Chapter 11 #2
“Are you okay?” Pascal asked him.
“I’m fine,” Xavier said mechanically.
“How was Paris?”
Xavier thought about it, searching for the right word. “Unusual. Interesting.”
“That sounds ominous,” Pascal said, noticing how calm Xavier was, and almost without affect or expression on his face.
As Xavier left the construction site that the hotel had already become, he felt like someone who had just been told that the war was over and, with all the dead and wounded, casualties and prisoners that had been taken in the course of the war, wasn’t sure whether to mourn or celebrate.
His marriage had ended on that day, and he felt nothing at all.
—
Sabrina had been working on her sketches for the mural that morning while the children were in school.
She was slowly turning them into templates that would be applied to the wall, with notations for the colors on each one.
The phone rang while she was working, and she was tempted not to answer it, but with children in school now, she had to be available, so she answered and was surprised to hear Sister Anne at the other end.
“Are the kids okay?” Sabrina asked. It was a reflex she hadn’t had in years, and Sister Anne smiled when she heard it.
“They’re fine. Mother Regina asked me to call you.
We have a situation that was referred to us by the bishop’s office.
It’s entirely confidential. We have a ten-year-old girl here in Biarritz.
It’s an influential family. The parents are separated in a bitter custody battle in a highly publicized divorce.
Pending resolution, and given the charges and accusations on both sides, she’d been left with an uncle and aunt, by temporary court order.
He’s an important political person. The whole situation is a mess.
And we’ve been advised that the uncle is molesting her.
She needs to be removed immediately, and no one wants her sent into the public system.
The truth is liable to come out, which would be terrible for everyone, most of all the child, with tremendous media attention.
They want to quietly remove her. The aunt and uncle and the parents have agreed.
We need a neutral place to put her. She’s too traumatized for us to have her here.
She needs a peaceful family where she can start to recover from what she’s been through.
Mother Regina asked me to tell you how sorry she is to ask this of you, and you have every right to say no.
Is there any chance she can stay with you, even for a few days until this calms down? You’re exactly what she needs.”
“Will I have press all over us?” Sabrina asked bluntly.
“No one will know where she is. And the details are confidential. I can promise you that.”
“Does she have mental issues? Will she hurt Elodie and Luc?” Sabrina asked her.
“We have a psychiatric evaluation on her, establishing the veracity of what we were told. Unfortunately it’s all true, and she’s surprisingly sound. There is no evidence of aggressive behavior from her. She hardly speaks at the moment. She’s uncommunicative, but not violent in any way.”
“Then bring her,” Sabrina said in a soft voice. “Just make sure you tell me whatever I need to know. I don’t need the gory details, I can guess. But anything that would help me to get through to her and make her feel safe.”
“I’ll bring her to you myself.”
“Will she go to school with Elodie and Luc?”
“No. She’s not up to it yet.”
“I’ll keep her home with me.”
“We’ll send a psychiatrist to talk to her.
But what she really needs is normalcy right now.
Her name is Geraldine. See you later. And Sabrina…
thank you, from the bottom of our hearts.
” Sabrina felt as though she was running a safe house for abandoned and abused children, and suddenly she knew that what she was feeling was what Xavier’s grandmother had felt more than eighty years ago.
She felt as though she was channeling her.
This must have been how it started, first with one, then another…
then another…. It was her way of giving back to the world and maybe that was why Xavier’s grandmother had done it, to repay the universe for the blessings she had.
To take away their pain. His grandmother had lost her husband and Sabrina had lost Malcolm, and the only way to cure their own pain was to minister to someone else’s.
She went to prepare a room for Geraldine as she thought about it, and felt distinctly as though someone else had trod this path before and she was following in their footsteps, down a dark underground tunnel toward a light shining up ahead.
—
Sister Anne brought Geraldine to Sabrina shortly before Luc and Elodie had to be picked up from school.
Geraldine was very thin and very pale. She had huge blue eyes and blond hair.
She looked guarded and refused to come into the house at first. She stood outside as though waiting for something, and Sabrina and Sister Anne waited patiently in the hall, and finally she stepped in.
Sabrina invited her into the kitchen and asked if she was hungry.
She didn’t answer, and Sabrina left a plate of cookies and an ice cream bar on the table, and served tea to Sister Anne.
They pretended not to notice as the ice cream disappeared.
Sabrina smiled at Geraldine from time to time and avoided all physical contact with her.
The child was wearing an expensive plaid skirt and a sweater, with navy leather Mary Janes.
She was clearly a child from a wealthy home.
And she was very polite. She had a suitcase full of pretty clothes, Sister Anne had whispered to Sabrina.
And she offered to pick Luc and Elodie up at school, and dropped them off a few minutes later.
They looked startled to see Geraldine when they got home.
She didn’t speak or smile at them, and Sabrina explained that she was visiting for a while.
After a short time, since she didn’t respond, they ignored her, and went outside to play until it got dark, while Sabrina got dinner ready, and Geraldine watched silently.
Xavier had made good on his promise to Luc and had bought him a bike with training wheels, and the two children rode up and down the driveway, within sight of the kitchen windows, which was the rule.
They followed it religiously, and Sabrina glanced out from time to time to make sure they were all right, and she could hear them laughing and squealing and calling to each other.
Geraldine could hear it too, and Sabrina spoke to her from time to time, without expecting a response.
She watched Sabrina prepare dinner and seemed to relax.
When the children came in, Sabrina sent them upstairs and told them to take Geraldine with them. They signaled to her to come, and she hesitated but went upstairs with them, which impressed Sabrina. It was the children who would reach her more than the adults. It was good to know.
Geraldine ate a normal dinner, and Sabrina let her bathe herself after the others, so as not to provoke any bad memories.
She had pretty pink silk pajamas, which she refused to put on and threw in the garbage, and Sabrina gave her a nightgown of Elodie’s, as they were almost the same size.
She had given her the bedroom next to Luc and Elodie, and Geraldine lay in the bed like a doll, with wide eyes.
Sabrina left the lights on and the door open and told her she would be downstairs in the kitchen, and showed her where her bedroom was if she needed her in the night.
She nodded, and didn’t answer when Sabrina said good night, and she went back downstairs to tidy up the kitchen.
Considering what Geraldine had gone through, she had done surprisingly well for her first night with total strangers.
The other two children made everything seem normal, and by the time they went to bed, Geraldine seemed comfortable with them. She was still studying Sabrina.
She had just loaded the dishwasher when there was a knock at the back door. It was Xavier. He looked tired and pale and his hair looked windblown and disheveled, and his eyes had the look of pain she had seen the day she met him.
“Bad day?” she asked, handing him a bottle of wine and the opener, and he laughed.
“You know me too well.”
“How was Paris?” She had an odd feeling that it had gone badly. And he didn’t answer. “Have you eaten? I have sausages.”
“I’m not hungry, but thanks.” He needed to talk to someone, and she was the only person he could think of that he wanted to talk to.
He drank the wine steadily, and slowly gave her a rough description of what had happened at the apartment.
She listened quietly, without comment, watching his eyes and hearing every word he said.
The scene he described was mortifying and ugly, but it would have been worse if he loved Brigitte.
He said he didn’t, and always said he never had.
But just being there, standing a few feet away from Brigitte and her lover, must have been as hideous as she imagined and he described.
“It sounds like a scene in a movie,” she said, and he smiled.