Hannah
Hannah was working on the painting once more. She had stayed up late the previous night and had nearly finished it. She felt a note of genuine pride. It was a good painting, one that had taken her longer than she expected to complete. She remembered the German officer and his instruction that she deliver the piece to him. She hoped that it had just been a passing interest and that he would have forgotten by now.
She put down her paintbrush reluctantly and went to the basin to freshen up and smooth her hair. Then she started out to the canteen. It was a cloudy spring day, the thick moist air carrying the promise of a storm. Micheline had summoned her, for another errand she assumed. It was the first time she had heard from Micheline or Matteo in the nearly two weeks since they had brought the injured fighter to Lily’s house. She had started to go with them when they took him to the safe house, but Matteo had shooed her away. “It’s too dangerous. You stay here.” She had hoped that she might hear from him after that, but she had not. The nightly gatherings had ceased now too, since things had become more dangerous.
When she reached the canteen, Matteo was just leaving, coat buttoned high and a plaid scarf tucked beneath his chin. His hair, usually askew, was neatly combed. Seeing him, longing rose in her. She had hoped that the passion between them was real. But Matteo seemed distant, as if he regretted what had happened, or at least had no intention of letting it happen again.
Now Matteo smiled as she approached. “Hello...” His greeting was friendly, nothing more. The gash on his forehead was almost healed, a faint red line marking the spot where it had been.
“Your sister summoned me,” Hannah offered. “Tomas. How is he doing?”
“Healing slowly. A bit better every day.” An awkward silence passed between them.
“Hannah, is that you?” Micheline called from the back office.
“Yes, coming.” Hannah walked to the office, still puzzled by Matteo’s cool demeanor.
“I have a job for you,” Micheline said brusquely from behind the desk, not bothering with greetings, as was her custom.
Hannah hesitated. Her encounter with the German, followed by the resistance worker being shot, had made the danger seem all the more real, the stakes higher. Of course, she still could not refuse to help. “What is it?”
“I need you to meet a group of airmen at the rail station and escort them to France.”
Hannah’s heartbeat quickened. Micheline was asking her for the first time to undertake the real work of the escape route. She had thought Micheline considered her too weak. Now she was finally being given real responsibility. “I’m picking up one of the other airmen from the group who was wounded and is too weak to travel,” Micheline added. “I’m taking him to the camp to hide.”
“What am I to do once we reach the station?”
“Get on the train and go south with the airmen across the border to Spain.”
“Leave Belgium?” Hannah scarcely believed the words as she spoke them. “You mean, for good?”
Micheline nodded. “Just as I promised. It’s all been arranged. Go to Gare du Midi today just before five o’clock. You will see a group of airmen, dressed in plain clothes on platform three. You are to join them, board the train and accompany them over the border. Here.” She thrust the papers at Hannah. “You can use these to get across France and into Spain. A visa will be waiting for you at the British consulate allowing you transit to America. After that, you’re on your own.” Micheline was handing her freedom, fulfilling her end of the bargain.
Hannah stared at the papers, still not quite believing it. “Really?”
“Pack no more than you would for a short weekend trip. You will see a convoy of airmen changing trains. They won’t be walking together, but spread out with a few meters between them. But you will be able to tell by their short hair that they are military. Join the very last soldier as if you are greeting him.”
“Will he know?”
“I doubt it. But if you say the word sapphire, he will recognize that you are part of the network, or at least he should. You are to board the train south with them. Do you understand?” Hannah nodded. “That is all. You’re leaving, so go.” Micheline turned away, her voice hardened.
Hannah was perplexed. Micheline had arranged her safe passage and kept her part of the bargain. But she seemed angry at Hannah now for taking it. And if Hannah was to be perfectly honest, going did not feel quite right to her either. “You know, I could stay if you wanted. Help a little longer.”
“We need you,” Micheline admitted, then shook her head. “But this is what you wanted. What you were meant to do. And it is likely your only chance.”
“Matteo...you’ll tell him after.” Hannah found the notion of leaving without saying goodbye unbearable. But she knew that if she saw him again, she might decide not to leave at all.
“Yes. I will take care of him. I swear it.” Micheline took her cloak from the coat stand in the corner and put it on. She held out some coins. “For the train ticket.”
“Thank you,” Hannah said. The words, which seemed inadequate, were all she could manage.
Micheline nodded. “Godspeed.” Hannah wanted to stay longer, but she knew there was nothing more to say.
With a confusing mix of sadness and excitement, Hannah left the canteen and started in the direction of Lily’s house. She dreaded saying goodbye to her cousin, and not just because of the many questions Lily would ask about her departure. The two women had become close in the time since Hannah had arrived, recapturing their childhood bond that Hannah had thought was gone forever. She did not want to lose that again.
When Hannah reached the house, it was still, except for Georgi’s high-pitched voice from the study. She pushed the door open and the tutor looked up from their lesson. “Lily?” Hannah asked.
