She told Joachim about it later that day, and he listened quietly, but he was not totally swayed by her religious belief.
“I’m serious, Joachim. … I felt this power … this absolute certainty that he’s alive somewhere. I know it.” She spoke with the conviction of the deeply religious, and he didn’t want to tell her how skeptical he was, or how few of those captured actually survived it.
“Perhaps you’re right,” he said quietly, “but you must also prepare yourself for the possibility that you could be wrong, Sarah.” He tried to say it as gently as he could. She had to accept the fact that he was missing, and perhaps dead. There was more than just a vague possibility that at that very moment she was already a widow. He didn’t want to force her to face that feet yet, but eventually, no matter what she had felt that night, or what she wanted to feel or believe, she would have to.
As time went on, with no reassuring news of him, and no reports of his capture or survival, it was obvious to Joachim that he was dead, but not to Sarah. Sarah always acted now as though she’d seen him the previous afternoon, as though she’d heard from him in a dream. She was more at peace and more determined and more sure than at the beginning of the war, when she still got occasional letters. Now there was nothing, there was silence. He was gone. Presumably forever. And sooner or later, she would have to face it. Joachim was waiting for that time, but he knew that until she accepted William’s death, the time was wrong for them, and he didn’t want to press her. But he was there for her, when she needed him, when she wanted to talk, when she was sad, or lonely, or afraid. It was difficult to believe sometimes that they were on opposite sides of the war. To him, all they were were a man and a woman who had been together for two years now, and he loved her with all his heart, all his soul, everything he had to give her. He didn’t know how they would sort it out after the war or where they would live or what they would do. But none of it was important to him. The only thing that mattered to him was Sarah. He lived and breathed and existed for her, but she still didn’t know it. She knew how devoted he was to her, and sensed that he was very fond of her and the children, and especially close to Elizabeth, after he saved her life when she was born, but Sarah never truly understood how much he loved her.
That year, on her birthday, he tried to give her a magnificent pair of diamond earrings that he had bought for her in Paris, but she absolutely refused to take them.
“Joachim, I can’t. They’re incredible. But it’s impossible. I’m married.” He didn’t argue the point with her, although he no longer believed that. He felt certain that she was a widow now, and with all due respect to William, he had been gone for six months, and she was free now. “And I’m your prisoner, for heaven’s sake,” she laughed. “What would people think if I accepted a pair of diamond earrings?”
“I’m not entirely sure we have to explain that to them.” He was disappointed, but he understood. He settled for giving her a new watch, which she did accept, and a very pretty sweater, which he knew she desperately needed. They were very modest gifts, and it was very much like her not to accept anything more expensive. He respected that about her too. In fact, in two years, he had never discovered anything about her that he didn’t like, except for the fact that she continued to insist she was still married to William. But he even liked that about her too. She was loyal to the end, kind and loving, and devoted. He used to envy William for all that, but he no longer envied him, he pitied him. The poor man was gone. And sooner or later, Sarah would have to face that.
But by the following year, even Sarah’s staunch hopes were starting to dim, although she didn’t admit it to anyone, not even Joachim. But William had been gone for so long by then, over a year, and none of the intelligence sources had turned up anything about him. Even Joachim had tried to make discreet inquiries without causing any trouble for either of them. But the general consensus on both sides of the channel seemed to be that William had been killed in March of 1942, when he was parachuted into the Rhineland. She still couldn’t believe it, and yet when she thought of him now, sometimes even their most precious memories seemed dim, and it frightened her to feel that. She hadn’t seen him in almost four years. It was a terribly long time, even for a love so great as theirs, to hold up in the face of so little hope and so much anguish.
She spent Christmas quietly with Joachim that year. He was incredibly sweet and loving to them. It was particularly nice for Phillip, who was growing up without a father, and had no memories whatsoever of William, because he hadn’t been old enough to remember. In his mind, Joachim was a special friend, and in a pure, simple way, he really liked him, just as Sarah liked him. She still hated everything the Germans represented to her, and yet she never hated him. He was such a decent man, and he worked hard with the wounded men who came to the château to recover. Some of them had no hope, no limbs, no future, and no home to return to. And somehow he managed to spend time with everyone, to talk to them for hours on end, to give them hope, to make them want to continue, just as sometimes, he did with Sarah.
“You’re an amazing man,” she said to him quietly, as they sat in her cottage kitchen. Emanuelle was with her family and Henri had been away for the past few weeks, in the Ardennes somewhere, Emanuelle said, and Sarah had learned not to ask any questions. He was sixteen by then, and he led a life filled with passion and danger. Emanuelle’s own life had grown increasingly difficult. The mayor’s son had grown suspicious of her, and eventually there’d been a huge row when she left him. Now she was involved with one of the German officers, and Sarah never said anything, but she suspected that she was getting information from him, too, and feeding it to the Resistance. But Sarah stayed clear of all of it. She did what she could to continue to restore the château in small ways, helped with medical emergencies when she was either demanded or desperately needed, and the rest of the time she took care of her children. Phillip was four and a half, and Elizabeth was a year younger. And they were lovely children. Phillip was turning out to be as hugely tall as he had started out to be, and Elizabeth had surprised her by being delicate, and much more small featured than her mother. She was frail in some ways, just as she was when she was born, and yet she was always full of spunk and mischief. And it was obvious to everyone who saw him with them that Joachim adored them. He had brought beautifully made German toys for them the night before on Christmas Eve, and helped them to decorate a tree, and he had somehow managed to find a doll for Lizzie, who had immediately pounced on her, clutched her in her arms and cradled her “baby.”
But it was Phillip who climbed onto Joachim’s lap and put his arms around his neck, as he snuggled close to him, and Sarah pretended not to see it.
“You won’t leave us, like my papa did, will you?” he asked worriedly, and Sarah felt tears sting her eyes as she heard him. But Joachim was quick to answer.
“Your papa didn’t want to leave you, you know. If he could, I’m sure he’d be right here with you.”
“Then why did he go?”
“He had to. He’s a soldier.”