Chapter Seven #4
“It’s over now, thank God,” Vianne said. “It’s best to focus on the good. Who is Gaetan? You spoke of him in your delirium.”
Isabelle picked at one of the scrapes on the back of her hand, realizing an instant too late that she should have let it alone. The scab ripped away and blood bubbled up.
“Maybe he has to do with this,” Vianne said when the silence elongated. She pulled a crumpled piece of paper out of her apron pocket. It was the note that had been pinned to Isabelle’s bodice. Dirty, bloody fingerprints ran across the paper. On it was written: You are not ready.
Isabelle felt the world drop out from under her.
It was a ridiculous, girlish reaction, overblown, and she knew it, but still it hit her hard, wounded deep.
He had wanted to take her with him until the kiss.
Somehow he’d tasted the lack in her. “He’s no one,” she said grimly, taking the note, crumpling it.
“Just a boy with black hair and a sharp face who tells lies. He’s nothing.
” Then she looked at Vianne. “I’m going off to the war.
I don’t care what anyone thinks. I’ll drive an ambulance or roll bandages. Anything.”
“Oh, for heaven’s sake, Isabelle. Paris is overrun. The Nazis control the city. What is an eighteen-year-old girl to do about all of that?”
“I am not hiding out in the country while the Nazis destroy France. And let’s face it, you have never exactly felt sisterly toward me.” Her aching face tightened. “I’ll be leaving as soon as I can walk.”
“You will be safe here, Isabelle. That’s what matters. You must stay.”
“Safe?” Isabelle spat. “You think that is what matters now, Vianne? Let me tell you what I saw out there. French troops running from the enemy. Nazis murdering innocents. Maybe you can ignore that, but I won’t.”
“You will stay here and be safe. We will speak of it no more.”
“When have I ever been safe with you, Vianne?” Isabelle said, seeing hurt blossom in her sister’s eyes.
“I was young, Isabelle. I tried to be a mother to you.”
“Oh, please. Let’s not start with a lie.”
“After I lost the baby—”
Isabelle turned her back on her sister and limped away before she said something unforgiveable.
She clasped her hands to still their trembling.
This was why she hadn’t wanted to return to this house and see her sister, why she’d stayed away for years.
There was too much pain between them. She turned up the radio to drown out her thoughts.
A voice crackled over the airwaves. “… Maréchal Pétain speaking to you…”
Isabelle frowned. Pétain was a hero of the Great War, a beloved leader of France. She turned up the volume further.
Vianne appeared beside her.
“… I assumed the direction of the government of France…”
Static overtook his deep voice, crackled through it.
Isabelle thumped the radio impatiently.
“… our admirable army, which is fighting with a heroism worthy of its long military traditions against an enemy superior in numbers and arms…”
Static. Isabelle hit the radio again, whispering, “Zut.”
“… in these painful hours I think of the unhappy refugees who, in extreme misery, clog our roads. I express to them my compassion and my solicitude. It is with a broken heart that I tell you today it is necessary to stop fighting.”
“We’ve won?” Vianne said.
“Shhh,” Isabelle said sharply.
“… addressed myself last night to the adversary to ask him if he is ready to speak with me, as soldier to soldier, after the actual fighting is over, and with honor, the means of putting an end to hostilities.”
The old man’s words droned on, saying things like “trying days” and “control their anguish” and, worst of all, “destiny of the fatherland.” Then he said the word Isabelle never thought she’d hear in France.
Surrender.
Isabelle hobbled out of the room on her bloody feet and went into the backyard, needing air suddenly, unable to draw a decent breath.
Surrender. France. To Hitler.
“It must be for the best,” her sister said calmly.
When had Vianne come out here?
“You’ve heard about Maréchal Pétain. He is a hero unparalleled. If he says we must quit fighting, we must. I’m sure he’ll reason with Hitler.” Vianne reached out.
Isabelle yanked away. The thought of Vianne’s comforting touch made her feel sick. She limped around to face her sister. “You don’t reason with men like Hitler.”
“So you know more than our heroes now?”
“I know we shouldn’t give up.”
Vianne made a tsking sound, a little scuff of disappointment. “If Maréchal Pétain thinks surrender is best for France, it is. Period. At least the war will be over and our men will come home.”
“You are a fool.”
Vianne said, “Fine,” and went back into the house.
Isabelle tented a hand over her eyes and stared up into the bright and cloudless sky. How long would it be before all this blue was filled with German aeroplanes?
She didn’t know how long she stood there, imagining the worst—remembering how the Nazis had opened fire on innocent women and children in Tours, obliterating them, turning the grass red with their blood.
“Tante Isabelle?”
Isabelle heard the small, tentative voice as if from far away. She turned slowly.
A beautiful girl stood at Le Jardin’s back door. She had skin like her mother’s, as pale as fine porcelain, and expressive eyes that appeared coal black from this distance, as dark as her father’s. She could have stepped from the pages of a fairy tale—Snow White or Sleeping Beauty.
“You can’t be Sophie,” Isabelle said. “The last time I saw you … you were sucking your thumb.”
“I still do sometimes,” Sophie said with a conspiratorial smile. “You won’t tell?”
“Me? I am the best of secret keepers.” Isabelle moved toward her, thinking, my niece. Family. “Shall I tell you a secret about me, just so that we are fair?”
Sophie nodded earnestly, her eyes widening.
“I can make myself invisible.”
“No, you can’t.”
Isabelle saw Vianne appear at the back door. “Ask your maman. I have sneaked onto trains and climbed out of windows and run away from convent dungeons. All of this because I can disappear.”
“Isabelle,” Vianne said sternly.
Sophie stared up at Isabelle, enraptured. “Really?”
Isabelle glanced at Vianne. “It is easy to disappear when no one is looking at you.”
“I am looking at you,” Sophie said. “Will you make yourself invisible now?”
Isabelle laughed. “Of course not. Magic, to be its best, must be unexpected. Don’t you agree? And now, shall we play a game of checkers?”