The blood won’t budge. My hands are shaking.

But they can’t be. Not now.

I think of The Nutcracker, the Sugar Plum Fairy, the ease and grace in the dancer’s movements. Yet my trembling continues. I can’t make it stop.

The MP is a single row away.

That’s when I hear the voice. A man’s words in French. An intonation I recognize.

It yanks my attention over my shoulder. I find the back of the fellow who’s speaking as he slides into a row. Ebony curls peek from his fedora, and for an instant, I’m sure I must be hallucinating. A product of exhaustion or desperately wishful thinking. Yet I recall the syllables I helped refine, transforming a rougher Cajun dialect to a suave European accent, in a crafting for the stage, for Charles.

He’s here—but how? Arranged by Hutton? Sent here to guide me home? My mind swirls with confusion, though a concurrent wave of serenity envelops me. I feel a grounding in the familiar, an unexpected comfort from home. A reassurance that in a way I’m not facing this all on my own.

“Ausweis.”

The guard’s demand swings me back. He towers over me with hand extended.

I pass over the papers, and my sleeve retracts slightly. To conceal the marks as best I can, I keep my palm downward and fingers closed. My hands have gone relatively still. I plant them across my waist regardless.

This is the first test of Evelien’s ID, a trial run with no room for error. Slowly he studies me and the girl. One of her braids partially obscures her face, and I wonder if he’ll demand a better look.

He regards our documents again. Has he noticed something off? I await a peppering of questions…that don’t come. He simply returns our paperwork and moves along.

We’ve passed, for now. Of course, I can’t fully relax until Charles too is cleared.

So as not to prompt suspicion, I resist turning around. The train hurtles forward. The cityscape blurs by. Anxiously I listen, waiting for the MP to finish. When finally he moves on to the next coach, I dare again to twist back, seeking a view of Charles’s face.

Only to discover that the man in the fedora, with a snub nose and prominent overbite, is merely a stranger.

He was never Charles at all.

Chapter 79

A short walk from Station Tilburg leads to the secondhand bookshop Boekhandel Lange. Scents of ink, leather, and dusty pages greet me and Evelien at the door, where the tinkling of a bell announces our entry. Past a wall of newspapers and magazines, a lean, bespectacled clerk with dark hair glances from behind the counter, then promptly refocuses on the female customer before him. They’re discussing her purchase in an apparent local dialect. Their accents are different but comprehensible.