She was still his beloved wife, but she was already leaving him. Sometimes when she slept he could see an illumination, as if the light was seeping out of her. He felt worthless and helpless. The reason he became a doctor was to possess the ability to change a person’s fate, as he’d seen his father do with his patients. He wanted to heal, not to idly sit at her bedside with cups of tea and stories to read to her. Even books, which he’d always loved, seemed like silly, unimportant things. There was only one thing that mattered now. The single moment they were in.

As a boy he had often gone to see patients with his father. At first he had been made to sit outside, but as time went on he’d been allowed into sickrooms. By the age of fourteen he’d seen more than most medical students would see in their first year. He had observed his father as he cared for those who were dying with great kindness and compassion, and afterward they would go out walking the steep paths in the Ardèche, where the air was thin and clear.

We’re shepherds, the older man had told his son. All we can do is tend to them.

The doctor couldn’t believe he was losing his wife, and yet every day he had more of an understanding of what she meant to him. They’d been fortunate to have had many years when they hadn’t thought about time at all, and had just greedily and happily lived their lives, having breakfast, walking in the woods, working, quarreling over inconsequential things, making love in their old bed, which had belonged to his parents. And then time was blown up altogether. Her disease was incurable, so he put away the clocks and removed his wristwatch, which he left in the night table drawer. They had six months, and then three months, and then, suddenly, a single day. A single day to look at her so that he would never forget the smallest details. The mole on her neck, the way she bit her lip when she was in pain, for she never complained.

Now, the Germans forced every Jewish woman to use the name Sarah after her own name on every official document. Girard was unwilling to let another woman die if he could save her. Each person who had slept in his barn, each he had given refuge, each Resistance worker he had helped, was for Sarah. It was always her, she was with him still, as if she were waiting in the kitchen, ready to embrace him as soon as he walked in the door.

CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

HIDDEN

IZIEU, APRIL 1944