault.” Not this time.
“Not this time.” Emile’s fingers tightened on the wheel as he turned toward a beautiful stand of trees.
Marcel had no idea where they were going, but it didn’t much matter, as long as it was away from their captors.
“But it was my fault before. I thought . . . I don’t know what I thought.
That everyone would be slapped on the wrist, I guess.
Maybe sent to a camp. No one was leading a coup, like Navarre. I didn’t think anyone would be killed.”
Gabriel. Lucien. So many others. “You were wrong.”
“I was. And I’m going to have to live with that for the rest of my life.
” Emile darted a glance at him, then focused once more on the road.
“Marie was furious with me. Thank God, she’s giving me another chance, even if it’s more for the baby’s sake than mine.
I’m not going to make the same mistake again. ”
Marcel swallowed, stared out the windscreen.
He didn’t know, in this case, what forgiveness looked like.
He couldn’t say it was all right—it wasn’t.
He couldn’t say he trusted him again—he didn’t.
Trust God, yes. He was willing to trust that the Lord would use this, redeem this, and certainly he could be trusted to use even Emile.
But maybe forgiveness, these first steps of it, didn’t have to look like total trust in the one who’d betrayed them. Maybe it was just a hand outstretched. A question asked. A song given its chance to be played. “Did you have a boy or a girl?”
“Girl.” Emile’s sigh said he recognized the question as the gesture it was. And his smile filled his voice. “Most precious little thing. We named her Charlotte, after Mère. But we’re calling her Lottie. Maybe . . . maybe someday you’ll meet her. If you want to.”
An innocent life, not to blame for her father’s poor choices. He nodded. “Someday. Someday I will. Perhaps when I’m not being hunted by every Nazi in France.”
His cousin laughed. “Fair enough.”
He drove them to a stretch of old, crumbling aqueducts and parked. “One of the Maquis depots,” he said as he reached for his door handle. “Undiscovered, so far as I could tell. There are supplies inside. Cash. I didn’t figure you’d trust me to take you to one of your locations.”
He was right. And Marcel didn’t even have to admit it, since his cousin hopped down. Marcel climbed out too, his body protesting every move. By the time he rounded the cab, Zelie and the others were climbing from the back, and she was striding straight for the depot, clearly recognizing it.
Leave it to Zelie. She’d have a plan in place in another thirty seconds.
Marcel stopped beside his cousin and turned to face him. He held out a hand. “Thank you, cousin. You saved our lives tonight. We won’t forget it.”
Emile gripped with one hand, covered it with the other. His nostrils flared. “Hearing you call me cousin is all the thanks I need.” He released him, easing a step back. “Good luck, Marcel.”
“Go with God, Emile.” Marcel backed away but kept his eyes trained on the lorry as Emile turned it around and vanished again into the night. Once its engine noises faded, he became aware of Zelie doling out instructions and provisions behind him.
“You’ll find Chamois here,” she was saying, tapping on paper. He turned and saw it was a map that she held out to the gendarmes. “Tell her Honey Badger sent you and you’ve come two by two.”
Andre frowned. “There are only three of us.”
“Noah’s ark reference, you dolt.” But Daviau chuckled. “It’s a code phrase?”
She nodded. “She should say, ‘Good, the waters are rising.’ If she doesn’t, she’s not Chamois and you’re in the wrong place.” She turned to Henri.
“I know my rendezvous point.” He was slinging a canteen over his back and shoving tins of food into an army-green bag. Once it was filled, he hefted that too, and gave them a nod. “See you in a fortnight or so at the new headquarters.”
The four men struck out with murmured wishes for luck and Godspeed, leaving only Marcel and Zelie. She was still studying one of the maps, tilting it to try to see it in the moonlight.
Marcel slipped up behind her and slid his arms around her middle. “And you, mon étoile? You know MI6 is going to order you to London.” Again.
But this time, would she go? Run Alliance from someplace still free?
Zelie leaned her head back against Marcel’s shoulder and let the map sag. She knew he was right. MI6 would issue a command, like they always did. Aimed at keeping her safe.
But what was safe in this world anyway? This was where she was needed. She shook her head. “There’s too much to do here. We need to reorganize again, institute new precautions, now that the Nazis have swarmed the south.”
No more Free France . . . but that didn’t have to mean no more Alliance. It only meant they’d have to shift too. Change however necessary. Perhaps even go into hiding, alter their appearances, stay on the move.
But they wouldn’t give up. Not now, when the very occupation of the south proved that they’d succeeded in something big, something far-reaching, something she never would have dreamed was possible when Navarre first recruited her.
The Allies had invaded North Africa because of them. And they’d need them for more work now. Work that, God willing, would help them get a foothold in Europe too.
And the Nazis knew it—feared it. That was why they’d swarmed in. Lions on the prowl, thinking they could overwhelm them with a flood of force.
But they’d ride it out, like Noah on his ark.
The night air was cold, but Marcel’s arms, despite being bare, were warm against her. Though the bare arms wouldn’t do—there’d be a few shirts and coats in the depot. They’d find him some. Soon.
Her throat went tight. They’d ride the ark . . . but their enemies thought he was Noah. “You could go.” She had to force the words past her lips. “You’ve made yourself the Nazis’ prime target with that stunt you pulled in there.”
“And I’d do it again, if it kept you safe for one more day.”
Her eyes slid shut. “You’d be safer in London. You could ride out the rest of the war there. Be our liaison.”
“Never.” He nudged her with his nose, and she opened her eyes in time to catch the dying trail of a shooting star. Knew it lit up the sky for her children in Switzerland too. “I go wherever you go, mon étoile.”
She turned in his arms, too many wants tangled up inside her to speak. Too many dreams she wanted to share.
But she couldn’t. In this, she couldn’t be la patronne.
She couldn’t just tell him she needed to be his wife, needed to be able to turn to his arms, needed the anchor of his love.
She needed him to ask. But he wouldn’t until he knew it was what she wanted, that she was ready. So how to let him know?
His eyes were locked on to hers, colorless in the night but no less beautiful. When he smiled, that dimple winked out. He lifted a hand to brush through her hair. “Will you marry me, Zelie? It doesn’t have to be now, if you’re not ready. But someday? Will you—”
She silenced him with a kiss. And tapped out her answer against his shoulder. --- ..- ..
Oui.