“No, because it’s not her fault, she’s only a child. Her father … oh, I see what you mean.”

  “Well, you had it a whole lot worse than Natalie ever did.”

  She shook her head, her teeth clenched. “But look at what I did, Pete. Werner was a German, the enemy; he was occupying my country, starving my people, and I … sweetheart, I thought, if you knew about us … if you knew, you wouldn’t ever be able to look at me again without … without a picture in your mind of … of … ”

  There was a picture in my mind, all right, but Werner wasn’t in it—only a scared, defiant, half-naked child with a shaven head and a tarred swastika between her breasts, and no one to defend her, surrounded by a crowd of closed, unforgiving faces.

  “Now you listen here, my girl,” I said, “You just damn well better get used to the idea that I’m not that easy to get rid of. I’m afraid you’re stuck with me, like it or not.”

  To my surprise and my deep pleasure, she smiled. Why, you look like the old Lily, I thought with a surge of pure joy. She touched my lips with an exploring finger, looking at my face as if she’d never seen it before, the way she did sometimes. “Pete, Pete,” she sighed, “I can’t tell you how glad I am to see you.” Her brow contracted in the tiniest of frowns, making her eyes seem even clearer and deeper. “Everything’s going to be all right, isn’t it?”

  I kissed her fingertips and laid her cool, smooth palm against my cheek. “It already is, honey. We’re together again.”

  * * *

  But of course it wasn’t as easy as that to sort things out, and we spent the rest of the long day talking, and talking, and talking. We had a lunch in the village of a garlicky, soup thick with potatoes, beans, and ham bones, and then she took me back up the hill to a stone fence beneath an oak—the ruins of a stone fence, rather; built who knew how many eons ago, by the Phocaeans, or Romans, or Tuscans, or any of the dozens of other peoples who had come to Corsica and long ago gone from it. And there we sat almost the entire day, sometimes on the wall, sometimes, lazily lying on the grass with our backs against it, looking out over the mountain flanks toward Calvi and the coastline.

  Lily was cautious at the start, wanting to determine if I really did know everything, but then she opened up and began to speak freely about how it had been; about her father’s Nazi connections, about Werner, about the baby, about everything except that awful day in Veaudry, the day of the photograph. A little, yes—“They were quite harsh with us; they shaved off our hair.”—but no details beyond that. And that was fine with me; better than fine. For my part, I didn’t tell her—and never will tell her—that I’d seen the picture of her in the extremity of her humiliation. Louis would cluck his disapproval at my withholding this, I suppose, but as far as I was concerned, there were things in a relationship that came before unfettered, no-holds-barred deepness and authenticity. Anyway, Louis was never going to know about the picture either.

  It was Lily who did nearly all of the talking, which was as it should have been. I restricted myself mostly to a running commentary of matter-of-fact, common-sense observations: A fifteen-year-old girl who has an affair with a German soldier in the middle of a horrible war is not a criminal or a traitor, and the actions of a crowd caught up in the fierce exhilaration of release after a long, brutal subjugation don’t make her one. And the behavior of a father, however repulsive, is his responsibility alone; it doesn’t pass down through the genes or the blood to taint his offspring. And so on.

  Platitudinous as they were, they seemed to fill some void in her. She listened hungrily to them, almost visibly soaking them up. The healing process is starting, I thought. Maybe we can come out of this whole, after all.

  The story of the baby, Odile, was a sad one, of course, but I think that talking about it after bottling it up for so many years brought home to her what a long time ago it had been, and how much had happened in her life since then. After the first couple of hesitant sentences she was calm, thoughtful, factual, pouring it out not in a torrent, but in a peaceful, steady stream. While she talked I held her hand. She’s starting to put it behind her, I thought gratefully. At last.

  “What else would you like to know about, Pete?”

  “Well, I’d like to know where you went after the baby, after you left Veaudry—if you feel like talking about it. How did you wind up in London?”

