“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?”