The Room on Rue Amélie

by Kristin Harmel

  “Ruby!” he cried out just as his Spit plunged into the shallow sea a few hundred yards from the French coast. Just beyond the poppies, there she was, smiling and beckoning, letting him know that at long last, it was all right to rest.

  CHAPTER FORTY-FOUR

  August 1944

  Ruby was vaguely aware of murmurs, quiet voices, whispered questions, and then, something like music. She strained to listen, and it was only after a few moments that she realized what the sound was. A baby cooing. Her baby cooing. “My baby!” she managed to whisper, though the world felt hazy and untenable. Where was she? How long had she been sleeping? Why couldn’t she see more than foggy shapes?

  Eva, the farmer’s wife, appeared in her field of vision, carrying a small, perfect bundle. “You’re awake, Ruby. Would you like to say hello to your daughter?”

  Ruby’s throat constricted as Eva brought the baby closer and placed her gently on Ruby’s chest. Her vision cleared enough that she could see the baby’s face in all its perfect detail. She was beautiful, healthy against all the odds. She had Thomas’s brilliant blue eyes, and for a few seconds, as Ruby gazed into them, she had the feeling that Thomas was right here with her. She could hardly wait until they were together again. Soon, they’d all go home. Not home to Paris, but home to the United States, the place they’d spend the rest of forever together. She knew her parents would love Thomas and their new granddaughter with all their hearts, and they’d welcome Charlotte with open arms too. Ruby would show them the world of poppies, the way that each new day exploded in a symphony of colors and hope. She could see the future, and it was glorious.

  Although Ruby felt weak, she was still able to hold her baby, who was rooting around for her mother’s breast. Tears came to Ruby’s eyes, for she wasn’t producing milk; it was impossible after Ravensbrück.

  “We have some milk for her,” Eva said, seeming to read Ruby’s mind. “She’ll be all right.”

  “Thank you,” Ruby rasped, still astonished at her good fortune to have ended up here. She swore to herself that she would repay Eva and Fritz one day.

  “What is her name?” Eva asked. “Your daughter?”

  Ruby smiled down at the baby in her arms for a moment without replying. She had hair the color of midnight and the tiniest fingers and toes Ruby had ever seen. Her skin was pale and her cheeks were pink. She was far smaller than she should have been, maybe only five pounds, but she was healthy and whole, which seemed impossible. She was, Ruby knew, the very definition of a miracle. And that gave her hope for the future, for if miracles could happen within her own body, they could happen anywhere. It meant that Thomas would come back to her, that Charlotte would be waiting for her in Paris.

  “Nadia,” Ruby murmured with a smile, thinking of her Russian friend who had given her this gift, this chance of survival, at the cost of her own life. The child she had saved would forever bear her name. “Her name is Nadia. It means hope.”

  Eva had tears in her eyes as she smiled down at Ruby and the baby. “Nadia,” she said softly. “A beautiful name.”

  “Yes.” Ruby gazed down at her daughter, who looked up at her mother’s face, searching. “My sweet little girl. You will have a good life, my darling. I promise you.”

  “Ruby,” Eva said after a few minutes. “I have some news for you. Paris was liberated a few days ago. The Allies are headed east. It is only a matter of time.”

  “Paris was liberated?” Ruby felt breathless, and she imagined joy flooding through the capital, people dancing in the streets, the French flag flying once again. Charlotte would be safe now, and that alone was enough to bring tears of joy to Ruby’s eyes. “Thank God.” She drew a ragged breath. “May I ask one more thing of you? There are three letters I’d like to write, just in case something happens to me.”

  “Of course.” Eva went to retrieve a few pieces of paper and a pen, and when she returned, she offered to hold Nadia while Ruby wrote. But Ruby didn’t want to let go, and so she cradled her daughter in the crook of her left arm while writing shakily with her right hand. When she was done, she addressed the letters—one to her parents, one to Thomas in care of the RAF, and one to Charlotte in care of Lucien—and handed them to Eva. “Thank you,” she whispered.

  “There’s no need to thank me.”

  Eva eventually took Nadia and fed her milk from a bottle as Ruby drifted off. When she awoke, it was morning, and she could have sworn she’d heard an explosion somewhere in the distance. “Has something happened?” she asked, struggling to the surface.

