Ava didn’t argue. She knew that Lea’s mind was made up. She came to sit beside her on one of the old chairs Monsieur Félix had made long ago, when his daughter was small, when people kept their doors unlocked and had no fear of their neighbors or of the police. The view was dusky in the fading light. Lea had grown taller and thinner. She hadn’t been a child for quite some time. She looked like the woman she would soon be, and she had a woman’s certainty. She intended to wait for as long as she must.

CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE

THE LAST ANGEL

HAUTE-LOIRE, JULY 1944

MONSIEUR CAZALES DROVE FROM A neighboring farm to deliver Bluebell, now in the back of the truck, for she had wandered over to his property, as she often did. He’d already heard from his wife that odd things were going on at the Félix place and had been ever since Marianne had returned. As he pulled up, two strangers, a girl and a woman, came out onto the porch, as curious about him as he was about them.

“The old man’s not here?” Cazales said. “Or his daughter?”

“No one was here when we arrived,” Lea told him.

“And who are you?” Cazales asked, not that it was any of his business. Still, old Félix had been his neighbor for a long time. He supposed he had a right to know. The dark woman was oddly silent and the girl was not someone he’d seen before. His wife had gossiped that the daughter, Marianne, was involved with some young fellow who came and went as he pleased, speeding down the road in some rattletrap car that was likely stolen, scaring the cows in their pasture.

“We’re friends of the family,” Lea said.

Cazales shrugged. Maybe this was true, maybe it wasn’t. But they weren’t German soldiers, and how much damage could they do even if they were thieves? Perhaps they were simply homeless, making their way to the border. He wasn’t that interested in other people’s personal lives. If Marianne had a boyfriend, for instance, who was he to care? Let her have a hundred of them for all it mattered to him. People here were entitled to their privacy. Still, there were some things that were quite concerning, the coming storm, for instance. He had already rounded up his cows and shut them in his barn. “Take my advice, tie up the goat so she doesn’t go running off and get lost in the storm. It will be here by dark.” He could tell from the way the wind was rising, from the upturned leaves on the trees.