  From Veaudry she had come here, to La Castagna, she told me, where her wonderful grandparents had willingly taken her in. And La Castagna, as it turned out, was a meeting place for members of the Maquis, which her grandfather ardently supported. One night they’d been briefed by a woman-member of de Gaulle’s Free French forces who had come to the island for the purpose of coordinating the Resistance’s mop-up operations. She’d stayed at the farm for a few days and had gotten to know and like Lily, and before she left she’d asked her if she’d be interested in working for the Free French in London. Lily had hardly known who de Gaulle was, or what the Free French Forces were, but she’d jumped at the chance to get away from France, and when the woman re-boarded her ship bound for England, Lily was with her. Four months later she’d walked into Captain Hendricks’ office on Grosvenor Square with her envelope—and there I was.

  “Lucky for me,” I said. “I could have been out of the office or something. Good God.”

  She smiled and dropped her eyes. “Do you … do you want to hear about Werner?”

  “Yes.” I want to hear about anything you want to tell me about.

  “Werner Leuschner. A sweet, lost boy. He was fifteen too, you know, born the same month I was.”

  “No, I hadn’t known that.” So they were both children.

  He was from Bremerhaven,” she said dreamily, staring out at the bay, out of which the ferry was steaming, just rounding the point of the promontory and heading south, toward Ajaccio. “A music student. He played the piccolo.”

  “The piccolo?”

  She nodded. “He’d actually managed to buy one in Paris—he was so excited—but then he broke his glasses almost the next day and couldn’t read his music.”

  I came perilously close to bursting into laughter, which probably shows how worn out I was and how tattered my self-control. But the thing was, you see, that I had conjured up this image of her lover as some kind of blond, Aryan god, and now to find out that he was a fifteen-year-old piccolo player who couldn’t see his music without his glasses …

  “You would have liked him, I think, Pete. He was good-hearted. He never wanted to be in the army, he just wanted to play his piccolo.”

  “I’m sure I would have,” I said.

  Not long after that we seemed to have talked ourselves out and so for a long time we just sprawled contentedly, shoulder to shoulder, with our backs against the warm, smooth stones, looking down on the white sweep of the bay and the citadel—so insignificant when seen from here—and catching the occasional glint of a car on the streets of the town.

  “Maybe we should be getting back,” Lily said. “It’s close to dinner time. You must be starving. I know I am. All this talking really takes it out of you.”

  “Uh-huh.” I nodded but didn’t move. I was too comfortable, too at peace. The wonderful Mediterranean sun was warm on my face, my hands were loosely laced on my abdomen, my arm was pressed against Lily’s arm. Above all, Lily and I were back in synch or well on the way to it. I couldn’t imagine feeling a more perfect sense of repose and I didn’t want it to end. And Lily, despite her suggestion, must have felt the same; she hadn’t moved a muscle either.

  “How’s Grandfather Vercier?” I said idly after a time. “How does he like being an innkeeper?”

  “Grandfather? Oh, he died long ago; I thought I told you that. I don’t know the people who own La Castagna now. I just came here because I always loved the place and I didn’t know where else to go. And I did have to leave, Pete. It was almost as if my life with you, my whole wonderful life with you, had been a movie, and I’d been an actress playing a part the whole time, and now it was over, and I had to go back to being me, the real me, and … and …”

  “I understand, honey. I really do.”

  I was really a mess, Pete. I thought my head was going to come off.”

  “Poor kid. Better now?”

  “Yes.” Her hand reached over to graze lightly over my forearm. I felt the hairs stand up. “Since you came, definitely yes.”

  Purr. “I can understand why this was the place you came to,” I said, turning on my side toward her. She lay face up with her eyes closed. “There’s something about the old house—peaceful, solid, enduring …”

  “Yes, that’s what you said before.”

  “Mm.” I was pleasurably engaged in the contemplation of her profile—lying face up, with her eyes closed, she did look a little like Leslie Caron—and I was about to put my finger on that charmingly upturned nose in hopes of making her laugh—when her words finally made it to my higher nerve centers.

  “I said what before?”

  The same thing, the same words—about the house. Enduring, solid—”

  I was up on one elbow. “Are you saying I’ve seen the house before?”