  Eva was there beside her, cradling Nadia, and she looked startled by Ruby’s abrupt question. “I don’t think so.”

  “I thought I heard a noise,” Ruby murmured, focusing on her daughter’s face. Eva rose and placed Nadia on Ruby’s chest once more, and Ruby touched her lips to the top of her daughter’s head, feeling her soft, downy hair. Ruby was hot, so hot, but the baby’s skin was cool, and Ruby knew she would be okay. “My sweet little girl,” she murmured. “One day soon, you will meet your father, and your aunt Charlotte and uncle Lucien, and your grandmother and grandfather. They’ll all love you so much, my sweet angel, just like I do.”

  Eva left the room as Ruby cooed to the baby, and she returned a moment later with a wet cloth, which she put on Ruby’s forehead. “You’re burning up, my dear,” she said. She reached for Nadia, but Ruby held on tightly, shaking her head.

  “Please,” she whispered. “Not yet.”

  Eva nodded, backing away, but Ruby could see concern in her eyes.

  “What day is today?” Ruby asked, because she wanted to remember everything about the start of her child’s life.

  “Wednesday, August thirtieth,” Eva replied.

  Ruby’s eyes filled with tears. She tried to take a deep breath, but there was pressure on her lungs, and she couldn’t quite inhale. “I know I have no right to ask anything else of you,” she began, “but please promise me again that you will protect my baby.”

  “I swear it on my life,” Eva said firmly, and Ruby believed her. “Sleep now, Ruby. It’s okay. You’ve saved your daughter.”

  “I did. I really did. And now, I’ll see Thomas very soon.”

  “Yes,” Eva agreed. She had moved to Ruby’s side and was stroking her forehead.

  “And Charlotte. And my parents.”

  “Yes.”

  Eva’s words and the cool touch of her hand were so soothing. Against her brittle, hollowed chest, Ruby could feel her baby’s heartbeat, and she smiled, relaxing into the rhythm. For the first time in years, she knew in the depths of her soul that everything would be okay. “Nadia,” she whispered as the world faded away once again. “Thomas.”

  And then she closed her eyes, and the poppy fields were there, their vibrant, familiar colors bright against the crisp blue sky. It had to be a dream, didn’t it? But there was her house, the one she’d grown up in, and beside it, impossibly, was the home she had talked of building one day: a whitewashed cottage with a white picket fence, exactly as she’d imagined it. She could feel the fresh desert air; she could feel the grass whispering beneath her feet; she could smell the fragrance of her mother’s apple pie wafting from the open window of her parents’ kitchen. Somewhere in the distance, Fred Astaire sang “Cheek to Cheek.”

  Ruby began to walk toward the house, and that’s when she saw Thomas emerging from the poppies. He looked just as he had when she’d last seen him, handsome and strong and full of hope. “Ruby!” he called, and all at once, his arms were open, and she was running toward him. She had always known, somewhere deep inside, that she would see him again, but this still felt like a miracle.

  “Thomas!” she cried as she fell into him, and that’s when she knew for sure this wasn’t a dream. He was warm and solid and real.

  Soon, she would tell him about Nadia, about the way her blue eyes sparkled, about the way her hair was feather-soft, about the way she looked just like him. She would tell him that she had saved their daughter, but that it was he
who had saved her all those years before by giving her a reason to live. She would tell him that she loved him, that she intended to spend the rest of eternity by his side, if he’d have her. There would be time for all of that, but for now, she only wanted to feel his arms around her, to hear his heartbeat, to breathe him in.

  She looked down and realized she looked just as she had that day in 1941 when Thomas had first arrived at her door on the rue Amélie. Her curves were once again ample, her skin glowing. Her dress was white, silky as a feather, billowy as a cloud. The poppy fields were familiar and unfamiliar at the same time, but their brilliant colors, more brilliant than she’d ever seen, soothed her.

  She knew she was exactly where she was meant to be, and as she found her home at last in Thomas’s arms, she could see the future stretching before them, beautiful and bright.

  CHAPTER FORTY-FIVE

  March 2002

  We reach the top of the hill just as the sun is nearing the horizon. I’d tried, at first, to push my darling girl through the fields in her wheelchair, but it had been too much; the wheels lodged in the mud. So I’d scooped her into my arms and carried her—like a bride over the threshold—the rest of the way. My whole body hurts, but I don’t care. Being able to hold her one last time, to feel her heartbeat against mine, is worth the pain.

