Chapter One
Maura Isles sat in the window bay of the study idly fiddling with a large, ornate ring on her elegant hand. Warm April sunshine streamed through the tall oriel windows to halo her full head of white hair, a few errant strands of which fell across her aged face but Maura was too lost in thought to notice.
Forty years. It was forty years ago today that Maura first saw her, all clean and innocent in her neat, starched uniform, her cap askew on a head of wild dark hair. The others had looked so frightened, huddled together like baby penguins, shuffling back and forth so that no-one was left on their own. But Jane had stood apart. Staunch. Legs thrown wide, brown eyes blazing. Daring the world to throw her the gauntlet, fully prepared to throw it back.
Maura should have known the young native Bostonian would be trouble. There was something inherently wild about her, a rebellious streak that refused to be tamed. She looked around the crowded tent like it was nothing more than a train station on a busy day, unfazed by the screaming men writhing on tables and beds, their pinched hands groping for human comfort from the doctors and nurses who rushed between them like frantic worker bees. There was something intimidating about her, a passionate intent that was equal parts terrifying and intoxicating.
She was a dangerous drug. And right from the start Maura was hooked.
Forty years had passed since that day. Forty years for Maura's addiction to sate itself, only to manifest with the next smile or laugh or the purr of Jane's gravelly voice. Forty years of lazy Sunday afternoons and rainy Mondays, of summers when the heat was too thick for clothing and winters when snowdrifts muffled the moan of wind gusts against the cottage. There had been thousands of mornings and sunsets together. Thousands of days of smiles and tears, of laughter and misery, of death and life.
Their love had burgeoned in the cusp of war and encompassed some of the darkest hours of man. And until her dying breath Maura knew it would continue burning in her breast.
"Mémé?"
The hesitant voice caused Maura to start, and she swivelled to see a wide-eyed child peering cautiously around the open mahogany doors, tiny fingers clutching one of the handles.
"Mon bébé!" Maura replied with a smile. The child's face lit up and he ran quickly across the study to throw himself into Maura's waiting arms.
"And how are you, my little one?" Maura asked, gently detaching him so that she could look into his eyes. Her eyes. "How is your English?"
"My English is good, mémé," he replied with a slight French lilt, grinning to reveal a missing front tooth.
"Why, look at this! You are growing up! Soon you shall be as big as your papa," Maura said, clapping her hands against his shoulders and pretending to marvel at his skinny frame.
"I am nearly as tall as him!" the child declared, rocking forwards onto his tip-toes and puffing himself up.
"You are, my sweet child, you are," Maura replied.
"Marcel?" The voice floated up the stairwell from the floor below. "Marcel, where have you gotten to?"
"Come, my child, your mama is waiting," Maura said, standing and gently enfolding her grandson's small hand in her own weathered one. Together they crossed the study and descended the spiraling staircase to the hall below.
Waiting at the bottom was Maura's daughter Angela. Even now, some thirty-eight years since she'd given birth to her, Maura was still taken aback at how much Angie looked like Jane. Her hair was dark and curly, her face thin and angular. She wore an original Cristóbal Balenciaga fitted suit which hugged her tall, spare frame. Maura recognised it as one she had purchased herself for Angie shortly before the war and marvelled at how time had taken so much from her but so little from her daughter who showed no sign of ageing. She looked exactly like Jane had twenty years ago. Except her eyes. She had Maura's eyes.
"There you are," Angie said, looking down at Marcel. "Are you ready, mama?"
"Yes. I'm ready," Maura replied, tightening her grip on Marcel's tiny fingers.
Together they exited the cottage and followed the cobbled pathway to where Angie's husband waited with the car – a black Mercedes 260D in impeccable condition. Maura paused at the garden gate and stared at it for a second, painful memories surfacing involuntarily.
"Mama?" Angie said. Maura said nothing. Angie gently took her by the arm and led her to the car. Her husband opened the door for Maura and she slid jerkily into the backseat, gripping the old leather tightly on either side of her thighs.
The car's engine roared to life and Maura forced herself to focus on Marcel bouncing in the seat next to her, rather than what she knew had happened in this car. The 260D slowly bounced along the dirt road and pulled onto the wide lane that led to Arras. It still rode as smooth as it had twelve years ago when Maura last sat in this seat.
Arras was quiet today. Fresh laundry flapped on clotheslines in the warm spring breeze. Children played with a ball in the street, parting like a shoal of fish for the old German car as it cut up the cobbled roads, weaving its way through the sleeping city. Maura looked out the small rear window at the sun shining on the faces of the tall, cramped buildings. Some still showing scars from the war – patches of missing plaster or shattered brick that gave the monotonous edifices their own character and set them apart from the new buildings built to replace those levelled by bombs in the first heady days of the invasion. The car passed street signs named after famous men – Winston Churchill, Georges Besnier, President Allende, John Fitzgerald Kennedy – until they finally pulled to a halt on the Boulevard du Général de Gaulle near the citadel and Angie's husband cut the engine.
"You wait here," Angie said to him quietly, and he nodded. But she needn't have worried about discretion, for Maura was transfixed by the sight of the tall white columns across the street.
Marcel stayed with his father as the two women ventured across the double laned roads to the open archway of the Faubourg d'Amiens cemetery. Rows of neat white headstones were cramped into the small grounds behind it, bodies of young men taken from the world at the hands of an enemy. Men Maura had comforted in their dying moments, feeling their life slip away beneath her fingers. Men broken by war.
And a woman.
Her gravestone was at the back, the newest addition to the war cemetery. The headstone gleamed a little brighter than the others, the name carved into its face fresher even if the remains mouldering beneath the grass had seen the same dangers as the men who rested beside her. When Angie and Maura reached the grave they stood silently for a few minutes, arm in arm, remembering Jane as they had known her alive. A stubborn, determined woman filled with fire and driven by a fierce desire to protect those she loved. For Angie she had been a second mother, and for Maura the very breath in her lungs, the blood that surged through her veins, and the will to push on through the sourest of times. Together they stood and honoured the memory of the woman who had protected them, sheltered them, loved them and laughed with them. A heroine who deserved her place amongst the dead of wars passed.
And as they stood there Maura slipped back in time, reaching through her faded memories to a darker time when she finally found her light.