24. Grace #2
We navigated through the doors between cars, past Garrett’s compartment, and finally reached Henri’s.
I knocked, and he opened, revealing a room nearly identical to mine.
He settled onto one end of the L-shaped sofa, and I took the other end, my back against the window.
Garrett leaned against the doorframe, one shoulder in the corridor to monitor traffic, one inside to monitor how well I was not spilling every bean.
Henri picked up one of the small complimentary bottles of sparkling wine. “May I offer you a glass?”
“No, thank you,” I said, “I’m?—”
“Please.” He twisted the cage off the cork. “I insist. It helps settle the nerves, and I suspect we could all use that tonight.”
He poured into the two plastic cups and held one out to me. I accepted, but Garrett shook his head when Henri offered the other to him.
I took a small sip from the plastic cup. It was passable, and it probably would help my nerves. I just had to refrain from having as much as I had last night at Jean’s. “Can you tell me more about your father?”
Henri set the bottle down. “I never knew him. He was killed in 1944, three months before I was born.”
“I’m sorry.”
“Don’t be. I’ve had many years to make peace with it.” He tasted his own wine and grimaced. “What I know about him—and about Delphine—comes from my mother. The stories were told so many times they feel like memories, even though they aren’t mine.”
Dmitry appeared in the corridor behind Garrett, holding a bottle of red wine and a small brown bag. Garrett stepped aside to let him squeeze past, then resumed his sentry position.
“Ah, perfect.” Henri accepted the bottle and stood to rummage in the suitcase on his bed.
He gestured for Dmitry to take his seat, and continued his story.
“You see, my mother’s family fled to Prague during the Revolution.
Her grandfather had been a guard at the Kremlin—a minor position, but enough to see what was coming.
He smuggled out what he could. Some items he sold to survive. Others he kept hidden.”
While Henri spoke, Dmitry withdrew a wrapped sandwich from his bag and ate. I probably should have gotten some more food, myself.
Henri produced a corkscrew. “The egg was one of those. Passed down through the family. Given to my parents as a wedding gift, with strict instructions to keep it secret.”
I played it forward like a scene from a movie. A priceless treasure, hidden for decades, carried across borders during a revolution, then tucked away somewhere, waiting. Didi had done the same thing. Kept it in her costume jewelry box as though it was nothing special.
“He was from Marseille originally, and they lived there after they married. However, when my mother became pregnant with me, my father sent her back to Prague. He told her it was too dangerous for her to remain in France.” Henri withdrew two more plastic glasses from the brown bag, uncorked the bottle, and poured glasses for himself and Dmitry.
“He sent her letters and photographs once she was home, including one that confessed he should have sent the egg with her. It was too late to ship it safely, but when Delphine was preparing to head home to London?—”
‘Home to London.’ So she was British. At least that much was true. “He gave it to her?”
“He did.” Henri nodded. “He planned to come for it after the liberation. For the egg, and—” He stopped. Shook his head. “He never had the chance.”
Nineteen years old, working with the French Resistance, carrying a Fabergé egg out of occupied territory. Did she know what it was? “What was she like? What did your mother say about Delphine?”
Henri’s expression softened. “Stubborn. That was the word my mother used most often. My father argued with her constantly about strategy, timing, risk. But she always backed him when it counted. He trusted her completely, and she had a network of women who followed her every move.”
Stubborn. I laughed. Didi had been the most stubborn and strong-willed person I’d ever known. Once she made up her mind about something, that was it.
Garrett was almost as bad.
“She believed in people,” Henri continued. “Sometimes when the evidence suggested she shouldn’t. My father wrote that she saw the best in everyone, including the ones who didn’t deserve it.” He looked at me. “Does that sound like her?”
My throat tightened. “Yeah. It does.”
Outside the window, the platform began to slide away. The train was moving, pulling out of Zurich, carrying us toward Prague. Toward answers. Toward Kessler’s territory.
“Didi always said ‘Life’s too short.’”
Garrett glanced at me from the doorway. “For what?”
“Everything. That was the point. ‘Life’s too short to skip the scone.’ Or ‘Life’s too short not to walk in the rain.’”
His brow furrowed.
“I guess life’s too short not to visit Prague,” I said, nodding toward the dark window.
Henri chuckled and continued with his stories. He shared small moments his mother had recalled from Marcel’s letters—the risks they’d taken, the close calls—all coded text she had to interpret.
I tried to picture it: occupied France, danger everywhere, and two people finding reasons to keep going. To keep believing. The kind of story I’d read a hundred times in my novels, except this one was real. This one was Didi. My grandmother. She’d been… what? A spy? A courier? A fighter?
When Henri finished his third glass of wine, he stifled a yawn. “I should sleep while I can. Tomorrow will be busy.”
Dmitry rose. “I should do the same.”
I stood, and Garrett stepped back to let me out of the compartment. We said goodnight to Henri, and Dmitry disappeared into his own compartment two doors down.
The corridor was narrow, lit by dim yellow lights, windows on one side showing little more than darkness rushing past. We passed through the rattling connection between cars, the floor shifting beneath our feet, and we soon arrived at my compartment.
I tapped the pass card which had come with my ticket and stepped inside, giving Garrett space to collect his bag. “Are you going to stay in the other car? In your room?”
He was quiet for a moment. The train swayed, and he gripped the handles of his bag, without picking it up.
“Your safety is the most important thing, Grace. I’m not sure how I would have felt if I was in the next compartment, but I definitely don’t like the idea of staying in a separate car from you. ”
My heart did a complicated little flip.
“I can’t protect you from there. If anything happened, I wouldn’t even hear it.” Garrett looked down at me, his voice low. “Is it all right with you if I stay here tonight? There are two bunks, so there’s plenty of room.”
This man had held me while I fell apart. He’d remembered my lip balm and put himself between me and every threat as if it were the only thing that mattered. We’d slept in the same room in London and on our first night in Paris, and I hadn’t thought twice about it.
But after last night? After the kiss and how he’d run away? I tried not to think about my dreams last night—and completely failed—when I said, “I’d feel better if you were in here, too.”