  Spreading below us now is the vast swath of poppy fields we inherited from Ruby’s parents when they died in 1947. My wife has always said that she feels Ruby’s presence here, especially when the poppies are in bloom. For a long time, I never felt it, but I do now. Now I believe.

  After the war, the Red Cross was able to get word to Ruby’s parents about Nadia, and when they came for her, the farmer and his wife gave them the letter Ruby had written just before she died. In it, she told them all about how Charlotte had become her family, and so when it became clear that Charlotte’s parents had perished in Auschwitz, Ruby’s parents insisted upon adopting her and bringing her to California as well. They understood how much Ruby had loved her, and so they loved her too, right from the start. But both of them died before Nadia was two, leaving sole custody of their granddaughter to Charlotte, who had just turned eighteen. After waiting for a visa, I married my darling girl amid the poppies that March and became Nadia’s adopted father.

  We were never able to have biological children ourselves, but Nadia is ours in every way that matters, and I can’t imagine loving a child more than we love her. As Ruby and Charlotte discovered so long ago, family is about so much more than blood.

  “Do you think I’ll see Ruby, Lucien?” my darling girl asks me now as I set her gently down at the crest of the hill, my arms aching nearly as much as my heart. “And Thomas? And my parents?”

  “I think,” I say slowly, my eyes filling with tears, “that they’re with us every day. I think they have been all along.”

  Nowhere is that more evident than on this spot. Ruby’s body came home in February 1946, and the month after her parents buried her here, with a silver statue of a poppy to mark her grave, the hill bloomed only in ruby red. Every year since, although the rest of the valley blossoms in a sunset rainbow, this place remains drenched only in crimson. I believe with every cell in my being that it’s a sign that Ruby watches over us from the other side.

  My darling girl nods and gazes off toward the east, where the horizon is beginning to melt into the late-afternoon mist. “I imagine sometimes that I can see all the way to Paris from here,” she murmurs. “That I can see into the past. That Ruby is still alive, and Thomas has just shown up at our door, and my parents are coming home any moment now.”

  I close my eyes, too choked up to reply. I never knew my wife’s parents, but I love them for raising such a wonderful woman—and for having the foresight to protect her. As for Ruby, well, she was always Charlotte’s, but I love her too. I love her for saving my wife and for the way she fought until the end to save Nadia. There’s not a piece of my world today that would exist if she hadn’t come into Charlotte’s life all those years ago.

  I slip my arm around my darling girl and pull her close. “From up here, it sometimes feels like the past and the present collide,” I say. “I feel it too.” We stay that way for a long time, until the poppies begin to glow in the waning evening light.

  “You said once that I was brave,” Charlotte says, breaking the long and lovely silence between us.

  I smile. “I’m sure I’ve said that many times, my darling.”

  “But the first time. When you said it to Philippe.”

  I sigh and look off into the distant east once more. “I remember.” It is the fault of those words that Charlotte became part of the Resistance, that Ruby became more involved than she should have been. It’s a black mark on my conscience that I’ve never been able to erase.

  “You told Philippe that I was strong and bold.”

  “Did I?” I kiss her on the cheek. “I always was a good judge of character.”

  I’m teasing her, but the half smile falls from my face as she looks up at me with eyes full of sadness. “What if you were wrong, Lucien?” she asks in a small voice. “What if I’m none of those things?”

  “Oh, but you are, my darling. You’re the strongest person I know.”

  When I lean in to kiss her once more on the cheek, I can taste her tears. “I’m scared, Lucien,” she says. “I’m frightened of what comes next.”

  And that’s when I know for sure. She’s telling me she’s ready to go. For a moment, I don’t say anything, because I can’t. But it’s time for her to find peace, and it’s up to me to help her.

  Slowly and with great effort, I get down on one knee and offer her my hand. I did this fifty-five years ago when I asked her to marry me, and I know she realizes I’m asking her to trust me one last time. I guide her down beside me, gently, until we’re lying side by side among Ruby’s poppies, staring up at the sky, which is just turning the deep cornflower blue of early twilight. I can see the first star of the evening flickering above us.

  “Remember the first time I held you in my arms this way?” I ask.

  She sighs. “I was fourteen. Ruby was asleep, and you appeared in the courtyard outside my window on the rue de Lasteyrie.”