  “Well, sure.” She opened her eyes. “What are you looking so confused about?” A little vertical furrow of anxiety had appeared between her eyebrows. “What’s the matter?”

  “No, no, no, nothing’s the matter. It’s just that—Lily, that’s the house that’s always in my dream.”

  “Is that so? Why didn’t you ever tell me that?”

  “Well, I didn’t—what do you mean, I’ve seen the house? When did I see it?”

  “In that picture, don’t you remember?”

  “No!”

  We had both sat up now, backs against the wall. “Yes, you do. Grandpére sent it to me years ago, a big one, hand-tinted. It looks exactly the same now, except the woodwork’s not green any more.”

  I shook my head. “Lily I don’t—”

  “Yes, you do. It’s in our scrapbook, Pete. For goodness’ sake, you—”

  “Do you mean the one of you as a little girl?”

  “Yes. I was eleven.”

  “Of course I remember that one. But what’s it got to do with the house?”

  She smiled. “What am I doing in the picture?”

  “Nothing. Just standing there looking gawky, with legs like a pair of chopsticks.”

  “Thank you.”

  “But cute, cute as a button.”

  She laughed. “And where was I standing, with my legs like a pair of chopsticks? Think.”

  “I don’t remember. On the grass, in front of … in front of … damn, you’re kidding me. Was it in front of the old farmhouse?”

  She tapped her temple. “Aha.”

  So, another mystery solved.

  * * *

  We had a simple dinner of cheese-stuffed cannelloni, fried sardines, and little doughnuts—beignets—made with chestnut flour, in the inn’s dining room, a big room with a wood-beamed ceiling, an unglazed tile floor, and a huge, unlit fireplace. Only two of the other five tables had occupants—a scowling older man who sat as far from the rest of us as possible and held his fork like an unnatural instrument, thumb on one side and four fingers on the other, and an exuberant, self-absorbed family of three—so we had it pretty much to ourselves.

  A pottery jug of local wine, sweet, strong, and amber-colored, had been placed on each table (we noticed the ten-year-old boy nearby swigging enthusiastically away with his parents; could that have been why they were all so exuberant?), and we each had a glass while waiting for the food to be served. It went quickly to our heads, making us both a little giggly, so that we agreed to a moratorium on serious talk. Instead, Lily rambled pleasantly on about the old days at La Castagna—how, as a little girl, she had once helped her grandmother roast an entire goat in the big fireplace, back when the whole ground floor was a single room with a primitive open kitchen tucked into one corner; how her grandfather had made with his own hands, out of chestnut wood, the two chairs that still stood along one wall in what was now the anteroom, how her grandmother used to send delightful chills down her spine with earnest warnings of dead spirits who announced their presence with an otherworldly humming. Of her father, and their walks together, and the rainy-day stories he told her in the root-cellar, she spoke not at all, and I didn’t press her.

  We took our coffee in the anteroom, sitting in the chairs her grandfather had carved, and now it was my turn to talk. I told her about my adventures in searching for her. She was, I think, embarrassed but also mightily pleased at all the trouble I’d gone to find her—except, of course, when it came to the shootout in Veaudry and my getting nailed with the chunk of wood. I tried to play it as lightly as possible, and even for laughs when I could, but she was obviously shocked, and there were many warmly gratifying expressions of concern, and solicitude; so many and so warm that I was grateful that I’d been shot, or speared, or shrapneled, or whatever it was I’d been.

  By the time I finished we were both exhausted and falling asleep, so we headed upstairs. Lily said she had asked for and gotten the corner room, which had been hers when she was little, although now it was smaller, as all three of the original bedrooms were, to make room for the creation of two additional ones. As I closed the door behind us, Lily turned to me, put a hand gently on each of my shoulders, and dropped her eyes. I got nervous. What was coming now?

  “Pete, I’m not sure if … I mean, everything is going so well now … I don’t know if it would be a good idea for us to …”

  “Me neither,” I said in all honesty, and much relieved that that was all it was. “There’s plenty of time. Let’s get to know each other again first.”