The tutor shook her head. “Sorry, ma’am. She’s gone out.” Again. Lily had been away from the house more often than usual lately.
Hannah reclosed the library door and went upstairs to pack her few things. As she passed Lily’s bedroom, she paused uneasily, remembering Lily’s identification card. The night that she and Matteo had gone on the errand and brought the wounded fighter to Nik for treatment. Later, she had gone to return Lily’s identification card to her purse as she always did after using it. But when she reached in the pocket of the skirt she had been wearing, the identification was gone. She had lost it somewhere that night, she realized panicking. She searched her belongings for it in vain. She didn’t know if she had dropped it in the woods or at the cabin. She worried that Lily would notice it missing, but so far, she had not.
Hannah packed a change of clothes and a few toiletries, looking back wistfully at the art supplies and other things she would need to leave behind. She went back downstairs, hopeful that Lily might have returned, but she had not. Hannah would have to leave now, without saying goodbye to her cousin. Part of her was relieved. Lily would have asked a dozen questions about where she was going and how she would manage—questions to which Hannah did not have all of the answers. She would have argued that it was too dangerous. It was for the best that Hannah could not tell her.
But she could at least leave a note. She walked to the notepad on the table in the foyer and picked up the pen beside it.
Dearest Lily,
Micheline has found a way for me to leave, and I need to take it. I’m sorry not to say goodbye, but it came up without any notice. I am so grateful to you for letting me stay and for all that you have done. I will send word once I reach America safely.
All my love,
Hannah.
She imagined Lily’s sadness and surprise at reading it and finding her gone. But at least she would not worry about what had happened to her. Hannah took her small bag of belongings and started to go.
At the door to the study, she paused, wanting to go to Georgi and sweep him up in her arms one last time. But interrupting his lesson would raise questions. Instead, she peered fondly through the crack in the door at his dark curls bowed over a book, then turned and started from the house.
Hannah began walking in the direction of Gare du Midi. A light rain, almost a mist, had begun to fall. The station was on the western edge of the city center, farther and in a different direction than Hannah had normally ventured on her walks. As she crossed the Square de l’Aviation, she spied a familiar figure on the far side. Matteo. She thought fleetingly that he had learned of her departure and was coming to see her. He was not headed toward the station, though, but in a different direction, his steps purposeful.
Hannah watched him, puzzled. She had not expected to find him in this part of town. But thinking about it, what did she know, really, about how he spent his time when he was not with her? She wanted to call out to him but did not want to draw attention to herself. He was striding away from her now, with a determined gait. She found herself following urgently, distracted from her need to get to the station.
Matteo stopped in front of a café and stood expectantly, as though waiting for someone. Then his eyes seemed to light up. For a moment, Hannah thought he might have spotted her and been pleasantly surprised. But he was looking past her to the right. Hannah followed his gaze. A woman was approaching in the distance, her face shielded by a parasol. A pang of jealousy shot through her. Relax, Hannah thought. She could just be an associate, someone who helped the network. She could tell from Matteo’s expression of unmasked affection, however, that the woman meant so much more. Matteo had claimed to be alone since losing his heart to a woman years earlier. He had told Hannah that he could not possibly love again. Yet here he was with someone else. Hannah’s anger grew.
Then the woman lowered her parasol, and as her smiling face came into view, Hannah gasped aloud.
The woman Matteo was about to meet was her own cousin, Lily.
How was it possible? She recalled Lily’s interest in Matteo when she had seen Hannah with him at the café, a vague mention of meeting him years earlier. That would have been just before Lily met Nik. The ground seemed to slide out from beneath Hannah as the final piece of the puzzle clicked into place: Lily was the woman who had broken Matteo’s heart. Lily and Matteo had been—and possibly were now—lovers.
Hannah stepped back, cheeks hot despite the cool rain that fell upon them. Her eyes stung. Lily and Matteo. Though she had not actually seen them together, the look of affection between them as Lily approached spoke volumes about the feelings she and Matteo shared. They were having a secret affair. What other explanation could there possibly be? Her cousin already had absolutely everything. Must she take him as well?
But of course, she had not taken him. Lily and Matteo had been together long before Hannah came to Belgium, and it was just a terrible twist of fate that Hannah had seen him in the park and had fallen in love with him herself.
Still, Lily had kept it from her. That was what hurt the most about it—not Matteo’s feelings for Lily but the fact that Lily had lied. She had betrayed her. Hannah wanted to storm across the square and confront them as they met. But something, pride perhaps, kept her from doing it. A church bell chimed, signaling a quarter to the hour. Hannah looked at the clock above one of the shops. Four forty-five. She had less than fifteen minutes to reach the station and connect with the departing airmen. Her future was in America, not here. So much the easier to leave now, knowing that Matteo was not really hers. She squared her shoulders and, heedless of the rain, started for the station without looking back.
