After the broadcast, Chloe and I helped each other climb back up to our room. We lay together and wept for a long time before we finally fell asleep.
Now I feel guilty for all the times I complained to Gram about having too much homework—look at what she was going through at my age! All I want to do is reach through the pages of Adalyn’s diary and comfort my grandmother. I want to tell her it ended up okay in the end. She found Gramps, and they had Mom, and she had me. But then I come back to the same questions as before: What happened to Gram’s family? What happened to Adalyn? Clearly, she and Gram were as close as two sisters can be. What changed? What could have possibly happened to make Gram go the rest of her life without ever mentioning Adalyn to her own immediate family?
And most importantly, did Gram want me to find the answers?
A warning appears on my laptop screen saying I only have 10 percent battery life remaining. I glance at the time, and I’m stunned to find I’ve been here for nearly two and a half hours. I’ll squeeze in one more entry, and then I’ll go back to the rue de Marquis to keep exploring. I type the first sentence into Google Translate, expecting another gut-wrenching piece of news.
But it’s the opposite.
June 18th, 1940
I take back what I wrote yesterday: It is not over. There is still hope. I can hardly keep my hand from shaking!
A French general named Charles de Gaulle made a speech on the BBC tonight. He vowed that the enemy would someday be defeated, and he called on men to come join him in London. At the end, he said the most unforgettable thing: “Whatever happens, the flame of the French resistance must not be extinguished and will not be extinguished.”
Tonight, Chloe and I shall hardly be able to sleep from excitement.
Do you hear that? The fight is not over!
I could jump up and cheer right now, except I’d obviously never do something like that in public. But still, I feel like I’m there with Adalyn, sharing in her excitement. I brush my fingertips against the brittle page, yellowing at the edges, and I imagine a current of electricity flowing from Adalyn through the paper to me.
I’ve heard of the French resistance. Mr. Yip covered it briefly in our World War II unit in European History. I remember they blew things up, like German trains and certain buildings where the Nazis had taken over. I recognize Charles de Gaulle’s name, too, but only because the Paris airport is named after him. It’s pretty bold that he went on the radio the day after Pétain and told the people of France to do the very opposite of what their government was mandating. How would I have reacted if I were there at Uncle Gérard’s farmhouse with Gram and Adalyn, huddled around the radio during those days of uncertainty? Would I have put my faith in Pétain, like their mother, or would I have rallied around de Gaulle, like Gram and Adalyn? If I had been there on the road out of Paris—if I had seen the terrible things they saw—I know where I’d stand.
I’d want to keep fighting.
Back inside apartment five, I finish my grand tour with the master bedroom at the end of the hall. It’s a very elegant room, bigger than Mom and Dad’s back home. There’s a wide four-poster bed and a set of dressers and an old-fashioned vanity with a round mirror. On every surface, I find more framed photos of the family, and I take them in one by one. I stare into Gram’s black-and-white face, missing her more with each passing second. But now that I’ve read Adalyn’s diary, I feel a small connection to the dark-haired girl, too. We’re similar, in a way. For starters, we both loved Gram. And we both tried the best we could to hold our families together.
When I’m done taking in the photos on the vanity, I open the topmost drawer. Unexpectedly, I find myself looking at a stack of magazine clippings. They must have been cut from the society pages, because they all have photos from fancy parties, and underneath, they list the names of the guests and the designers they’re wearing. I pick out Adalyn’s smiling face in every single one of them, surrounded by other young people in expensive-looking clothing and jewelry.
Well, I guess my great-aunt and I had our differences, too. I’m not saying that Hannah, Camila, and I are at the bottom of the social hierarchy, but we also aren’t anywhere near popular enough to get invited to the parties at Katrina Kim’s mansion in Short Hills. We spend our weekends trying to replicate recipes from The Great British Bake Off.
I sit down at the vanity to sift through the clippings. They all seem to be dated in the late thirties and early forties, which means some of these must have been printed after the Germans occupied France. That’s a little odd. Adalyn’s diary made it sound like France’s surrender was the absolute end of the world, but judging by this photo of her and her friends at a party in October of 1942, she wasn’t entirely miserable during the War.
The photos are all pretty similar, and I start to flip through them more quickly. But then, toward the bottom of the stack, I come upon a photo that almost makes me fall out of my chair.
This can’t be real.
I don’t understand.
I don’t want to.
This photo was clipped from a newspaper. In it, Adalyn is sitting at a table in what looks to be an upscale restaurant. There’s a white tablecloth and fancy-looking silverware. Accompanying her are six men in military attire . . .
. . . and they’re all wearing Nazi armbands.
What’s more, my great-aunt looks like she’s enjoying their company.
I feel like I’m going to be sick.
Leaping to my feet, I drop the clippings as if they’re on fire and slam the drawer closed. My brain is in overdrive trying to process what I just saw. What . . . ? How . . . ?
This must be the explanation. This is why Gram went her whole life without telling anyone about Adalyn. She was ashamed of what she became. How long had it been since they’d seen each other, or even talked? Did they go to their graves without—
Wait a second. I’m assuming Adalyn is dead, but that isn’t necessarily the case.
Gram turned ninety this year. We had a party in her condo building’s multipurpose room. Judging by the family photos, Adalyn was a few years older, so that would make her, what, ninety-two? Ninety-three? It’s a major long shot, but it isn’t completely unrealistic. Hannah’s great-grandmother is 103 years old and still with it, for the most part. For all I know, Adalyn could be living right here in Paris . . . and she could be the only person left in the world who could tell me what happened to her family. My family.
Still, something doesn’t feel right about this. I pace the floor with my arms crossed, thinking. Even if Adalyn is alive, do I really want to spend my summer searching Paris for a Nazi supporter? A voice in my head says maybe I should leave this alone—that maybe Adalyn was out of the picture for a reason. Gram loved her family; she adored Gramps, Mom, Dad, and me. If she was willing to cut ties with her own sister, then it’s probably safe to assume that Adalyn was downright terrible.
Okay. . . . But why leave me the apartment, then? If Gram really wanted Adalyn out of the picture, why would she give me the keys—literally—to finding out who she was? And also, what about Adalyn’s diary? How could the girl in that photo be the same person who witnessed the German bombers attacking innocent refugees? How could it be the same person who wrote in her diary that her world was disintegrating? The two things just don’t add up. I stop pacing in front of a photo of Gram and Adalyn when they were little, no more than ten years old, their arms wrapped tightly around each other’s waists. She could still be alive . . . and maybe even close by. . . . If I found her, I could get all my answers about Gram. . . .