Chateau of Secrets: A Novel (37 page)

Riley slipped his arm over Madame Calvez’s shoulder. But instead of finding comfort in his protection, she gasped and began to pummel him with her knobby fists, crying as she fought. Riley retracted his arm to protect his face against her blows, but he didn’t move away.

Then, as quickly as she’d begun to hit him, Madame Calvez stopped. Her eyes flickered for a moment, and I watched as both her hands fell back to her sides, her gaze locked on the black engraving on Riley’s skin. Mesmerized. He lowered his arms, and her eyes followed his tattoo.

Slowly she reached out one of her hands. For a moment, I thought she might strike him again, but her fingers gently touched his forearm. The fear in her gaze melted into compassion. “You were there.”

This time Riley didn’t look back at me. Instead he gently placed his hand over her fingers. “Where was I?”

She curled the sleeve on her left arm and slowly pushed it up above her elbow.

Dear God.

Etched on Madame Calvez’s forearm was a series of faded numbers. The mark of the beast.

The elderly woman leaned close to Riley, whispering, one friend empathizing with another. “Birkenau,” I heard her say.

He cradled her in his arms.

Chapter 51

I
nstead of raiding Pas-de-Calais, the Allied troops stormed the northern beaches in Normandy. On the morning of June 6, German troops awakened to a swarm of aeroplanes that blackened the sky and thousands of soldiers emerging from the treacherous waters, attacking their fortresses on foot.

Major von Kluge had been raging for weeks, ever since they’d found the remains of
Deborah D
. Now, with the Allied troops fighting on French soil, he was inconsolable. Every night he berated his men over dinner as if they’d personally invited and then escorted their enemy across the English Channel.

But tonight was different. Tonight Gisèle waited outside the dining hall, a roasted chicken on her platter, as Major von Kluge ranted about the ineptness of the German military.

Shivering, she glanced up at the clock. It was already fifteen minutes past the eighteenth hour. The Germans were never late—not for their morning routine, not for patrol, certainly not for dinner. Tonight she took a bit of comfort in their lateness. The deficiency in the German army must have rattled Major von Kluge to his core.

When it appeared his tirade wouldn’t end, Gisèle stepped back toward the kitchen. Lisette was sitting by the hearth in the
kitchen, a cigarette in her hands. Adeline was playing on the floor with Shadow.

Lisette motioned toward the chicken. “They didn’t like it?”

“Kluge was yelling at his men. Apparently the Allies are almost to Saint-Lô.”

Lisette swore under her breath.

“I thought you might be pleased at the news,” she said as she set down the platter.

But Lisette’s face remained grave. “It’s going to get ugly, Gisèle.”

Gisèle glanced down at Adeline. “Why don’t you and Shadow go play in the pantry?”

Adeline groaned in response, but she reached for the cat’s front legs and dragged him into the pantry. Gisèle closed the door partway.

Lisette took another drag on the cigarette and then lowered her voice. “Hitler won’t let his men retreat.”

“How do you know?” she asked. Then wished she hadn’t.

Lisette fidgeted with her scarf before meeting Gisèle’s eyes again. “One of the men I know—” She paused. “He said that no matter what happens, they won’t leave. As if I would be pleased with that news. They’re preparing to fight, right here among the hedgerows.”

“What about all the civilians?” Gisèle said, glancing over at the cracked door to the pantry. Adeline was lecturing the cat inside.

Lisette flicked ashes into the fireplace. “The civilians will be collateral.”

Gisèle shuddered. “It is sick,” she whispered. “They kill innocent people for no reason—”

“The Nazis are depraved and desperate.” Lisette eyed the door, her hand trembling along with her cigarette. “And they hate the innocent.”

“Perhaps they will have to leave the château.”

Lisette’s laugh sounded sour. “Only after the Allies have bombed it.”

Gisèle sat down on the hearth. It had been four years since the Germans’ bombs crashed down around them. They’d lived in fear of their enemies for so long; she’d never considered that the Allies might have to take their town by force as well. If the Germans refused to leave, her house would become their target.

Gisèle pointed toward the pantry. “We must protect her.”

Lisette nodded.

“But where can we take her?”

“That’s simple.” Lisette puffed on her cigarette and the smoke drifted over her. “We can take her to your hiding place.”

She stiffened, too stunned to respond at first. “What hiding place?”

“I’m not stupid, Gisèle. I know you’ve been hiding Michel.” Lisette closed her eyes, leaning back against the bricks. “I loved him with all my heart, but you hid him from me.”

Gisèle sighed. “Michel hid himself.”

“Because he didn’t trust me.”

Gisèle shook her head. “Because he was trying to protect you.”

“It’s too late now for Michel and me, but I love—we both love—Adeline. Perhaps we can hide her wherever you hid him.”

Gisèle thought about Adeline’s cries when she was hidden in the cellar, of her fear of dark places. She may have been three years old now, but sometimes she still cried in the dark. “They will hear her there.”

