Danny is right, of course. What is a little private matter of a tattoo in the face of existential danger?

She sets down the packet, bracing herself for the inevitable confrontation.

Midafternoon, Danny stops by her work area and drops the math book on her desk. “Ready for your lessons?”

She winces and looks down, waiting for him to say more. The book’s corners are frayed, and geometric pen doodles fill all the white spaces on the cover. She flips it open, goes past the title page and table of contents. Unfamiliar letters and complex equations stare at her. Calculations are scribbled in the margins.

“Sorry about the book’s poor condition. I bought it used.”

“It looks very difficult.”

“You’re smart. We’ll take baby steps. How about an hour after work today? Get a grid notebook from supply. I’ll be back at seventeen hundred hours.”

Maybe Uzi couldn’t find the letter, or maybe he included it but made no mention that he was sending it at the request of someone named Sharon. Relieved, she pushes the math book aside and continues filling out multipage customs forms for navigation equipment from Italy.

Before five, with a crisp new grid notebook on her desk, she sharpens a couple of pencils and places a rubber eraser next to them. She fans through the pages of the dreaded textbook, doubting her ability to conquer the equations.

She halts at the sight of a piece of paper tucked inside the back cover. She unfolds it and feels her heart stop. It is a letter on a lined notebook page, browned in places, and written in French.

Chapter Forty-One

Claudette

Loire Valley, France

Spring 1946

As their last acts, the Nazis had burned villages during their retreat. Ruins were visible everywhere in La Guerche-sur-l’Aubois, where Claudette was back, living with Solange, her two little girls, and Dorothée, her ailing mother. Mémère’s home on the main road was a pile of cinders. Luckily, some houses like Dorothée Poincaré’s on side streets had been spared.

Claudette was a hundred and forty kilometers from Valençay. She’d exhausted the markets in that vicinity, but with Solange, she could explore villages far outside the cheese seller’s territory. She didn’t feel as alone now as she had when living with Madame Couture, both of them immersed in their own grief, their respective sorrows separating them like two islands wedged in a river as life flowed past.

Now that spring was here, Claudette planted a vegetable garden. She had missed the feel of the clumps of earth between her fingers and the sight of the first brazen leaf that poked up its head in search of sun—and she loved gardening with Solange’s adorable little girls, ages four and five, at her side. Their little arms around her neck when they thanked her for the dresses she sewed for their dolls gave her minute reprieves from her anguish. And having their little bodies in her lap while she read them the stories of Babar brought her closer to her little Benjamin. She hoped his adoptive parents were equally loving, bestowing on him the same tenderness and care.

Their home was the refuge of three disabled women. The cooking stove posed dangers to Solange—she might scorch precious food, scald the hands that wove baskets for their livelihood, or set a sleeve on fire. Dorothée suffered dizzy spells that kept her lying on the living-room sofa. She wove small jute baskets with her eyes closed while instructing Claudette how to cook—Claudette, the cripple whom Mémère had kept away from the stove for fear of an accident.

On weekends and some Wednesdays, the little girls were sent into a neighbor’s care while Claudette and Solange traveled to the markets. Claudette was Solange’s eyes on the road, and Solange acted as Claudette’s voice. She didn’t hesitate to ask any passing strangers—not just those who were accompanied by little boys—whether they had heard about a boy with a blue tattoo at the bottom of his foot.

In the evenings, after the girls and Dorothée were in bed, the two of them sat by the fire. While Solange wove rattan, Claudette read aloud from the many new romance books published after the war. The virginal princesses had been replaced with confident, capable heroines with soft hearts for their lovers. Relentless Search, Unforgettable Woman, and A Hero’s Return told sensuous stories of courage and valor. The two of them giggled like the teenagers they once were, the only difference being that now, each had known a great love.

Solange’s husband had developed abdominal pain and died five weeks later. The midwife in the village where he had been serving as a social worker touched his enlarged belly and told Solange that no doctor could save him.

Claudette confessed her love for a Jew. She talked about Raphaël and his father. “I have you and your husband to thank for directing them to Château de Valençay,” Claudette said, then added, “Even if you didn’t like Jews.”

“My husband taught me to be a better person,” Solange replied. “‘God’s Chosen People,’ he said.”

“Yes, Raphaël was an admirable man. So smart too.” Claudette was grateful for the memories of his bright eyes and lean body, of his kisses and caresses.

His boy was somewhere. She had to find him for both their sakes. In her inquiries about a three-and-a-half-year-old boy with a blue tattoo, she never revealed its design, and she asked Father Hugo not to describe it in his probes of his colleagues. Only someone with reliable information would know about the Jewish star.

No one had heard of such a boy.

And then it happened. The day was bright, with the first buds of cherry blossoms. The long morning in the market had been profitable; Solange sold many baskets, and Claudette had been kept busy mending clothes at a side table. It was almost two o’clock when they finished packing up the cart and entered a nearby tavern for a meal.

While waiting for their pea soup to arrive, Solange rose to address the room in a way that Claudette would never have dared. Solange’s past public inquiries had been met with either indifferent glances she had been unable to see or crude jokes to which she responded with her sharp tongue, drawing laughter.

Claudette was jolted to hear a drunken man say, “Tattooed with that star of the Jews?”

“Yes!” Claudette jumped up from her seat. “Where have you seen him?”

“I heard, not saw.” The man waved his hand. His speech was slurred. “Gone the way of all the Jews.”

“Spell it out,” Solange called to him. “What are you saying?”

“The Boche got him and his Jew-loving family.”

“But how, exactly?” Solange pressed.

The man mimed raising a rifle and shooting. “Boom, boom.”

Shot? The Nazis shot a baby? Claudette’s heart broke into a million pieces all over again. She crumpled into herself, trying to control the scream that threatened to tear out of her.

Still standing, Solange squeezed Claudette’s shoulder and went on. “Where was it?”

Claudette saw the man waving his arm in the direction of the outside world. Then he gulped the rest of his beer and dropped his head on the table.

“What’s his answer?” Solange asked the man on her other side.

“Nothing. He’s a known drunkard and a liar,” he replied.

But Claudette knew that this wasn’t a lie. The drunkard had identified the star tattoo—and not just any star, but the six-pointed Star of David. He’d implied that Benjamin’s adoptive family was not Jewish but had sheltered a Jew.

Benjamin, the innocent soul, was dead. He had been killed because she had marked him for the Boche. Her little cherub didn’t even have the comfort of sitting at Jesus’s feet.

Claudette’s wail filled the tavern. She fell sobbing into Solange’s arms.

Chapter Forty-Two

Uzi Yarden

Loire Valley, France

Late September 1946

Uzi felt more at ease when he arrived at his new base in Argenton-sur-Creuse even though this was a bustling town, unlike the tiny enclave of Châtillon-sur-Indre. He walked on a stone bridge over a wide river bisecting the town and stopped to lean on the railing, felted with green moss. Charming two- and three-story houses constructed of various colorful materials lined both sides of the river, and majestic weeping willow trees drooped into the water. To the east, a bridge over massive, arched rock foundations had been gutted in its center. Twisted metal rods of a railway testified to Nazi air bombing.

No need to search for a room here. Father Patrick, a Catholic priest, was to host him in the church with its carved medieval façade.

“I thought Catholics baptize our children and won’t give them back,” Uzi had said to Hilda when she had handed him this address.