Read Chapter 32: Unspoken Confessions

The church bell had not rung for months, but Elise heard it now—or thought she did—a phantom sound vibrating through the cold stone walls of the vestry where they had carried Jameson. He sat propped against a pew, his jacket cut away, the shoulder wound bound with strips torn from a curtain Elise had yanked down without asking permission.

“You’re staring,” Jameson said, his voice thin but threaded with the old dry humor.

“I’m checking your pulse,” Elise said. “Through the bandage. It’s called doctoring.”

“You’re a postwoman.”

“And you’re not a doctor.” She knelt beside him, pressing two fingers to his wrist. His skin was warm, clammy. “But you played one well enough to save me.”

He exhaled, a sound that could have been laughter or pain. “I played one well enough to get shot.”

“You played one well enough to get Ashwell killed. And the officer who—” She stopped. The scarf was knotted at her throat, the wool rough against her collarbone. She could feel the dried blood stiffening the fabric, her brother’s blood, or the sniper’s. She didn’t know which anymore. Maybe both.

Jameson’s good hand found hers. “Who killed your brother. I know.”

She let him hold her fingers. It was a small thing, a hand, but it felt like the first unmoving point in a week that had spun sideways.

“I found his scarf,” she said. “On the body. I took it.”

“Good.” His thumb traced the ridge of her knuckle. “He’d want you to have it.”

“You didn’t know him.”

“I know you.” He said it simply, without grandeur, and Elise felt something crack open in her chest, a door she had kept barred since the occupation began.

She pulled her hand away gently and busied herself with the bandage, tucking the edge under, smoothing the fold. “You need real care. A proper surgeon. Marie’s cottage—she has supplies, she knows how to clean a wound without it festering.”

“Marie LeFebvre,” Jameson repeated. “The woman whose husband’s name was sold.”

“She’s safe. She’s been safe.” Elise hesitated. “The refugee—LeFèvre’s widow—I left her with a family in the lower town. But she can’t stay there. If the patrols find the boat, they’ll search every house within a mile of Petit Port.”

“So we move her tonight.”

“You can’t move anywhere.” Elise gestured at his shoulder. “You lost enough blood to fill a bucket.”

“Then you move her alone.”

The words hung between them, sharp as a scalpel. Elise stood, brushing dust from her knees. Through the vestry’s small window, she could see the square—empty now, the shopkeeper’s blood still staining the cobbles where he had been dragged away. The tribunal would sit at dawn. She had given her testimony twice, once to the resistance council, once to a man with cold eyes who claimed to represent the Allied command in London. Neither had asked about the binder.

“The binder,” she said aloud. “Ashwell’s list. The full one, with all the names.”

Jameson shifted, wincing. “The shopkeeper had a copy. The one we used to accuse him.”

“A copy, yes. But the original—” Elise pressed her palm to the window glass. “Ashwell kept it in his quarters at the billet. When he died, the Germans cleared his room within the hour. I tried to get in before they did. I was too late.”

“So the original is in German hands.”

“Or in the hands of whoever cleared it.” She turned back to face him. “The shopkeeper wasn’t the top of the chain. He sold names for goods, but someone above him set the prices. Someone who knew which refugees were high-value. Someone inside the network.”

Jameson’s good hand gripped the edge of the pew. “You think the traitor is still out there.”

“I know it.” Elise pulled the bloodied scarf from her throat, held it in both hands. It was heavy, weighted with memory. “My brother delivered letters all over this island for three years before they caught him. He knew every lane, every safe house, every family hiding someone. The Germans didn’t find him by luck. They found him because someone told them where to look.”

“And you want to find that someone.”

“I want to deliver his last letter.” She looked down at the scarf. “He never got to finish his route. So I’ll finish it for him. Every house, every name, every person who needs to know the truth about who sold them.”

Jameson studied her for a long moment. The lamplight caught the hollows under his eyes, the bloodless pallor of his face. “You’re not just going to rebuild the mail service.”

“I’m going to rebuild trust.” Elise folded the scarf neatly, tucked it into her coat pocket. “The occupation broke something on this island—not the roads or the houses, but the sense that your neighbor won’t betray you. Someone has to stitch that back together.”

“And you think that someone is you.”

“I think it has to be me.” She crouched beside him again, closer this time. Close enough to see the flecks of gold in his tired eyes. “Jameson, when the war ends—if the war ends—what will you do?”

He blinked, as if the question had struck him blind. “I hadn’t thought past the next hour.”

“Think past it now.”

He was quiet. Outside, the first grey light of false dawn crept along the rooftops. “I was a doctor before all this. A real one. In London, at a teaching hospital.” He smiled faintly. “I was good at it. Boring, but good.”

“And when you go back to London?”

“I don’t know if London will still want me.” His voice dropped. “I don’t know if I’ll want London. The occupation changes you. It makes you see things clearly—what matters, what doesn’t.” He met her eyes. “I know what matters now, Elise.”

Her heart gave a single hard thump. “Don’t.”

“Don’t what?”

“Don’t say it.” She stood, paced the small room. “You’re wounded. You’re running on adrenaline and blood loss. Whatever you’re feeling—it’s the moment, not the truth.”

“You don’t know what I’m feeling.”

“I know what I’m feeling.” She stopped, pressed her back to the cold wall. “And I know it can’t go anywhere. We’re in occupied territory. Every day is a gamble. I have refugees to move, traitors to unmask, and you have a hole in your shoulder that might still turn septic.” She forced herself to look at him. “If I let myself—if we let ourselves—we’ll make mistakes. People will die because we were distracted.”

Jameson was silent so long she thought he had fainted. But when he spoke, his voice was clear. “So you’re saying we wait.”

“We survive first. Then we see what’s left.”

He nodded slowly. “After the war, then.”

“If we live that long.” Elise managed a thin smile. “That’s the deal, Dr. Jameson. Stay alive, stay useful, and when the last German leaves this rock, you can court me properly.”

“I’ll hold you to that.”

“I know you will.” She crossed back to him, knelt once more, and pressed her lips briefly to his forehead. It was not a kiss, she told herself. It was a seal on a promise. “Now, let’s get you to Marie’s before you bleed through my good bandage.”

Outside, a door slammed. Elise spun toward the vestry entrance, hand going to the small pistol she had taken from Ashwell’s body. But the figure who pushed through was not a soldier—it was the refugee woman, her dark hair wild, her eyes frantic.

“The soldiers,” she gasped, gripping the doorframe. “They’re at the beach. They found the boat.”

Elise’s blood went cold. “How many?”

“A patrol. Four men.” The woman’s voice cracked. “They’re following the tracks. The tracks lead toward the town.”

Jameson tried to rise, his face twisting in pain. “Marie’s cottage is between here and the beach.”

“I know.” Elise’s mind raced. The cottage was compromised—if the patrol followed the tracks, they would search every property along the route. And Marie was there, waiting for a refugee who would not come, in a house that now had hours, not days, before discovery.

She looked at Jameson, then at the woman. The scarf felt heavy in her pocket, her brother’s blood and the sniper’s blood, asking her a question she did not yet know how to answer.

“We move,” she said. “Now. All of us.”

“Where?” the woman asked.

Elise thought of the mail route, the lanes and hedgerows, the safe houses her brother had marked in a code only she understood. There was one place the patrols never searched—because it was too obvious, too ordinary, a building they passed every day without a second glance.

“The post office,” she said. “We’re going to deliver a letter.”