The Guardsman gives Nicole a clipboard with a sheet of paper attached. “You have to authorize the move back to Rockaway Manor.” He reaches over to Granny. “Can I borrow your pen?” She hands over the fountain pen with a flourish.
He points to the paper on the clipboard. “Sign here.”
He jumps in surprise as we all laugh and exclaim, “Sign here!”
Maria calls us over to sit at a table set up under the basketball hoop that has paper-towel place mats held down by small cartons of chocolate milk. In the center of the table there are peanut butter and jelly sandwiches and pudding cups stacked around an extra-large sheet cake decorated in glow sticks: S & W!
The group gathers around the table to feast on Armory food, but Granny and Marguerite walk arm in arm to a set of aluminum beach chairs arranged in the corner near Granny’s cot.
“Would you like some cake?” I ask them, but they’re deep in conversation. I’m not sure if I should join them. Granny looks up and points to the shoebox on her cot. “Can you bring that to me, Lily?” Marguerite pulls over an empty chair, and they sit down next to each other.
I carefully place the heavy shoebox on Granny’s lap. I guess they want to be alone with their memories, but as I turn away, they both call out, “Lilybelle?” Marguerite motions for me to sit across from them.
Granny reaches into the shoebox, and she pulls out one of the small boxes of soap that’s decorated with the Eiffel Tower and has a false bottom for hiding secret messages. She gives Marguerite a long look and Marguerite nods. Granny places the box of soap in the palm of my hand. There’s still a faint whiff of lavender.
“Lilybelle,” Granny says as they both lean forward, “we need you to go to Brume.”
Author’s Note
Although this book is fiction, the story is based on actual events. There really was a nursing home evacuated during Superstorm Sandy, in 2012, in Queens, New York, and the residents and nurses stayed for three weeks in an armory. There really was a French Resistance group called the Alliance that the Germans referred to as Noah’s Ark because its members had animal code names. The leader, Marie-Madeleine Fourcade, was code-named Hedgehog.
There were many different resistance groups in France that performed various types of sabotage and espionage. It was extremely hazardous work and took great determination, especially because of the risk of torture, death, and deportation, and the possibility of reprisals against French citizens. The resistance workers blew up bridges, trains, and supply dumps; kidnapped and killed German Army officers; passed along vital intelligence information; hid families trying to escape; ambushed German troops; decoded secret messages; and assisted Allied soldiers and intelligence operatives who landed in southern France to deliver supplies and carry out spy missions.
Children also participated in the French Resistance. One example is that boys (or maybe they were really girls?) threw fake lumps of coal onto the open coal cars of German supply trains. Hidden in the coal was plastic explosive. When the coal was shoveled into the boiler of the locomotive, trains exploded and crashed.
It is also true that the American Office of Strategic Services in 1944 experimented in derailing trains without explosives. After several tries, they figured out that if a piece of rail sixty inches long was removed from one side of the track, and a piece thirty inches long removed from the other side of the track, offset by thirty inches, the train would derail. The locomotive and first few cars would hang together, but the rest of the loaded cars would drift and crash.
Collette and Marguerite’s Brume could be any village in southern France during World War II in 1944. The author would like to thank the International Museum of World War II in Natick, Massachusetts (https://museumofworldwarii.org); the World War II veterans who gave the author detailed personal accounts of liberating the south of France; and the real Nicole for her unbelievable dedication to her elderly residents.
Special thanks to Barbara Kelly, Carrie Pestritto, and Charlie Ilgunas for their encouraging words and remarkable attention to detail.
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