“You were speaking German.”

“We’re studying it in class so that we can read our texts in the language in which they were written.” He was still staring at her. “Perhaps I can help you?” the pretty liar said cheerfully.

“I’m here for the flowers,” Favre told her. He sounded unfriendly, even to himself, not that it mattered. He knew what was going on here. Just what the rumors implied.

The girls watched him cut far too many of the blooms, leaving a gash in the rosebush. They had grown to love this garden, and all of the girls without parents felt a special connection with the beauty of this place. Favre left the shears splayed open on the white gravel path. When he was gone, Lea and Rachel ran to the mother superior’s office and told her that they feared a man in the garden had overheard them speaking German. They wanted her to say it was nothing to fret about, very likely he hadn’t heard them at all, and what if he had? Everything would remain the same, as it always did in this convent.

When she heard about how Monsieur Favre had questioned them, the mother superior went to the window, frowning as she watched him walking to his old van. She thought of all the reasons her grandfather had told her not to be Jewish, but the truth was there was only one. The way people let themselves fill with hate. Some of the flowers he had taken were falling apart in his grasp, petals strewn on the walkway. He was careless and he didn’t mind leaving a path of ruined flowers. Still, the petals seemed to glow. He stopped and regarded the convent, and the mother superior knew that look, she had seen it on other men’s faces. It was greed.

The nun turned back to the girls. “Go upstairs and tell the others. You must leave today.”

As there was no time to bake bread and no one to make breakfast, the mother superior joined Ava in the kitchen while the other sisters were packing up the girls’ belongings, as well as their own. It was too dangerous for anyone to stay on.