Chateau of Secrets: A Novel (18 page)

“Gisèle!” a voice called, and she turned to see Lisette pedaling quickly down the lane. She waited until Lisette stepped off the bicycle.

Her breath came in short heaves. “You pedal too fast.”

“I didn’t know you were following me,” Gisèle said.

“For at least half a kilometer.” Lisette patted her curls and then straightened the navy blue scarf around her neck before kissing Gisèle on both of her cheeks.

“Aren’t you supposed to be at work?”

“The commander sent me on an errand.” The woman’s blue eyes implored her for information. “Have you heard from Michel?”

Gisèle shook her head.

“How about Philippe?” Lisette asked.

The Nazis had overtaken northern France, but in the south, they’d left France unoccupied in an area known as Vichy. De Gaulle called it a “puppet government,” Hitler’s cronies pulling the strings, but Lyon, where Philippe and his mother lived, was in Vichy.

“He tries to call about once a week,” she said. Though lately it seemed to be more like once a month, and with the Germans listening, they never talked about anything of consequence. She’d stopped waiting for him to return to Saint-Lô a long time ago.

“I keep hoping . . . ,” Lisette began. “I just want to know if Michel’s still alive.”

“You must keep praying that he’s alive.” Gisèle swallowed. “Thank you for helping me at the town square.”

Lisette shook her head. “I don’t want to know who that child is—”

“I won’t tell you,” she said even though she didn’t know anything about him.

Lisette glanced up the lane behind her before she looked back at Gisèle. “Is the boy safe?”

Gisèle nodded as she stepped toward the house.

Lisette eyed the front door. “We shouldn’t be here.”

“André and Nadine are my friends.”

Lisette lowered her voice. “Nadine may not wear her star, but the officials know about her parents.”

“Her family is Catholic. And French.”

“Before she became French—”

Gisèle stopped her. “It shouldn’t matter about before.”

Lisette waited by her bicycle as Gisèle walked through the picket gate and up the stone pavers that wove a path through the trellises of roses in the Batiers’ front yard. She knocked on the front door, her fingers drumming against the frame as she waited impatiently for
Nadine to swing it open and kiss her on both cheeks. When no one responded, she knocked again.

Stepping to the side, Gisèle tried to peer through the window, but the curtain covered the inside. Perhaps André had been able to secure bus passes to Grenoble, where Nadine’s parents lived. Or perhaps they had simply taken a walk down to the Vire.

She glanced over her shoulder at Lisette. “They must be out back.”

Lisette looked skeptical, but she trailed her through Nadine’s garden, to the edge of the property. Red berries ornamented the hawthorn trees, and the air smelled of wood smoke and rain.

“Nadine?” Gisèle called into the trees.

A bee buzzed past them, and Lisette shrieked. Then she pulled her scarf up over her head as she eyed a row of old wooden hives tucked back in the forest. “This place is creepy.”

“As long as you don’t harm the bees, they won’t hurt you,” Gisèle said.

“You don’t know that.”

Gisèle called André’s name this time, but still there was no response.

Lisette stepped into the garden. “Perhaps they left before the roundup.”

Gisèle had to cling to that hope—she couldn’t let herself consider the alternative.

A goldfinch fluttered between the trees, and then she heard a noise. A cry. She swiveled toward Lisette. “Was that a bird?”

Lisette’s eyes were wide. “It sounded like a baby.”

There was a second cry, dull but persistent.

If it was Louise, why weren’t André and Nadine answering her cries?

Turning, Gisèle raced back toward the cottage. On the second floor, one of the bedroom windows was cracked open. She reached for the knob on the back door, expecting to shove it, but the door was already open. She stumbled inside.

The living room looked as if a German tank had plowed through its center. André’s prized books had been flung across the floor, torn pages crumpled, as if someone planned to build a bonfire. Legs had been hacked off the wooden furniture, the upholstered pieces slashed, dishes shattered on the floor.

Lisette cursed.

Gisèle steadied herself on the windowsill, trying to force her thoughts to stay present, but they refused to cooperate. Her mind flashed back again in rapid sequence to that terrible day two years ago when she found her father’s bloodied body in the forest. The loss that had seared a hole in her core.

The room swayed.

Would she find André and Nadine as she had Papa? She didn’t think she could bear the loss of someone else she loved, seeing them bloody and bruised. She knew it didn’t really matter how much she could bear, but still, the thought of losing her friends was heart-wrenching. Overwhelming. Whatever she found, she would try to bear it, for Louise’s sake and for the sake of her friends, but still—it seemed too much.

Lisette rushed toward the kitchen, and Gisèle yelled for Nadine as she hurried upstairs to the bedrooms. Louise’s small bed, carved by her father, was empty, the pink spread unwrinkled on top. Her toys were in a wicker basket in the corner, under the lacy pink curtains that fluttered in the breeze.

In the next room, the bedcovers on André and Nadine’s bed were balled up on the floor, clothes piled on top of it. Gisèle looked under the bed, as if a child was stowed underneath, but it was empty.

“Louise!” she shouted.

The child had just begun to walk. Had she toddled downstairs alone? But if the Germans had come, surely they would have taken her with her parents . . .

She found Lisette on the bottom step, a cigarette trembling in her hand. “You wanna smoke?” Lisette asked, holding it out.

Gisèle took a long drag, but the tobacco did nothing to calm her. They had to find Louise.

