“Did you know that the paintings in that room used to belong to her family? The ballerinas? I put them in there thinking that they might make her feel less alone. That a part of her family was still with her.” She was twisting a loose thread on the hem of her skirt around the top of her index finger, turning the tip of her finger white.

“What happened to them? Her family?”

“More of my best.” The thread snapped. “Her father died on the front before he could be taken back to a field hospital in my ambulance. What was left of her family was arrested and shipped east in a liquidation I should have seen coming.”

“That you should have seen coming?” Sophie repeated with raised brows. “You have a crystal ball?”

“Don’t patronize me.”

“I’m not patronizing you. Evil is unpredictable, cruel, and without mercy. I did not foresee the bombs or the guns that killed my husband. Nor, I would imagine, did my parents go to bed one night knowing that it was the last time they would do so.”

Estelle traced a pattern with her toe on the rug. “I’m sorry,” she said after a moment.

Sophie said nothing. She was sorry too.

“I shouldn’t have said anything. You have your own heartache and trials, and neither Aviva nor I are your concern.” Estelle blew out a shaky breath.

“Leave France.”

“You think I haven’t considered that?” Estelle hissed. “You think I don’t want to? But just how far do you think I might get with a child who looks nothing like me and has no papers?” She held up her hand. “Let me answer that for you—not far enough to make me think I could pull it off. Though it seems that now I have no choice but to try. For Aviva’s sake.”

“I could get her out of France.” The words were out before Sophie had stopped to consider them. Before she stopped to consider if that was something that she might actually be able to do.

Estelle stared at her. “What?”

“There are…people who smuggle children over the Swiss border. And there are families who provide a home for them after that.”

“How do you know this?”

“I just…do.”

“That is not very reassuring.”

“You’d have to trust me.”

“I don’t know you enough to trust you.”

“No. I don’t suppose you do.”

“Why would you do this?”

Sophie frowned. “What do you mean, why?”

“What do you want from me in exchange?” The jaded defiance was back.