Chapter 3

She waited.

Forced herself to carry the milk into the house. To strain it through cheesecloth into the cooling crocks. To bank the fire. To move through her evening routine as if nothing had changed, as if there weren’t a dying man in her cheese cellar and German soldiers potentially watching from the darkness.

Her hands shook so badly she nearly dropped the strainer twice.

When she finally judged it safe—an hour, maybe more—she gathered what she could. A blanket from Henri’s chest. A jar of water. Bread from yesterday’s baking. Clean rags that might serve as bandages.

No lamp. Too risky. She would have to manage in the dark.

The night had turned colder. Her breath plumed white as she crossed the pasture, moving by feel and memory. The ground was frozen hard enough to leave no tracks, but that was small comfort. If the Germans came back at dawn to search more thoroughly...

She pushed the thought away. One crisis at a time.

The cellar door opened with a creak that sounded like a scream in the silence. She paused, listening. Nothing but wind and the distant barking of a dog.

She descended the ladder carefully, arms full, feeling for each rung with her feet.

At the bottom, the darkness was absolute. The smell of earth and aging cheese and something else now—blood, sweat, fear.