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“Peuh! Do not think that way.” She was combing her hair, carefully easing a fine-toothed comb through her wet curls.

“I’m sorry.”

“I have the idea that someone sympathetic should go to him, with something from the past. I will take you. You are a success story. A success for him. And for me,” she added quickly. “Everything we did—we are confirmed, in seeing your success.”

He was embarrassed. “You and Robert, both of you, made a terrible sacrifice,” he said.

Annette would not accept such thinking.

“What were we to do?” she asked. “Just sit there and let our country be stolen? Not just our buildings and our churches and our lives, but the very culture that is our life! To see it all replaced by German beer and sausage? My family could not abide it. Whatever we did, regardless of the risk, we had to do it. For my parents, it was automatic. For me also. We simply did it. You would too! Absolutely.” Her voice was vigorous, almost shrill.

Not every Frenchman had taken such chances, Marshall thought. Would he have taken them? He had been willing to bomb Germany—not only factories but, inevitably, citizens—and then to sneak through Occupied France, thinking only of his own survival. But Annette …

She twisted the towel around her head and placed her hands on his shoulders. Gazing into his eyes, she said, “Once, during the war, from our window in Saint-Mandé, we saw two parachutists. An Allied plane was shot down. I think the target was a factory at Pontoise. The plane was far away and we didn’t see it fall, but we could see the parachutes in the distance. Then we saw the men being shot as they drifted down. German soldiers on the ground shot them as they descended. We were hiding a pilot, and he watched this with us, and he began to cry when he saw the shooting of his comrades.” She paused, as if replaying the scene in her mind. “ ‘Poor men!’ he said. ‘Poor men.’ ”

“My God.”

“Yes,” she said.

“I’ll cry now,” he said.

“No, you will not do that.”

“Did Monique—”

“Yes, Monique saw it.”

Annette touched his cheek. “You have encouraged me so much,” she said, waving her hands for words. “I cannot explain how your return has affected me. What I just said about France—that is what I should tell my students. Maman wants me to make a scrapbook for them.” She smiled. “Do I make sense? I could make an exhibit of you for the students—my aviateur!”

“Would I have to wear my old flight suit?”

“For us, this project could be jubilatoire!”

“Come here,” he said. “If you’re not careful, I’ll fall in love with you for sure.” He lifted her hand and kissed her palm.

57.

THE DRIVE UP TO THE MOUNTAIN PASS WOULD BE SIMPLE, Annette had said, pointing to the map. Marshall had given no thought to the squiggly line leading up into the mountains, but as he drove the route now, he felt the mountains closing in. The cliff-edge road twisted alongside steep woodlands, and it seemed to become narrower with each hairpin curve.

“You must have been a very good pilot,” she said, patting his arm. “I trust you to drive me anywhere.”

“How far is it to that hotel?” he asked.

“Thirty-two kilometers. Not far.”

He was aware of the deep valley on the right, but he kept his eyes on the road, the spiraling climb.

Some bicyclists came hurtling past the car, curving and zipping downhill, as smoothly as fish in water.

Some of the curves were bordered by foot-high stone guardrails, but some equally precipitous were not.

“The whimsical placement of these little walls is entertaining,” he said.

She laughed.

He pulled over slightly for an oncoming car. His tires skittered on gravel.

“The view is breathtaking,” she said.

His eyes were fixed on the winding road ahead. They climbed higher. He was guiding a lumbering aircraft through an insane corkscrew ascent. After a while, the switchback turns became rhythmic. Higher up, the day turned gray, but visibility was still good.

The lip of the valley beside him, five feet away, opened onto an abyss.

The stone barriers