Simone was not happy. 

You could tell by the way she threw a pot into the sink, cracking a glass into shards and rounding on me with white-hot fury in her eyes. She wouldn't kill me in front of her children, for that I was lucky. Simone's voice was carefully controlled anger, that didn't quite match the force with which she threw the kitchenware, as she told the two gathered at the table to run along. I tried to shake my head at Linette and Max, begging them not to leave me with the fury of their mother but they only laughed, obeying Simone's bidding. She threw me into the linen closet and stepped inside after me, slamming the door shut. In the darkness, I didn't need to see her face to know she was angry. At me. At the Nazis. At the OSS for placing me in her care.

It hadn't been my idea and I knew Simone didn't blame me for the war or for the occupation. But I did bring an element of danger into her life, there was no denying it. She had taken me in, a fresh agent with little to no field experience. I had been told to lie low. Simone had shown me how to do that. Her own children didn't question my presence. To Max, Linette, and Lillie, I really was their cousin Irene from the southern coast.

"Why are you not meeting your informant?" She hissed in stuttering English. "Do you know how long it took us to get him here safely?"

Simone was a woman of few words but her ability to get information and people was unprecedented. She didn't need to speak to get men and women on the side of the resistance. Most of Normandy knew to come to Simone's small home, just off the square, with any information of the Nazis. Farmers would come, spilling secrets across the kitchen table of men in uniforms assembling along the coastline, building a line of fortifications. The Nazis were building a wall of forces between Normandy and the channel. From my place in the garden, tucked underneath the open window, I knew the locals thought they were being closed in but I didn't think so. The Nazis wanted to keep something out.

"I was cleared off the streets. The Germans are bringing something into town, I know it." I said, quickly jumping to my own defense. I had learned after two years in Simone's home that her fury was a fate worse than the Germans.

Simone huffed a breath. This wasn't good for anyone, particularly the informant that she had spent all winter communicating with. Some old Great War contact, back when France had been riddled with trenches, and the spies who operated the network were a different breed. Simone had told me many times that when she had been a girl, a young teen with only wings on her feet and hidden messages in her skirt, that being a spy was harder. I'm not just a spy, I would mutter to myself. I am an agent.

"The messenger is going to be caught unawares. You have to find him before they do."

I nodded. My whole time in France was coming to fruition. Months from now, there was going to be something big. Everyone knew it. The French knew it, finding excuses to leave town, to move to the countryside, or finding ways out of France. Simone knew it, her informants rustling like leaves in the wind. Even the Germans knew it, their transports had been more frequent, bringing in men and weapons. If the informant got caught, my chances of a successful report to Madrid would be dashed. And if I could find out why the Germans were clearing the streets, what they were bringing in that was so important, maybe I could slide in something to please my superiors. I needed to be on their good side before I dropped the bomb of the photograph.

"Also," I said, steeling myself for the flame of her temper that was sure to come. "They have a photo of me."

"What?" Simone's gasp was hot on my face and I grimaced, smelling the sherry that was heavy on her breath. She always loved to drink, especially now as the Germans occupation of Saint Marie Du Mont increased in length. Surely here, she would make the speech about how a spy in her day would never have dared to be photographed. "How did you make it back?"

"They only caught my shoulders. I had turned my head, but, " I said, unbuttoning my blouse to show my collarbone in the dim lighting offered by the dusty lightbulb. "They got my birthmark."

This was worse than them capturing my face, which could have been chalked up to a resemblance or a doppelganger. But the chances of someone else having a birthmark on their collarbone at the same place I did was slim. And from the look on her face, Simone knew this.

She had been kind to me, a valuable asset, and a trusted ally of the Resistance and the OSS. She had been several decades into retirement and I had endangered her. I had endangered her children, who I could hear playing out in the garden, who thought me a part of their family. My mission had jeopardized everything she had here.

"I would never have-" She started to say, a teasing glimmer in her eye that tried to mask the fear that I saw firmly planting itself.

"I know, I know. You never would have let this happen. But I'm going to find the informant. I'm going to find out what they are bringing into town. And I'm going to tell Madrid about the photo." I told my landlady, trying to infuse as much confidence as I could into the words, making it seem like I knew what I was doing. She nodded, though I could still see the fear in her eyes.

We were all dancing with death in this town and it was worse for her. Her children were here, her life was here. I knew that my parents would never face the backlash of my actions here. If I was discovered, my family would live. Simone's would see the gun squad.

I laid a hand on her shoulder and gave it a squeeze, letting her out of the linen closet. "It's going to be fine. I know what I'm doing."

I'm an OSS agent for Christ's sake, I thought to myself. I should know what I'm doing. I started down the hallway towards the front door, trying to draw some semblance of a plan together.

Simone seemed to be reassured but as I reached for the door, to let myself back into the Nazi-ridden streets, she whispered. "The photo, how did they get it?"

I looked back over my shoulder to meet her gaze. It was a question that I had been asking myself. There was only one place that photo could have been taken and how the Germans had gotten their hands on it was beyond me.

"I have no idea," I admitted and let myself out.