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“Lily, you must wake up.”
“I’m awake,” I groaned and rolled away. Colette’s petite fingers were icicles against my skin. “Your hands are cold. Go away. I’m still on holiday, you know.” Sleep had been long in coming last night, making for a weary morning. I desperately needed another hour of shut-eye.
“Someone is here to see you.”
“Tell Phillippe to go away. I’ll see him later.” I pulled the blankets over my head.
“It is not Phillippe. But if you want me to tell the handsome American major to go away, I will do so.”
Her words had me shooting bolt upright. “Charlie? He’s here?”
Colette grinned. “Oui. You were not expecting him?”
“I ... I don’t know. I sent the letter only two days ago.” I threw the covers off and jammed my feet into a pair of slippers. “I didn’t expect him to get a pass so quickly. Help me with these curlers, will you?”
“Calm yourself, my friend.” She sat next to me and began unrolling. “You mustn’t appear too eager. I will entertain your visitor until you are ready. Wear the red dress and take time to make yourself beautiful.”
“Colette, he doesn’t have much time. What if it’s only a twenty-four-hour pass?” I jerked at a stubborn roller. “Ow.”
Colette pushed my frantic hands away and untwisted the curler. “Lily, the most recent memories this man has of you could not be described as your best. Bloodied, burned, bruised, gray-haired, and gaunt. When was the last time he saw the beautiful woman you are?”
Her comments made me pause. “November.”
“He deserves to see the glamorous movie star he fell in love with. Brush your hair, wash up, and put on some lipstick. Take your time. He will wait.” She tossed the last curler in the box and rose. “I will make fresh coffee.”
Half an hour later, I entered the living room wearing the red calico dress and my newly styled hair pulled back with a pair of silver combs. Colette perched on the edge of her chair, but I only had eyes for Charlie.
“Here she is and just in time too. The major and I have finished our coffee,” Colette chirped with her French-accented English.
His eyes widened as he rose from the divan. “Lily? Is that... You changed your hair... You look ... beautiful.”
The smile I could no longer hold back spread across my face.
“I hope it’s all right that I came. I sent a telegram last night, but your roommate informed me you didn’t receive it.”
“Yes, of course. It’s a lovely surprise.” An unexplained bout of shyness gripped me, and I couldn’t seem to make my feet walk across the room.
Charlie must have felt the awkwardness, because he, too, stood staring and fidgeted with his hat.
Colette broke the tension. “I am off. Charlie, it was lovely to meet you. We will have a little drink tonight. Lily will bring you to our regular place.” Colette pinched my arm as she walked past.
“Yes, good day, ma’am,” Charlie mumbled but didn’t take his eyes off me.
The door closed behind Colette.
“I like your hair,” Charlie murmured.
“You look good too.” I shifted my weight. My heart yearned to leap into his arms, but thoughts in my head kept my feet from moving. Our last meeting had been fraught with dramatic confessions and swirling emotions. With all my free time, I had, of course, replayed those moments in my head over and over. Today, I didn’t want the drama, I wanted it to be like it was back in November, when our love was fresh and untouched by the harrowing times in between.
“Are you sure it’s okay that I came? Our last meeting ... I didn’t know. I mean ... I wanted to see you ... and your letter ... but—”
“Oh, Charlie.” His awkward schoolboy stammering washed away my trivial doubts, and I flew across the room into his arms.
After a while, I came around to asking the question I dreaded most. “How much time?”
“Seventy-two hours.”
Seventy-two blissful hours. We held hands wherever we went, and I consistently found Charlie watching me, as though he feared to let me out of his sight.
The first evening, I took Charlie to meet the crew at a bar a few blocks away from the apartment. Philippe, he remembered from our meeting at the café, but there was also Alfonso, a former soldier who lost his arm when the Germans invaded France. A farmer hid him in his barn and nursed Alfonso back to health. Afterwards, Alfonso joined the Résistance. Mariette, another co-worker in French Intelligence with Colette, also joined us. She originally lived in a little village in Vichy-controlled France, and she helped as part of an underground railroad for Jews and downed pilots. She barely escaped over the Pyrenees herself when the Gestapo closed in and burned her home to the ground. However, it was the woman sitting next to Mariette who gave me pause as I introduced Charlie.
“And I don’t think I know who is sitting next to...”
The dark-haired woman turned her head my way. The years fell away and even the change from blond to black hair couldn’t disguise her prominent brow, rather large nose, and sturdy chin.
