“It’ll fade.” Dan threaded his fingers into hers. “It might linger for a bit but then, finally, it’ll disappear, like cigarette smoke. Everything does.”

“Do you think so? And doesn’t Sparrow deserve more than that?”

“He does.”

Neither spoke for a long time. Jess lay her head down again, her ear filled with the sound of Dan’s heartbeat, slow and steady and inexorable. She ran her hand along his chest and he curved an arm around her, warm and strong, and little by little, in that tranquil and private moment, she felt her limbs relax and the pictures fade once more.

* * *

It was late when they at last fell asleep and early when Jess woke, listening to a Paris that sounded almost the same as the city she’d left in 1939: the elegance of the language rolling up from the streets below, the clatter of chairs placed on the pavements for those who had time to linger over coffee, the occasional horn blasting its way through pedestrians who’d forgotten, over the long years of hardly any cars on the streets, that they now had to cede way.

She stepped lightly out of the bed, smiling at the way Dan looked when sleeping—on his back, one arm flung over his head, black lashes curving upward from his closed eyes, eminently kissable. Her eyes ran over the dark hair, the line of black stubble along his jaw, the dog tags sitting on the muscles of his chest, which rose and fell as he breathed. She reluctantly moved over to the window, knowing that if she stared at him for longer she’d want to at least kiss him, if not trail her hands over his body. But he deserved to sleep.

Instead she gazed out the window at the people moving below, at the shops still clogged with lines, at the lack, the lovely lack of German uniforms. At the British uniforms, the American, the French. At the undiminished presence of the Opéra to her right. At the streets to her left that led down to the elegance of the Place Vendôme, and then the Seine. She felt the wonder of not instinctively ducking or crouching or diving each time she heard a sudden noise, of not having to keep her head down, of not being always on the alert.

But she also saw the absences: the Jewish people who might once have held businesses in this area, the men who should be rushing to work, the joy that a spring morning in Paris, with the air perfumed by lilies and rose and chestnut, should bring. And if she listened hard, she could still hear, beneath everything, the guns, the bombs, the screams, the sirens, the sobs.

A rustle from the bed made her whip around. Dan had rolled over, had stretched out his arm, searching for her, had shifted his body across to her side of the bed when his arm didn’t find her. The gesture, that he remembered she was supposed to be lying beside him, that he would scour the bed for her, made her eyes fill with tears. Before she could stop it, one of them rolled down her cheek.