The Nightingale

by Kristin Hannah

She had tried to be loved by him; more important, she had tried to keep loving him, but in the end, one was as impossible as the other.

“It is hard for a man to lose his wife.” “It is hard for a girl to lose her mother.” She smiled defiantly.

Vianne had been as quick to abandon Isabelle as Papa had been.

“It can’t be true,” she said. “The worst can always be true,”

“Something like that. But like I said, a nice girl like you wouldn’t know anything about survival.” “You’d be surprised the things I know, Gaëtan. There is more than one kind of prison.”

He had abandoned her after all; it filled her with the kind of bone-deep disappointment she knew so well. Had she learned nothing in life? People left. She knew that. They especially left her.

She had made a terrible, grievous mistake. She couldn’t take it back, however much she might hope for such a chance; she couldn’t undo it, but a good woman would accept responsibility—and blame—and apologize. Whatever else she was or wasn’t, whatever her failings, she intended to be a good woman.

Asking yourself a question, that’s how resistance begins. And then ask that very question to someone else.

Had she been so pathetically grateful for his presence that his silence escaped her notice? Well, she noticed it now.

Or maybe she had imagined that memory, constructed it from the threads of her own need and wrapped it tightly around her shoulders. She didn’t know anymore.

She stared up at him, feeling hot tears glaze her eyes. “Why did you push me and Vianne away?” “I hope you never know how fragile you are, Isabelle.” “I’m not fragile,” she said. The smile he gave her was barely one at all. “We are all fragile, Isabelle. It’s the thing we learn in war.”

From now on, she was Juliette Gervaise, code name the Nightingale.

“I was brave,” Sarah said, “wasn’t I?” “Oui,” Rachel said brokenly. “So brave.”

“We need to bury her,” Vianne said as gently as she could. “She hates the dark.”

What kind of benevolent God would allow such a thing?

She was so tired of being strong.

Humiliated men could be dangerous.

She wanted to say “Don’t leave me,” but she couldn’t do it, not again. She was so tired of begging people to love her.

She knew suddenly that a woman could change her whole life and uproot her existence with one choice.

Mother nodded. “We have heard terrible rumors coming from Radio London about what is happening in the camps.” “Perhaps our Holy Father—” “He is silent on this matter,” Mother said, her voice heavy with disappointment.

“You’re a wonder,” he said. “I am,” she said with a smile.

If you’re going through hell, keep going.

“I love you, Papa,” she said quietly, realizing how true it was, how true it had always been. Love had turned into loss and she’d pushed it away, but somehow, impossibly, a bit of that love had remained. A girl’s love for her father. Immutable. Unbearable but unbreakable. “How can you?” She swallowed hard, saw that he had tears in his eyes. “How can I not?” He gave her a last, lingering look—and a kiss to each cheek—and then he drew back. So softly she almost didn’t hear, he said, “I loved you, too,” and then left her.

“We were supposed to have time,” she whispered, feeling tears start. How often had she imagined a new beginning for her and Papa, for all of them?

“Papa,” she said; it was such a big word suddenly, a dream in its entirety.

It was the beginning and end of everything, the foundation and the ceiling and the air in between. It didn’t matter that she was broken and ugly and sick. He loved her and she loved him.

“Men tell stories,” I say. It is the truest, simplest answer to his question. “Women get on with it. For us it was a shadow war. There were no parades for us when it was over, no medals or mentions in history books. We did what we had to during the war, and when it was over, we picked up the pieces and started our lives over.

It is not biology that determines fatherhood. It is love.