“Camilla?”
“Hello, Lily.” She rose.
I went to her and wrapped my arms around her. “But how? What are you doing here?”
“Much like you, I’ve been pulled in for a cooling off.”
My brows rose. “Let me introduce you to Major Charles McNair. Charlie, this is Camilla, a good friend from finishing school.”
After the introductions, Alfonso called Charlie to his side, and I had a private moment with Camilla.
“SOE?”
She gave an enigmatic smile.
“I’d no idea. When?”
“Not long after that last letter I wrote to you. I had to do something. By the way, I believe I have you to thank for my getaway.”
“What do you mean?”
“I’ve been informed”—she lowered her voice—“you were mistaken for the Black Widow.
“It was you?”
She winked. “Your capture allowed time for my escape. For that, I am both grateful and regretful. What you must have endured at the—”
“Hush.” I shook my head and patted her shoulder. “I’m relieved to find my ignoble capture was of use to someone.” I frowned. “But they said she limped...”
Camilla tapped her hip. “Fell down a flight of stairs to the Underground during a bombing raid.” She grimaced. “Didn’t healed properly.”
“Tough luck, that. What about your friend Friederich?”
A look of distress crossed her features. “Unknown.”
“Lily, come, we need your sage advice to settle an argument,” Colette called to me.
I squeezed Camilla’s hand and whispered, “I’m sorry,” before joining the rest of the group.
At the end of the night, Colette pulled me aside to tell me she would be bunking at Mariette’s for the next few nights and sent me home with a wink and a kiss on Charlie’s cheek.
The second night I awoke to an empty bed.
“Charlie?” I poked my head into the hallway to find a faint glow emanating from the living room.
Charlie, lit by flickering candlelight, stood in Colette’s red and black flowered kimono, hands on hips, staring out the window onto Paris’s darkened streets.
“Darling, what’s wrong?”
He turned, his face drawn, and enfolded me into his arms. “Did I wake you?” he whispered. “I couldn’t sleep.”
“Nightmares?”
His chin rubbed against my head.
“I have them too.”
“I remember.”
“Colette believes when we talk about our nightmares it takes away their power.” I rubbed a finger across his furrowed brow. “Come, sit here.”
I fluffed a pillow, tossed it on the arm of the divan, and guided him down. I nestled between his legs, back to front, and wrapped his arms around me. My body rose and fell with his breathing for many minutes before he broke the silence.
“We were in the Ardennes. It was cold. A deep-down-to-the-bone-marrow cold. It’s not as though we could light a fire, and I often wondered if I would ever be warm again. One morning, early, I climbed out of the foxhole and headed out to take a pi— uh, relieve myself. We’d get this eerie snow fog in the morning—you could hardly see three feet in front, and sounds bounced around. I’d just finished my business when I heard someone else, close by, doing the same thing. Not ten steps away was a Jerry. You have to realize, our troops were stretched so thin there were gaping holes along the line. Sometimes the enemy would wander into our territory. We’d been taught a few phrases in German. I told him to drop his gun and put up his hands.”
His thumb stroked the soft flesh of my inner wrist. “I don’t know why he didn’t follow the directions. Did I say it wrong? I don’t know. The kid couldn’t have been more than seventeen, and there was something in his eyes that reminded me of a school chum of mine who was on the basketball team with me, Tommy Gundersen. He scored the winning basket our last game senior year and went to Indiana State on an athletic scholarship. He had the smartest, driest sense of humor...”
I was so intent on listening to Charlie’s story, I barely breathed.
“Instead of putting down the weapon, the stupid kid fumbled to aim it. I told him to stop. ‘Halten sie!’ I remember calling. He got off a wild shot and I dropped him. The bullet hit him in the chest. His gasping sounded like a gurgling water fountain, and I knew it must have punctured a lung. I was about to check on him, even call for a medic, when I heard other German soldiers. I slipped back the way I came, into the fog, and realized I’d wandered farther than I thought into Jerry territory, rather than other way around. They must have found their man because there was some sort of argument. German. I didn’t understand ... but the single shot ... that I understood.”
“That was the last time I fired my weapon. The following day, I was moved up to battalion HQ.”
“What happened to your friend?”
“Tommy? He died on the beaches in Normandy.”
I pulled his arms tighter around me. The dawn light rose, and the candle guttered in its socket. We drifted into sleep.
