She looked so vulnerable in the dark, her nervous, chalky face flecked with freckles, so unlike her usual fierce self. Because of this Victor was moved to tell her the truth, whether or not he seemed a fool.

“Marianne,” he answered. “Nothing else matters.”

People said love was the antidote to hate, that it could mend what was most broken, and give hope in the most hopeless of times. That time was now. They had watched the captain enough to know that on Friday nights he went to the café in town to look for women and girls. This was why fathers hid their daughters and wives, why women no longer walked through the streets. But Ettie would be waiting for him. She would be wearing the red shoes.

She thought over her situation, and by the following day she’d come to a decision. She had never been with a man, and if things went wrong, she didn’t wish the captain to be the first man who touched her. She went to Dr. Girard’s study, where he was reading a book and having a glass of wine, doing his best not to think about the past, the same routine he had every night, disrupted only by chess games with Ettie. When he saw Ettie, he assumed she had come for a game, but she was barefoot and her expression was troubled. He knew her mission with Victor was approaching, and he wondered if she was backing out.

“Have you come for chess?” he asked.

In her old life, Ettie would not have been allowed to be alone in the same room with a man who was not a member of her family, but now she went to him, and because it was so difficult to ask for what she wanted, she came to sit on his lap. He was startled and confused by her unexpected action.

“There, there,” he said as if she were a girl, perhaps one of his patients who feared being ill. “You’re not getting frightened, are you? You have to be sure, Ettie. If this isn’t for you, speak up now before you endanger yourself and the others.”

“That isn’t the problem. I want to be with you before I go,” she told the doctor.

The doctor drew her off his lap, depositing her on the chair across from him. He was flattered, but not interested. He had not been with a woman since Sarah’s death, and he didn’t intend to be with one again. “Let’s play chess instead,” he suggested patiently, as if speaking to a child.

Ettie stood up and unbuttoned her dress. It was an ill-fitting frock, unlike any of the clothes in his wife’s closet. Girard thought perhaps it had belonged to the housekeeper.

Ettie could only coax him by telling him the truth. “The first one can’t be him,” she explained.

Dr. Girard shook his head. “It’s wrong.”