The Lost Girls Of Paris. Пэм Дженофф

suppose. I never had any business being here in the first place.”

      “You never had a good reason to be here,” Josie corrected unsentimentally, still folding clothes. Her words, echoes of what Eleanor had said, stung Marie. “There has to be a why. I mean, take me, for instance. I’ve never really had a place to call home. Being here is just fine for me. It’s what they want, you know,” Josie added. “For us to quit. Not Eleanor, of course, but the blokes. They want us to prove that they were right—the women don’t have what it takes after all.”

      “Maybe they are right,” Marie answered. Josie did not speak, but pulled a small valise out from under her bed. “What are you doing?” she asked, suddenly alarmed. Surely Josie, the very best of them, had not been asked to leave SOE school. But Josie was placing her neatly folded clothes in the suitcase.

      “They need me to go sooner,” Josie said. “No finishing school. I’m headed straight to the field.”

      Marie was stunned. “No,” she said.

      “I’m afraid it’s true. I’m leaving first thing tomorrow morning. It isn’t a bad thing. This is what we came for after all.”

      Marie nodded. Others had left to deploy to the field. But Josie had been their bedrock. How would they go on without her?

      “It isn’t as if I’m dying, you know,” Josie added with a wry smile.

      “It’s just so soon.” Too soon. Though Josie couldn’t say anything about her mission, Marie saw the grave urgency that had brought Eleanor all the way from London to claim her.

      Remembering, Marie reached into her footlocker. “Here,” she said to Josie. She pulled out the scone she’d bribed one of the cooks to make. “I had it made for your birthday.” Josie was turning eighteen in just two days’ time. Only now she wouldn’t be here for it. “It’s cinnamon, just like you said your brother used to get you for your birthday.”

      Josie didn’t speak for several seconds. Her eyes grew moist and a single tear trickled down her cheek. Marie wondered if the gesture had been a mistake. “I didn’t think after he was gone that anyone would remember my birthday again.” Josie smiled slightly then. “Thank you.” She broke the scone into two pieces and handed one back to Marie.

      “So you see, you can’t leave,” Josie said, brushing the crumbs from her mouth. “You’ll need to stay to take care of these youngsters.” She gestured toward the empty beds. Marie did not answer, but there was a note of truth in Josie’s joke. Three of the girls were newer than herself now, having replaced some of the agents who had already deployed.

      “There will be a new girl to take my place.” The thought was almost unbearable. But Josie was right; whoever came next would need her help to navigate this difficult place as Josie and the others had done when Marie herself first arrived.

      “The girls need you now more than ever. It’s not just about how long you’ve been here,” Josie added. “You’ve grown so much since that day you stumbled in here, unable to make it to The Point on a run or to hide your English contraband.” They both smiled at the memory. “You can do this,” Josie said firmly. “You are stronger than you know. Now, on to detonation. I can’t wait to see what piece of crap Professor Digglesby blows up today.” Josie started from the barracks. She did not wait or ask if Marie was coming. In that moment, it was as if she was already gone.

      Marie sat motionless on her bed, staring out at the dark waters of the loch. Behind the windswept hills, the sky was a sea of gray. She imagined if she did not move, nothing would change. Josie would not deploy and she would not have to face her own terrible choice of whether to leave. They had created kind of a separate world here where, despite the training, it was almost possible to forget about the danger and sorrow outside. Only now that world was ending.

      She looked down at her belongings in the bag, relics from another era. She could have her life back, as she’d been dreaming for weeks. But she was part of something bigger now, she realized as she looked across the barracks. The days of training and struggling with the other girls had woven them together in a kind of fabric from which she could not tear herself away.

      She pulled her hand back. “Not yet,” she whispered. She closed the bag, then went and joined the others.

       Chapter Eight

      Grace

       New York, 1946

      The suitcase was gone.

      Grace stood motionless in the concourse of Grand Central, letting the end-of-day crowds swirl around her as she stared at the space beneath the bench where the suitcase had been that morning. For a moment, she thought she might have imagined it. But the photographs she had removed from the suitcase were there, thick in her hand. No, someone had taken or moved it in the hours while she had been at work.

      That the suitcase was no longer under the bench should not have been a surprise. It belonged to someone and hours had passed. It was only natural that someone had come to claim it. But now that it was gone, the mystery of the suitcase and the photographs became all the more intriguing. Grace looked down at the photos in her hand, which she felt bad for having taken in the first place.

      “Excuse me,” Grace called to a porter as he passed.

      He stopped, tipped his red cap in her direction. “Ma’am?”

      “I’m looking for a suitcase.”

      “If it’s in the stored luggage, I can get it for you.” He held out his hand. “Can I have your ticket?”

      “No, you don’t understand. It isn’t my bag. There was one left under a bench earlier this morning. Over there.” She pointed. “I’m trying to find out where it went. Brown, with writing on the side.”

      The porter looked perplexed. “But if it isn’t your bag, why are you looking for it?”

      Good question, Grace thought. She considered saying something about the photographs, but decided against it. “I’m trying to find its owner,” she said finally.

      “I can’t help you without a ticket. You might want to ask at the lost and found,” he replied.

      The lost and found was on the lower level of the station in a quiet, musty corner that seemed worlds away from the bustle above. An older man with white sideburns wearing a brimmed visor and a vest sat behind the counter, reading a newspaper. “I’m looking for a suitcase, brown with chalk writing on it.”