She sat on the porch all that afternoon, the wildflowers collected in her skirt, and by the time the wreath was done, she had decided to stay. She would eventually get some cows and more goats. She would go to a neighbor on the other side of the village who had many beehives and ask for his help restarting one in the field. Monsieur Cazales would likely be willing to help her in the fields until she could pay someone to work for her. It would be a beginning. She would walk the old paths and look at stars. She hadn’t lost the ability to find her way in the dark. She would be here alone, and as time passed, she would find that she enjoyed it, just as her father had. She would soon bring out a rocking chair so she could sit outside on clear nights. There was little need to go any farther than the village, or the neighbor’s. The world was right here. She had brought more than sixty children to freedom; she’d held down fences, her coat covering the barbed wire, and she would always have small gashes in the palms of her hands to remind her of this. She’d had her heart broken, she’d been in love, she had lived her life, she’d done something worthwhile, and wasn’t that what she had wished for most of all when she left the farm and continued walking, when she went to Paris and was so happy that she had no regrets about what she had done? She was especially glad that she had slept with Victor the last time, when the bee flew in his mouth, when she feared she would lose him and they spent all night together in her bed.

It would be May of the following year when the baby arrived, that green time of the year when the bees are working so hard in the fields. By then, the war in France would be over. She would name the baby after Victor, and when the pastor came to call he would understand why she would not wish to have the child baptized in a church, since he was his father’s son. Instead, they would bring the baby to a stream beyond the field on his naming day and Marianne would hold him in her arms while the pastor recited Jacob’s blessing.

May the angel who delivered me from all harm bless this boy.

CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE

THE WEIGHT OF A SOUL

ARDÈCHE, AUGUST 1944