“Ah, oui, monsieur! One does not forget his love. Perhaps the vanille? It is the scent of the érotique.”

A blush spread across his cheeks, and he did not need a translator to understand her meaning.

She gestured for him to put out his other arm, and when she rolled up his sleeve, she spritzed him with a new bottle. The scent was warm and inviting, but also comfortable. Like home.

“I’ll take it.”

“Excellent choice.”

She wrapped the package identically to the first and marked a corner of it with a V so tiny that he would never have known to look for it if she hadn’t shown him.

“This way you know one from the other. And—for you? Perhaps a cologne for you to keep?”

Tom held up his hand to say no, offering a polite smile. Currently, he was a walking bouquet of violets and vanilla, something that would surely have made him the target of John and William’s laughter if they were here with him. And anyway, he had a bottle of Old Spice at home that he used on Sundays, but there was no use for it here. Tomorrow, he would rejoin his unit in Holland. Back to the front. Where the enemy didn’t spare you just because you smelled good.

He paid the bill, returning his much lighter wallet into his pocket, and took the handle of the bag that the woman had given him.

“Merci,” he said.

“Au revoir.”

He left the store and was once again swept up in a crowd similar to the one yesterday. Banners waved in the breeze, confetti fell from balconies, and the swarm of people inched its way westward. He joined them, or rather, he was absorbed by them, walking down the Rue di Rivoli until it connected to the Champs-Élysées. At that point, everything stopped because the Champs was already filled with people on the sidewalks.

He picked out enough British and American voices in the crowd to learn that there was to be a magnificent victory parade today.

A child cried behind him, and he looked to see a little girl, maybe three years old, wriggling in her mother’s arms and trying to see above his broad shoulders.

“Let me help,” he said, hoping that his intention overcame the language difference.

He held out his arms and the mother handed the child to him. He thought of little Joanna, John’s daughter, and how he hoped to meet her one day and carry her, too, like the uncle he wanted to be.

Band music started up and Tom was grateful that his tall stature allowed him to see over the women standing in front of him. He looked up at the little girl, whose curled pigtails were bouncing as she looked back and forth in excitement.