He knew everything about her, everything that was important. And it all seemed to happen overnight. It felt like a small miracle that she could feel anything at all, given the state of her marriage.

Didier no longer pretended to be kind. He strutted about, ordering searches and arrests of people suspected of aiding the resistance, taking a strange pride in his status with the Germans. When his boyhood best friend was shot in the street for possessing contraband explosives, Didier didn’t even bat an eye. At home, he was a bully, and in the bedroom, cruel. He claimed it was Lisette’s fault that they had not conceived a baby, and he taunted her for being barren. For the sake of her parents, she hid her pain and tried to stay out of his way.

She loved sitting and talking with Hank. He told her about distant Vermont, which sounded to her like a magical kingdom—thick forests of maple trees that gave up their sap at the end of winter, to be boiled into delicious maple syrup, which she longed to taste. He spoke lovingly of his family—two sisters, grandparents, and even great-grandparents. Two of them had passed the venerable age of one hundred.

She came to him one day to find him sitting up in the hut. Not only that, he was clean and shaven, and wearing an old linen shirt and dungarees she’d given him.

“What did you do?” she whispered, her gaze devouring his handsome face.

“I couldn’t stand myself any longer. I had to get cleaned up.”

“You went to the stream.” She examined his bad leg. Yesterday’s wound dressing was still in place, and his ankle was still bound. “My God, did you walk?”

“Crawled like a baby,” he said. “Don’t worry, it was in the dead of night, and I covered my tracks. When there’s enough light to see, I’ve been reading,” he said. “Thanks for the book. I don’t have anything to give you, but . . . here . . .” He handed her a Mass card with the head of Christ and a prayer on the back. “The USO gives these out to all the soldiers. It’s not much.” He wrote You’re my angel on the back. “A keepsake.”

She slipped it into her pocket without taking her eyes off his clean-shaven face.

“Is it bad?” he asked, rubbing a hand over his jaw. “I reckon I missed some spots.”

“It’s not bad,” she said. “You look so much younger now. How old are you, Hank?”

He hesitated, then said, “Almost eighteen.”

“So young!” She was not much older, but being married to Didier made her feel ancient.

“I had to get special permission to enlist,” he said, “but it wasn’t a problem. They needed every man they could get for the big push to end the war.”

She nodded. “We are not allowed to have radios, but we hear rumors and reports.” She didn’t mention Toselli’s radio, which he kept hidden from the Nazis. “But no one has heard how this will end.”