“The unconscionable bitch!” Jeanne turned her furious gaze out the window. She had heard Madame Richter laugh and express her philosophy that in regard to servants, the harder you whipped a horse, the faster it ran, so she would not question Bernadette further about her treatment at the woman’s hands. The answer sat in a filthy dress beside her, skin and bones without flesh, the pith of youth stripped from her, castrated—there was no other word for it—and smelling of the deprival of the most basic human needs. The flesh would fill out, the scars fade, the heart be restored, but the mind would remember…always. Such absolutes Jeanne knew from her own experience as a courier for the French Army, when she had been caught and incarcerated by the Germans during World War I. She noticed that the pad of Bernadette’s needle finger had grown to the size of a cherry the color of a plum, callused to the hardness of a pit.

“What’s going on?” Bridgette asked as Jeanne’s Mercedes was forced to drive slowly to avoid hitting the growing number of pedestrians gathering in the streets.

“The liberation of Paris!” Jeanne replied excitedly. “The Resistance has the German garrison successfully under siege, and the Americans are making headway into the suburbs of the city. Many of the Germans have fled, and people are feeling free to come out of their homes.”

Bridgette stared at the sidewalk cafés packed with Parisians where once German soldiers had lolled in their jackboots, their jubilation like the lift of a fog bank rolling into the streets. Paris liberated…She could go home now, back to the house on Elm Street in Traverse City, Michigan, back to its boredom and slumber, its humdrumness and routine, its peace and quiet…

Jeanne patted her hand. “France will soon be free as well, thanks to brave people like you and Sister Mary Frances.”

“And to you as well, Madame Boucher,” Bridgette reminded her and added silently, And to Liverwort and Lodestar and Limpet and Lapwing. A mental picture formed of her sitting alone in the Rose Main Reading Room of the New York Public Library, watching the door for arrivals that never came. She blinked to clear the image. “How did you come to know Sister Mary Frances?”

Jeanne explained that they’d met over concern for their petite Bernadette Dufor and become friends when they agreed to stay in touch to share news of her. Sister Mary Frances sometimes invited her to tea at the convent.

“Then you must have seen the mural on the wall,” Bridgette said.

“Oh, yes. A beautiful piece of artwork—by your hand, I understand.”

“Is it still there?”