“Take these, too,” Lisette said to the nun, handing her a sheet of ration coupons. “It was a good harvest year, even without the usual laborers.” She stuffed her hands into her apron pockets, self-conscious about her cracked and calloused skin and rough-edged nails. Didier was too proud to work in the fields; he deemed it beneath the station of the town mayor, but Lisette was far too practical to let the yield rot away, untended. She and her mother, Didier’s sister, Rotrude, and even Didier’s little niece, Petra, had all pitched in throughout the harvest.

“Bless you, Madame,” said Sister Marie-Noelle.

“I’ll come back tomorrow,” Lisette promised.

As she carried her empty bushel basket outside, a small boy ran up to her and briefly put his skinny arms around her waist. “Thank you for the apples,” he said, looking up at her with shining eyes. “They’re my favorite.”

She smiled down at him, gently brushing the hair from his face. His touch melted her heart, reminding her that there was one issue on which she and Palomar agreed—they wanted to have a baby. Sometimes she thought it was foolish to want to bring a new life into a world so filled with danger and uncertainty, but to give up the dream of a family would be to give up hope.

Her heart felt lighter as she rode home on her bicycle. At the edge of town, there was a rise in the road, and then an unpaved dirt track leading to the mas—the home she now shared with her parents, Didier, Rotrude, and little Petra, and a small household staff. A half dozen soldiers were billeted in a far wing of the house, but for the most part, they kept to themselves as they went about their duties.

Sauveterre was a beautiful, ancient farm, particularly in the autumn. The ocher-colored walls held a golden glow from the late-afternoon light, and shadows lay long across the fields. No wonder painters like Cézanne and Van Gogh, Chagall and Deyrolle spent so much time in the region, capturing the brilliant, changing colors and rugged landscape.

At several spots along the way, Lisette stopped and dismounted, leaning her bike against the hedgerow and removing her camera from the wicker basket on the front of her bike. Taking pictures with Toselli’s marvelous camera fulfilled her in ways she couldn’t describe. It was a refuge of sorts, when she forgot everything except the images she saw through the viewfinder or brought to life under the enlarger in the darkroom. She lost herself in her pictures of lavender fields, dry stone ruins, close-ups of wild thyme, action shots such as an eruption of butterflies or children at play. At first, Didier had frowned on her pastime, but when she made a flattering portrait of him and hand-colored it for inclusion in the town archives, he relented. Lisette was grateful for this, because her darkroom yielded something other than photographs of local folk and landscapes. She was adept at producing pictures for counterfeit identity cards used by the partisans.