  I smile into the darkness and wipe away a tear. “You were crying. You insisted you were all right, and I reminded you that it was okay not to be.”

  “I remember.” Her voice is fading, and it takes all my resolve not to beg her to stay with me a little while longer. But that would be for me, not for her.

  “It’s okay now too.” I nuzzle her neck and pull her close to me, curling my body around hers just like I did on that night. “I told you then that you had to hold on to hope, my darling girl.”

  “And I did. For all these years, Lucien.”

  “Good.” I breathe into her hair, inhaling the scent of her. “Then just hold on a little longer. Hope will carry you home.”

  “I love you,” she murmurs, so softly that I can barely hear her.

  “I love you too.” And just like that night so many years ago, I know that the comfort of my body against hers has soothed her. She melts into me, and as I stroke her hair and murmur “Je t’aime,” again and again, the night closes in, and I can feel her slipping away.

  “Ruby,” she murmurs, her voice full of hope and love, and then she smiles softly, and she’s not breathing anymore. I know she’s already made the crossing, and that somehow, Ruby is there to take her home. Peace settles over me as tears fill my eyes.

  “Good-bye, my love,” I whisper. I know that one day soon, I’ll see her again.

  I struggle to my feet, and in the waning light, I gently lift my sweet Charlotte into my arms for the last time and begin the long walk down the hill, across the fields of poppies.

  Author’s Note

  While researching World War II connections to Florida for my 2016 novel, When We Meet Again, which is set partially in the Sunshine State, I came across the extraordinary story of Virginia d’Albert-Lake, a Flor
ida woman who married a Frenchman in 1937, moved to Paris, and ultimately worked with the Comet escape line in 1943 and 1944 before her arrest and imprisonment at the infamous Ravensbrück concentration camp. Like Ruby, the heroine of The Room on Rue Amélie, Virginia initially had the option to return to the States and decided against it. She felt compelled to help.

  From the start, I felt a kinship with Virginia, who died in 1997 at the age of eighty-seven. I never knew her, but the paths of our lives overlapped many times, albeit decades apart. Like me, she moved with her family from the middle of Ohio to St. Petersburg, Florida, when she was a child. Like me, she was published for the very first time in the St. Petersburg Times. Like me, she lived in the Orlando area as a young woman and then fell head over heels in love with Paris. She even lived in the same Paris arrondissement where I once lived, just over a mile from my old address. I was drawn to her story and fascinated by the idea of an American woman choosing to stay in Paris during the war so that she could help save lives. The idea for the character of Ruby was born.

  Virginia’s diary survived the war and was published in 2006 as An American Heroine in the French Resistance (Fordham University Press), providing me with a wonderful jumping-off point for the story of the fictional Ruby Henderson Benoit, who, like Virginia, couldn’t sit idly by with the world at war. In a 1993 interview in the St. Petersburg Times, Thomas Yankus, a pilot shot down over France in 1944, said of Virginia, “There we were, walking into this apartment after some pretty hairy experiences and being greeted by this beautiful woman who said, ‘Hi, fellas, how’re you doing?’ She had no fear whatsoever.” I envisioned Ruby as that kind of woman too.

  Creating Thomas, Charlotte, Lucien, and the other characters who populate The Room on Rue Amélie took a lot of research too, and I’m indebted to many authors who chronicled the war years in Paris so well. The heartrending Journal of Hélène Berr—often compared to Anne Frank’s diary—was very useful in helping me to understand the sentiments of Jews in Paris as the war dragged on, as was Jews in France During World War II by Renée Poznanski. Caroline Moorehead’s A Train in Winter, Ronald C. Rosbottom’s When Paris Went Dark, and Alan Riding’s And the Show Went On were great resources for understanding life in Paris in the 1940s. First Light by Geoffrey Wellum and Survival Against All Odds by John Misseldine were fascinating firsthand accounts of what the war was like for RAF pilots who flew missions over the Continent. And The Freedom Line by Peter Eisner, Little Cyclone by Airey Neave, and The Shelburne Escape Line by Réanne Hemingway-Douglass, and many newspaper features, helped me to understand the Allied escape lines through France and how they operated. It’s important to note, however, that while based heavily on the Comet, Shelburne, and Pat O’Leary escape lines, the escape routes in this book are fictionalized.