  And so, with no more talking, we fell asleep in each others arms, as chaste as a pair of infants (not quite as easy as I’d thought, since my luggage was sitting in a bar in Calvi and I was sleeping without anything on). In the morning I awakened on my side to find Lily studying my face from about three inches away, our foreheads almost touching on a single pillow.

  “Hi,” I said. “Do I know you?” What a great way to start the day.

  “Hi.” Her voice was sleepy, tranquil, a pleasure to hear. “Pete, isn’t this nice?”

  “Not too bad.” I pressed the tip of her nose and she laughed on cue. “Listen,” I said, “let’s be serious. I’d say we know each other pretty well by now, wouldn’t you?”

  “It’s amazing. I feel as if I’ve known you for years,” she said, opening her arms to me.

  Chapter 21

  By the time we got out of bed, my luggage, having been picked up in Calvi by Pascal, the inn’s busboy-waiter, on his way to work, was outside the door. That meant that for the first time in three days I was able to shave and put on fresh clothes, which I’m sure Lily appreciated as much as I did.

  “You know, I don’t think I realized how seedy you were looking,” she said as we sat down in the spare little walled garden behind the house, where a few tables had been set out in the sun for those hardy enough to breakfast outdoors in the “wintry” morning temperature of fifty-five degrees or so.

  “That’s because you were so happy to see me.”

  “Yes,” she said seriously, “it is. Pete … darling …” She reached her hand out to me across the table and I took it. “… I don’t know how to tell you how sorry I am for … for the stupid way I’ve been acting. The last thing in the world I wanted to do was to hurt you. I just couldn’t—”

  “Now come on, Lily, enough already. We’ve been all through that. It was me. If I hadn’t been so self-centered all this time, so damn dense—”

  “No—oh, no—you’ve always been wonderful. You’re the best thing that ever happened to me.” Her fingers kneaded my palm. “That was another thing, Pete—I was so terribly afraid something would happen to you.”

  “To me? Why to me?”

  “Because you’d try to protect me—”

  “Of course I’d try to protect you. It’s in the contract, I believe.”

  “Yes, but after I saw those men, those thugs, hurting you …” She shivered. “I knew that whatever was happening wasn’t over yet, that more awful things were going to happen, and I didn’t want you involved. It’s not that I didn’t think you could handle things, I just wanted you to be safe. It was my responsibility, not yours, and I wanted to take it away with me. Can you understand that?”

  “Hey, we’re in this together,” I said softly. “‘For better or for worse,’ remember?”

  She looked at me, her eyes huge and bright.

  “Look,” I said. “The only thing that matters is that you’re all right—and that we’re back on track.” I gave her hand a solid squeeze. “Right?”

  She nodded. “Thank you for coming after me,” she said softly, with her eyes lowered, then looked up, smiling. “And that’s the last I’ll say on the subject.”

  “Good, I’m glad to hear it. Let’s eat.”

  Breakfast was the same as it had been at the stand-up bar in Calvi: coffee or hot chocolate and croissants, either plain or chocolate-filled. We took a basket of plain croissants and coffee—au lait for me, black for Lily, as usual—and once we’d had a few swallows our talk turned to the unanswered questions that were still rattling around out there. Why had Chastenet been killed in the café in Veaudry? What had he been going to tell me? Why had her father been killed in Brooklyn? Who was behind the murders? What was on Marcel Vercier’s precious film? Why had he been so insistent that Lily see it? On these perplexities we got nowhere that I hadn’t already gotten with Sergeant Kovalski or Inspector Juneaux—which is to say, not much of anywhere.

  What was troubling me the most, but which neither of us wanted to think about, let alone talk about, was the knowledge that whatever was going on probably wasn’t over yet. That other copy of the film, if it really existed, was still out there somewhere, and someone was presumably still after it. And, according to Vercier’s landlady, Lily was supposed to hold the key to its location. Did Vercier’s killer believe that too? There was no way of knowing, but it meant we couldn’t count ourselves out of the woods yet. It was something I was reluctant to frighten Lily with, but I knew it had to be brought up.