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Annette’s husband had practiced in a wide area—driving to people who owned large farm animals, going out on calls at dawn or late at night, any time of day—and she still kept in touch with many of the clients. She stopped at a vineyard, where she bought some bottles of wine from a man who had a pair of friendly briards. Then she drove to another village to take flowers to an ailing man who kept geese.

“Now, a surprise,” she announced, as they pulled back onto the main road. “I have a friend who is passionate to meet you. She is another who helped to hide pilots in the war, and her experience was so much more dramatic than mine. She had a great deal of courage. I want you to hear what she did during the war. It is extraordinary.”

The friend, a schoolteacher, lived in a town near Angoulême. Their common past aiding Allied aviators had drawn Annette and Odile Durand together.

“I thought you and your parents were pretty extraordinary,” Marshall said.

Annette laughed. “Oh, we did what was necessary,” she said. “Nothing more.” She slowed down to make a turn. “Odile’s daughter married last year and has gone away on some type of global adventure with her new husband. Odile is troubled—there are so many dangers in the world.”

Annette turned into a street so narrow they nearly scraped the walls on both sides. Expertly she pulled into a tiny apron of stone in front of a small stucco house with a red-tile roof. The door flew open immediately.

The women exchanged kisses, with affectionate hugs.

“Voilà, my pilot!” Annette said.

“Monsieur, monsieur, bienvenue. I am delighted.”

Odile grabbed him and bussed both cheeks. She was small and wiry.

“Odile, I have brought you some eggs,” Annette said. “My chickens engage themselves in a contest, to lay so many eggs!”

“Merci beaucoup, Annette. Tu es très gentille.”

They sat in the small garden behind the house. It was quiet except for the chatter of the women. Odile said her daughter had written from Bangkok and had ridden an elephant. “Mon Dieu, what next!”

“Remember, Odile, what you were doing at her age. She will be all right.”

“Elephants I trust, but she and Giscard are on airplanes so often, and I do worry about that. Tell me, monsieur, am I right to worry?”

“Travel today is simple, madame,” he said. “Airline travel is safe.”

“Did you ever have a crash?”

“No, no, not in the airlines.”

“Sometimes they crash.”

“If you were to look at a timetable, madame,” he said, like a professor, “you would see how many flights there are in one day just on one airline—thousands. And they all arrive safely.”

“Marshall knows everything about airplanes,” said Annette assuringly.

Marshall enjoyed watching Annette with her friend. Annette’s good humor balanced Odile’s sober nervousness.

After Odile had served them some of the wine Annette had brought, Annette urged her to tell Marshall about her pilots in the war. Odile jumped up, grasped both of his hands, and gazed hard into his eyes for a moment. She was close to his age, he thought. Her hair was gray, with springy curls running willy-nilly up her temples.

“I am so glad you have come,” she said. She let go of his hands and sat down.

Quickly she launched into her tale, as though she had been waiting for the chance to blurt it out. Her voice was raspy, as if she was getting over a bad cold, but her French was clear, easy for Marshall to follow. Annette sat comfortably in a straight-backed chair, and Marshall cocked his chair onto its two back legs, rocking a bit now and then.

Odile had been a very young teacher during the war, on her first teaching assignment, in a coastal village above Bordeaux. The Occupation there was relatively peaceful. The Germans, worried about the British and the Americans, kept a nervous watch on the beaches. Odile liked to walk along the seashore, but the Germans patrolled it and had put up a barrier. She could see their bunkers five kilometers down the shore. The school stood between the beach and a large forest, crisscrossed