His clothes were filthy and caked with mud. He had been eating regularly and had put on some of the weight he had lost in the past few years. He was muscular now, nearly six feet tall. But he didn’t bathe regularly and he labored outside and so he was embarrassed by his condition. All the same, the priest insisted he sit down in a leather chair. Julien ran a hand through his long hair, self-conscious. When he thought of the boy who had stood in the hallway in Paris on the day Lea arrived, it was as if he were imagining a younger brother, someone who was forever lost to him, a boy with little experience and too much confidence, who could fall in love in the blink of an eye.

Father Varnier sat back in his chair and asked if Julien believed in heaven, and Julien answered truthfully. He wasn’t sure if he believed in anything anymore. The priest poured them both glasses of cognac, though it was all of ten A.M. When the father offered him a drink, Julien knew something was wrong. He waved his hand no to the drink and leaned forward in his chair.

“We can’t know God’s reasons for what we mortals must endure,” Father Varnier told him. “We can only be grateful for our lives and for his love.”

Julien was then told that his brother had been arrested. There had been a bombing in which a captain of the Milice had been killed, along with a Resistance worker, and the news had gotten back to Varnier. Victor had been taken to Montluc Prison in Lyon, and even though the end of the war was near, and Lyon would soon be liberated, he had been on the last train to Auschwitz on August 11. The Germans were retreating but the deportation was personally overseen by Klaus Barbie. One hundred and thirty-one Jews had been gassed upon arrival, Victor among them. Lyon was to be liberated thirteen days after the convoy was sent east.