“I despise them all,” Lisette said, her voice shaking along with the cigarette.

“Me too.”

Lisette took another drag. “We heard a baby’s cry, didn’t we?”

“I pray so,” Gisèle said as she moved toward the back door.

“And the Germans wonder why the resistance wants them dead.” Lisette lowered the cigarette to her side. “If Michel were here, he would know what we should do.”

The two women searched the garage, the garden, and back among the hawthorns again. They called for Louise all the way to the river, just in case she’d wandered away, but they didn’t hear another cry.

Discouraged, the two women trudged back to the house. Gisèle collapsed against the side of the garage, wiping the sweat off her brow with her sleeve. She would never forgive herself if she left Louise here alone.

Lisette climbed on her bicycle. “I must return to work.”

Gisèle kissed her friend’s cheeks, but before Lisette began to pedal down the lane, the cry echoed again. Lisette threw down her bicycle.

Gisèle pointed left toward the river. “It sounded like it came from that direction.”

Another scream erupted in the forest. “
Maman!
”

Lisette followed Gisèle into the forest, scouring the overgrown tangle of trees until they discovered what looked like an old root cellar among the beehives and brush, camouflaged with river stones and branches. On the moss-covered door was a rope handle.

Gisèle leaned down and yanked it open.

I
sabelle led me down to the river, to a paved path alongside a grove of white-tipped trees. Graying wooden hives stood among the trees, their resident bees congregating in the neighborhood outside. Last year one of my students had brought
The Life and Times of the Honeybee
to read to the class, and I had been just as fascinated as my students with the world of beekeeping.

I stopped for a moment, sniffing the blossoms. The scent reminded me of the sweet almond smell in marzipan. I reached for a branch, pulling it closer. Until it stung me.

“Ouch!” I said, shaking my fingers.

“The trees have thorns.”

I rubbed my hands together. “I figured that out.”

“That’s why they call them hawthorns.”

With a shiver, I recalled my grandmother’s words about losing a baby. In the hawthorn trees. How exactly did one lose a child in these trees?

Not that Adeline would still be here, seventy years later, but I was curious to know where my grandmother’s mind wandered and what she remembered. And what happened to this girl.

Isabelle chattered with a seamless mixture of French and English. About her school in Paris and her twelve cousins and
how she planned to visit America with her mother when she turned sixteen.

A bee buzzed past my ear, and I almost leapt into the river.

Isabelle laughed at me. “They won’t sting you this time of year.”

I waved my hands across my face. “You can’t possibly know that.”

“They’ve never stung me.”

“That’s because you don’t look threatening to them.”

“What does
threatening
mean?”

I stretched out my arms overhead. “Big and scary.”

She laughed again. “I don’t think you look threatening.”

In less than a half mile, we veered away from the river and took a small path between the trees. Old hives clung to tree trunks on both sides. Isabelle didn’t seem the least bit concerned about trekking through the city of bees, but I prodded her forward, practically stepping on her heels.

We passed an overgrown vegetable and then flower garden before we reached a white cottage adorned with peeling shutters, the color of their paint blending with the trees. A swing set had been built among the gardens and on the back patio of the house was a glass table with two vinyl chairs.

Isabelle slid open the glass door and slipped inside.

When she reopened the door, she didn’t step back onto the patio. Her sweet smile was gone, and worry tugged at her eyes.

“Is something wrong?” I asked.

She tilted her head slightly. “Grand-mère says she can’t visit with you.”

I tried to hide my disappointment. “Did you tell her that Gisèle Duchant is my grandmother?”

Isabelle nodded her head. “She doesn’t want to talk about Madame Duchant.”

I smiled at the girl. “Thank you for asking. Perhaps I can come back—”

“She said that you shouldn’t return,” Isabelle said in a louder voice. I assumed so Madame Calvez could hear.

In the window near the patio, I watched a face peek from behind the curtain. I lifted my hand to wave, but the face disappeared.

“I’ll be here for a few more days,” I told Isabelle as I backed away from the patio. “I’d love to visit her anytime.”

I hurried back through the maze of beehives and trees.

What had happened between Madame Calvez and my grandmother?

•  •  •

I called Marissa and in lieu of being a bridesmaid, I asked if she wanted to go kayaking with me on August 10, far away from Richmond. My friend commiserated for an hour without reminding me even once that she’d told me so.

Then I tucked myself away in my room and searched online for the records of an Adeline who had lived in Agneaux or in Saint-Lô. Nothing emerged so I expanded my search through Normandy and discovered an Adeline who’d been born near here. In
AD
980.

The other Adelines I found proved equally futile.

I hadn’t expected an easy answer, but like my parents, I began to doubt the validity of a quest for a girl that Mémé remembered only after her mind began slipping away.

Outside the window, a cloud of dust trailed Marguerite’s station wagon down the drive. I closed my iPad case and watched as a man stepped out of the car and took off his dark sunglasses to gaze up at the château. He looked to be in his early thirties, and he wore a brown bomber jacket even though it must have been at least seventy degrees outside.

When I realized he might see me, I started to step away from the window but it was too late. The man I assumed to be Riley Holtz waved up at me, and I had no choice but to wave back. Then Marguerite motioned toward the farmhouse and Riley followed her away from the château.

There was no reason to rush out now and greet him. I’d promised two hours tomorrow morning for his documentary, and I’d keep my word.

Chapter 25