The French War Bride by Robin Wells

she had died?”
    â€œMy mother found her in the bathroom two weeks later, at the apartment where we stayed with some other refugees when we first arrived in Paris. She had slit her wrists.” He lowered his head, but not before I saw that his eyes were swimming. “She found it impossible to live with the shame.”
    I put my hand on his arm.
    â€œI failed her. I failed my father, my mother—my whole family. I should have been home. If I’d been with them, this would not have happened.”
    â€œNo.” I desperately wanted to lighten his burden of guilt. “If you had been home, you, too, would be dead.”
    â€œAt least that would have been honorable. If I had been there, they would have just taken me and left my sister alone.”
    â€œYou cannot know that.”
    He buried his eyes in his hands.
    â€œThe important thing now is that you stay alive and try to provide a future for your mother,” I said.
    He rubbed his eyes, then reached for his coffee. “That is not what I think in the dark of night. I fear that is not what my mother thinks, either.”
    I reached for his hand. He squeezed it. I leaned in to kiss him, but, as always, he turned away.

6
AMÉLIE
    1940
    T he joke of war stopped being funny on May 10. That was when Yvette and I came home from school to find Maman wringing her hands as she listened to the radio. Yvette’s mother stood beside her.
    â€œWhat has happened?”
    â€œGermany has invaded Belgium,” Maman said.
    â€œAnd Luxembourg and Holland,” Yvette’s mother added. “It’s a blitzkrieg.”
    It was the first time either Yvette or I had heard the word. I thought it sounded like a pastry. “What’s that?”
    â€œIt means lightning war,” Yvette’s mother said. “Planes suddenly appear and drop bomb after bomb. And then panzer tanks move in and destroy everything in their path.”
    A shiver ran up my spine. “Why are they attacking those countries? Has Germany declared war on them?” I asked.
    â€œNothing was declared. They just started bombing and invading.”
    If they were doing that to countries that they weren’t even officially at war with, what would they do to us?
    When I voiced my concerns at dinner, Papa was quick to reassure me. Or maybe it was my mother he wanted to reassure. She seemed to be falling apart. Her hair was unkempt, her dress was wrinkled, and her face had taken on an unhealthy pall.
    â€œWe have defenses in place,” he said, “and we have allies. There are more than three hundred thousand British troops—the great British Expeditionary Force—in our country to shore up our army.”
    The British had a new prime minister, a man named Winston Churchill. No one seemed to know anything about him, except that he had never advocated trying to make peace with the Nazis, as the previous English prime minister had.
    We heard that the British and French military were moving toward the Dyle River. Were Thomas and Pierre on the move, as well?
    Over the next few days, life in Paris went on as usual, except for the fact that the radio played more news than music. Yvette and I went to school. Father continued to teach at university. France had become so inured to a war that wasn’t really a war that it was hard to realize how much the situation had changed. Everyone still believed the impregnable Maginot Line would hold.
    Joshua was the one who told me the news when I met him at the Jardin des Plantes, in the Allée Becquerel. We had taken to meeting there now that the weather was warm. “The Germans are in France. They invaded through the Ardennes.”
    â€œThe Ardennes forest?” I had studied French geography just last year. “That is supposed to be impenetrable.”
    He nodded grimly. “Which is why it was virtually undefended. No army in the history of the world has ever been able to get through.” He shook