“You have no idea what it’s like for me, trying to protect all of this, and the entire town, too.” He stood and straightened his posture, looking falsely righteous as he came around the desk to face her.

“Then protect the town,” she said. “Father Rinaldo is gone because you betrayed him. Madame Fortin fainted from hunger in church yesterday while you guzzled wine with Colonel von Drumpf.”

His arm flashed out. At first, Lisette didn’t even realize what hit her, or indeed that she had even been struck. She simply found herself on the floor, seeing stars and holding her hand to her cheek. No one had ever hit her before. It was like her first plunge off the cliffs of the Calanques into the sea—singular, frightening. She climbed to her feet and found her breath. “Monster! You have no right—”

“I’ll do what I like.”

“I shall report you,” she retorted, her anger burning hotter than her cheek.

“To whom?” he demanded. “The authorities? Of course, that would be me.”

Her mind raced. Where was safety now?

Didier must have guessed her thoughts. “You have no protection. Your crippled father can’t help. You could tell him, but that would only drive him insane because he can do nothing for you.”

Pressing a hand to her burning cheek, she backed away in horror. “I used to think you were a man who possessed a few good qualities. Now . . .”

“Now what?” he demanded. “By now you should know that anyone can be taken away. Anyone. Even your own father.”

“What?” A chill swept over her. “My father has nothing to do with the partisans. You wouldn’t—”

“He is lifelong friends with Raoul Canale, a known element of the FTP.”

The Francs-Tireurs et Partisans were greatly feared by the Nazis, because they knew the terrain and were experts at sabotage and assassination. Even a breath of suspicion meant a partisan could be taken and shot.

“Papa and Monsieur Canale were partners at pétanque, playing their games in the park, nothing more,” she said, trying to hide her panic.

“You had best hope no new information about your father comes to light,” Didier said coldly. He caught her chin in his hand, his fingers biting into her. “If you don’t conceive a child soon, you’ll be as useless to me as your father. As useless as my first wife was, and look how she ended up.”

Lisette did not allow herself to flinch. “Are you threatening me?”

“Do I need to?”

In the silent cave of Toselli’s darkroom, Lisette lifted a strand of film from its chemical bath. These were the pictures she had taken of Didier’s induction into the Milice. Studying the grinning, smartly uniformed men posing in the garden of Sauveterre, she finally understood. She was hopelessly and inexorably tied to Palomar. He had absolute power over her.

She maintained her sanity by keeping a secret photo diary, taking pictures and making prints, captioning them and keeping them in wooden tobacco boxes carefully labeled with the date. She trimmed the prints with sewing scissors and carefully penned the captions with a pen dipped in turquoise ink. Her solitary marches through the vineyards and meadows, along the beaches and rivers, became a kind of solace.