Inside Gare du Midi, Hannah looked around, trying to get her bearings in the unfamiliar station. Platform three, Micheline had said. She located the platform and started toward it. From the opposite direction, she saw a group of men walking toward the train. Though they wore the simple clothes of Belgian laborers, their too-short haircuts threatened to give them away as military. There was a man in front of them, French-looking, with thin sandy hair, who seemed to be leading the group. Hannah was certain those were the airmen she was supposed to meet. She started toward them, determined to leave Belgium and Europe and all of this pain behind forever.
The airmen walked at a quicker gait than she, and Hannah sped up as much as she could to fall in beside them without attracting attention. She needed to reach them before they boarded. Another ten meters and she would be there. But as she neared the group, two policemen stepped out in front of her, cutting off her path. For a moment, Hannah thought she had been apprehended. Her heart stopped. How could they possibly know she was trying to flee? But the police were facing away from her, their stances turned in the direction of the airmen. “Halt!” one of them cried. “You are under arrest!” The convoy had been detected.
The sandy-haired man was talking to the police, seemingly trying to explain something. He had gold teeth, which seemed to glint as he spoke. One of the policeman handcuffed him roughly. There were police behind the group of airmen now too, blocking their escape.
But there were none behind Hannah. Slowly, she turned and started walking away, certain that at any moment, she would be apprehended as well.
The police seemed not to notice her, though, and a moment later she stepped outside the station. She hurried down the steps, eager to get as far away as she could. Around the corner, she stopped, gulping great gasps of air. Her lungs burned. The airmen had been captured. Someone knew that they were coming and had intercepted them. They had been taken, and with them her chance to escape this wretched place was gone as well.
What now? She needed to tell Micheline that the convoy had been arrested. But Micheline had left (to save the injured airman, Hannah presumed, though Micheline had not said as much.) And as for Matteo... Well, Hannah could not possibly face—or trust—him again.
She raced back to the canteen, which was now deserted, and left a quick note for Micheline. “Flight canceled. Planes grounded.” It was the only way she could think of conveying, without saying outright, that the men had been taken.
Hannah stepped outside, trying to figure out where to go next. Though the rain had stopped, her hair was still damp. She was exhausted from all that had happened. But she did not want to return to Lily’s house, not after seeing her with Matteo. Hannah began to walk away from the station toward the park, trying to process all that had happened and figure out what to do next. As she wove her way through the commuters and other late-day pedestrians, Hannah’s mind reeled. Lily had betrayed her, and the convoy, her best and only chance of leaving Belgium, had been apprehended. She was trapped, caught in a dead end as surely as she had been the night that the MS Brittany sat docked at Havana Harbor.
After nearly an hour of walking the city, Hannah slowed. Her feet ached. It was nearly dark now, and the streets nearly empty, with most of the people who had been out having made their way home. She couldn’t remain outside forever. She needed to return to Lily’s house, the closest thing she had in Belgium to a home. After what had happened, though, she could not stay there. She would find another place to live and continue to help Micheline until she could devise a different escape route.
But first, she decided, she would confront Lily about Matteo. Lily would deny it at first, of course, but then when faced with the truth, she would have no choice but to explain herself.
With grim determination, Hannah started for the house, her mind reeling. Within minutes, her entire world as she knew it had been upended.
She reached the house and hesitated, steeling herself to confront her cousin. It had been a few hours since she had seen Lily with Matteo, and she should be home by now. Then she stepped inside. The foyer was still. She listened for the usual sounds of the house at that time of day, Lily in the kitchen, talking to Georgi about his day as she made tea. Stillness. She walked into the study. The tutor had gone and Georgi sat alone on the floor, drawing with crayons. “Darling, is Mama here?”
Georgi shook his head. “She hasn’t come back yet.”
Hannah was puzzled. Lily had not returned home. Was she still with Matteo? She likely would not have remained out with him that long into the evening, though, and risked arousing suspicion. She should have been back by now, Hannah realized, suddenly uneasy. Despite her anger at her cousin, she was also concerned. Where could Lily possibly be?
“Who is minding you?” Hannah asked.
Georgi pointed in the direction of the dining room. “Papa.”
Nik was home early, Hannah noted with surprise. Hannah had hoped to catch Lily before Nik got home so that she could confront her about Matteo without her husband hearing. Now she would have to wait until the next time they were alone.
Hannah walked into the dining room where Nik sat at the table, his head buried in his hands. “Have you heard from Lily?” she asked. “I thought she’d be home by now.”
Nik looked up. His eyes were bloodshot and rimmed with red, as if he had been crying. For a second, Hannah thought that perhaps Nik, too, had learned of his wife’s betrayal.
But something about his dire expression told her it was even worse than that. “What happened?” she asked, her concern growing to panic. “What’s wrong?”
“Lily...she’s been arrested.”