The cigarette trembled in Lisette’s hand again. “We can’t let them hurt her.”

She may have lost her friendship with Lisette, but she had no doubt of this woman’s love for Adeline. “What if you take her to your apartment tonight?” Gisèle asked.

Lisette pointed her cigarette toward the ceiling. “But if I don’t return—what will you say?”

“Nothing at all,” she said, “unless they ask.”

Lisette considered her words. “Eventually they will ask.”

“Then I’ll tell them the truth. We want to protect Adeline from the Allied bombs.”

She heard the boots on the steps and she shut the pantry door with a solid kick. Major von Kluge stood before her, his eyes ablaze. “You are late,” he barked.

Gisèle reached for the cold chicken. “I didn’t want to interrupt your meeting.”

“Who told you to wait?”

“I—” She stumbled on her words.

“Who?” he demanded.

She shook her head. “No one.”

He slammed his palm on the kitchen table. “Why can’t you people do as you’re told?”

When he turned, Lisette rolled her eyes and then stepped toward the pantry. As she followed the major up the steps, Gisèle hoped the Allies would hurry to and then quickly through Saint-Lô.

R
iley insisted that he was fine, but after Madame Calvez was stabilized, the paramedic refused to leave until she’d cleaned up the scratches on Riley’s face and his bloodied nose. The man I’d seen in the pictures online was gone. Transformed. I’d never forget how he had comforted Madame Calvez in the depths of her pain, her horrific memories of the concentration camp.

After the ambulance left for the hospital, Isabelle clung to my hand until her mother arrived. Then she raced into her mother’s arms.

“My name is Monique,” Isabelle’s mother said in English before directing Isabelle to her car. “Isabelle calls you the lady of the château.”

I wasn’t sure if Monique meant her words to be a slight, so I chose to ignore them. “Your daughter is a delight.”

Monique peeked out the window at her car. “Isabelle adores her great-grandmother, but I don’t know how much longer I can send her here. These episodes are becoming more frequent.”

“I can’t imagine how hard it must be—”

“France wants to forget what happened to many of her people, but my grandmother will never forget. It almost seems—” She paused. “The older she gets, her memories seem more clear.”

My frustration at Mémé’s fading memory seemed trivial in
that light. Perhaps, instead of the memories plaguing her in her last years, there was mercy in the dullness of her mind.

Monique thanked both Riley and me for our help, and as we stepped outside, I asked her, “How long was your grandmother in a concentration camp?”

“The Germans didn’t send her there until after D-Day, but as the Allied forces moved closer to the camps, they kept sending their prisoners west. It was nine months before they set her free.”

“Why did they send her away?” I asked.

Monique took her car keys out of her pocket. “Someone was afraid she would talk.”

•  •  •

The silver thread of river glistened in the setting sunlight as Riley and I walked back toward the château, the silence of contemplation our third companion.

The man beside me was nothing like the man I’d been engaged to marry. Instead, his sincerity and steady confidence, and even his kindness, reminded me of my father. I wasn’t trying to earn Riley’s approval. I was simply enjoying his company.

He had asked me to fly home with him, but I couldn’t leave yet, not until I found out what had happened to my grandmother and Madame Calvez and Adeline. Somehow they were all connected, by the thread of their stories. Like the villages on the Vire.

But how were they connected?

Madame Calvez said she was afraid of Philippe Borde. Had he sent her to a concentration camp? And after the war, why did the French government give her the home of a Jewish family?

I wished I understood where Mémé was when Madame Calvez was taken to the camp. Had she fought for her friend?

Riley said we couldn’t judge, and he was right. But after
seventy years, it seemed the wounds were still fresh. And somehow, Adeline seemed to be the source of both women’s pain.

Mémé may not remember much now, but at one time, she had. Was it shame that made her keep her secrets, perhaps like some of the Jewish men who’d kept their family’s secrets as they served under Hitler?

“What do you think happened to Adeline?” I asked.

“I’m afraid the Nazis might have killed her,” Riley said.

I nodded. It made sense. My grandmother’s agony. Why she never told me about this child. She was grieving for her daughter at the end of her life.

I glanced over at him. “Are you going to the orphanage tomorrow?”

He pulled out his phone and clicked on the calendar. He stopped walking, staring down at the date.

Riley Holtz was a complicated man. Cute and charismatic when he wanted to be. Unassuming when not. And seemingly undaunted when he sat by a woman sixty years his senior, sharing her pain. Something haunted him, and while I didn’t know if I’d earned the right to know what it was, I wanted to give him the gift he’d given to Madame Calvez.

“Is something wrong?” I asked.

“Tomorrow is June 24.”

“Do you have another interview?”

“No. It’s a . . .” He dug his hands into the pockets of his grandfather’s jacket. “It’s an anniversary.”

But there was no celebration in his words. “The anniversary of what?” I asked quietly.

He glanced over at me, sadness etched in his eyes. “Of my daughter’s . . .” His voice trailed off, but I assumed he meant his daughter’s birth.

Chapter 53