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"I’ve been thinking about the things Iher tea Steam rose from the delicate bone-china cup "It was a lot for you to take in at one ti about your adventures, Grandma" And they truly were adventures, of a kind few people experienced these days Real adventures, with real and often involuntary risks

Helen nodded "My children didn’t, either But as I said before, it’s tiile cup back in its saucer "Your father phoned and asked me about all this" She paused, a look of distress on her face "I hope he’ll forgiveit from him all these years"

"I’m sure he will," Ruth assured her

Helen obviously wanted to believe that "He asked me to tell him more, but I couldn’t," she said sadly

"I’ain so soon"

Ruth laid a corandmother’s arm This information of Helen’s was an ireement, she’d co would be lost

"Jean-Claude had a wonderful gift," her grand into the story without prea roup trusted him with our lives"

Paul nodded encouragingly

"Within a fewsomeone, he could determine if he should trust that person," Helen continued "More and more people wanted to join us We started with a few students like ourselves, ere determined to resist the Nazis Soon, others found us and we connected with groups across France We all worked together as we lit fires of hope"

"Tell me about the wanted poster with your picture and Jean-Claude’s," Ruth said

Her grandmother smiled ruefully, as if that small piece of notoriety embarrassed her "I’erated reputation Soon al that happened in Paris as part of the Resistance movement was falsely attributed to us, whether ere involved or not"

"Such as?"

"There was a fire in a supply depot Jean-Claude and I wished we’d been responsible, but eren’t Yet that hat prohtened her eyes "It was a rather unflattering sketch of Jean-Claude, he told reed"

"Can you tell me some of the anti-Nazi activities you were able to undertake?" Ruth asked, knowing her father would want to hear as much of this as his mother could recall

Helen considered the question "Perhaps theadventure was one of Jean-Claude’s There was an SS officer, a horrible " This as spit out, as if even the usted her "Jean-Claude discovered that this officer had obtained infor a fellow Resistance member, information that put us all at risk Jean-Claude decided the man had to die and that he would be the one to do it"

Paul glanced at Ruth, and he see an SS officer would be no easy task

Helen sipped her tea once more "I feared for Jean-Claude"

"Is this when he…died?" Ruth asked

"No" For eranded

"One night Jean-Claude left arden in the suburbs, at the home of a syroup He and his ent out for the evening Jean-Claude instructed us to dig a grave and fill it with quicklime We were to wait there for his return He left with two other ain"

"But you did," Ruth said

The old wo to Jean-Claude, it was either kill the SS officer or he would take us all down He simply knew too much"

"What did Jean-Claude do?"

"That is a story unto itself" Helen sat even straighter in her chair "This happened close to the final time he was captured He knew, I believe, that he would die soon, and it made him fearless He took more and more risks And he valued his own life less and less" Her eyes shone with tears as she gazed out the rain-blurred , lost in a world long since past

"The SS officer had taken a room in a luxury hotel on the outskirts of Paris," Helen went on a nac before retiring for the evening When he called for his drink, it was Jean-Claude who brought it to hi a waiter’s jacket I don’t kno he killed the SSanyone Hethe body out of the hotel without anyone seeing"

"Why? Couldn’t he just leave it there?"

"Why?" Helen repeated, shaking her head "Had the man’s body been discovered, the entire staff would have been tortured as punishment Eventually soed to srandmother smiled "Jean-Claude was clever His friends hauled him and the body of the SS officer up the chimney First the dead man and then the live one That was necessary, you see, because there was a guard at the end of the hallway"

"But once they got to the rooftop, how did he e?"