Tangled Ashes (33 page)

A
NURSE CAME
clanking in, pushing a metal cart loaded with drinks and startling all four occupants of room 244. “Same as this morning?” she asked Thérèse, oblivious to the undercurrents that moved, slow and powerful, between Jojo and his daughter. Thérèse nodded, and the nurse poured her a cup of chamomile tea, leaving the room as quickly and noisily as she’d entered.

The silence that followed was loaded with hesitation and unasked questions. It was Jade who finally said, “What happened?”

Before Jojo could answer, Thérèse took a deep breath and began to recite the details of her story as if reading from a script. “Marie made it into the river with me. I was just three days old and light enough to hold above the water. But she couldn’t risk taking the files and getting them wet.”

Becker leaned forward. “What files?”

Jojo cleared his throat. “Marie found Elise’s files in the truck on the way to the castle. Her family history was there—everything the Lebensborn had collected for her application to the residence program.”

“And pictures,” Thérèse added. “One of my mother and one of my—” She stopped, her eyes darting to the elderly man who seemed to have shrunk as he’d sat in the plastic hospital chair recounting his story. “And one of Karl,” she amended.

Becker wasn’t sure, but he thought he saw tears brimming in the older man’s eyes. He wanted to do something to comfort him, but there was little that could be done to defuse the ravages initiated by the war and sharpened by the passage of time. “You okay, Jojo?” Beck asked, leaning forward in his chair as he noticed the sudden paling of the older man’s already-gray skin.

Jojo raised a hand in response, nodding imperceptibly and swallowing hard. He appeared determined to see his tale through to the end. He cleared his throat and turned his eyes toward the window. “Marie found me around midnight,” he said, pronouncing her name with a rolled German
r
. “I was helping to load the trucks. Boxes and boxes of documents—and all the artwork they could pull off the walls. She shouldn’t have been there. If anyone had seen her . . .” He coughed, his slight frame convulsing with the effort, then took a deep, raspy breath. “If anyone had seen her,” he continued, “they’d have become suspicious. It was strange enough that a French girl had volunteered to live at the castle when all the other villagers had gone home. But Marie . . . Marie was a loyal one. Stubborn, too.”

AUGUST 1944

Karl was walking down the stairs to the foyer, carrying a painting under one arm and a box of ledgers under the other, when Marie stepped out of the shadows and grabbed his arm, swinging him around and down into the dark space under the well-traveled steps.

“Are you out of your mind?” Karl hissed, his eyes darting feverishly here and there in fear of being discovered. He lowered the painting and the box to the floor, then raked unsteady fingers through his hair.

“Listen to me,” Marie said, her lucid and determined gaze finding his. “I’ll be leaving with the baby at 3 a.m., but I can’t take these.” She pressed a manila folder into his chest.

“What is it?” He flipped the folder open, leafing through the pages of information and pausing when he reached the two pictures. “Where did you get these?”

“They fell out of a box.”

His eyes narrowed. “You can’t keep them.”

Marie stared at him in incredulity. “Are you kidding?”

“They belong to the Reich.”

“No, Karl, they belong to your daughter. That folder is the sum total of everything she’ll know about her mother, and you’re going to help me preserve it for her.”

“I won’t. I won’t defy the Kommandant’s orders. Take it out of here yourself.”

“In the river? What if it’s too deep? Or if I fall and get it wet? No. Karl—Karl, listen to me!” She grabbed his arm and shook it. He was so focused on the sound of boots going up and down the stairs above them that he couldn’t concentrate on what Marie was saying. His eyes darted back to her when she shook his arm, and she continued in quiet, hurried words. “Take these with you when you go. Pack them with your stuff or tuck them into your trousers or . . . whatever. Just take them with you, okay?”

“And then what?”

“And then send them to me. Whenever you can.” She took the folder from him and showed him the handwritten address on the inside of the back cover. “Send them to me here. It’s the address of the aunt my mother is living with.”

“I don’t know. . . .”

“She’s your daughter. She’s your daughter, and this is the only thing I’m asking you to do for her. Karl—”

Somewhere above them, a voice asked if anyone had seen Karl-Joseph. “Try the latrine,” another voice called. “He’s been hiding like a scared little girl all afternoon.”

Karl snapped his head around, aiming a panicked look at Marie. “Fine,” he said, snatching the folder from her. “Fine. But if you get caught, don’t mention me. Don’t say my name to anyone, you hear?”

Marie shook her head, and a look of disgust crossed her face. In a soft voice, she said, “I don’t know what Elise ever saw in you, Karl, but what I’m looking at now . . .” She paused, studying him. “What I’m looking at now is a far cry from the man she described.”

Karl stared her down for a moment before taking a couple steps and glancing around the edge of the staircase, eager to reenter the stream of dutiful soldiers carrying the
boches’
loot out to the trucks. He came back to Marie, pulling up his shirt and stuffing the folder into his trousers. “That’s the difference between you and Elise,” he said, tucking his shirt back in. “She knew I was a soldier and didn’t expect me to be anything else.”

Marie let out a humorless laugh. “How convenient for you.” She handed him the painting and helped him pick up the box of ledgers. “Promise me you’ll do it,” she said. “Promise me.”

He turned, his ears trained on the coming and going of soldiers. “Sure.”

“Karl!”

The expletive he let out reverberated too loudly in the shadowed space beneath the stairs. Karl froze, holding his breath, but Marie had no time for fear. “Promise me,” she said.

Karl turned icy eyes on her and hissed, “Fine! I promise!”

Thérèse took a sip of chamomile tea and smiled sadly at Jade. “Marie made it out of the castle grounds with me the night the Germans evacuated Lamorlaye.”

Jojo took over. “It was just before dawn when the order came. Generalmajor Müller said to fetch the babies and take them to the trucks. Frau Heinz oversaw the procedure and never mentioned the missing baby to anyone. She seemed completely . . . unaware that Thérèse was gone.”

“How could she not have known?” Jade asked.

Jojo smiled. “She was the last one onto the last truck,” he said, “and just as I was closing the doors on her, she said, ‘You might be a better father than I thought.’”

“She knew,” Becker said, captivated by the story emerging as the two points of view converged.

“She knew,” Jade agreed, squeezing Thérèse’s hand. “Did Marie have any trouble getting to her mother’s? I mean—with the liberation under way, I presume it had to be difficult to get anywhere. . . .”

“What happened to her?” Jojo asked, leaning forward as his eyes brightened with intensity. “What happened to her? I wrote to tell her that the papers had never left the castle, but . . . I never heard from her again.”

Thérèse looked at Jojo with so much bitterness that his face went slack and he grasped the armrests of his chair. She took several breaths before answering his question. “All I know I heard from my mother.” She stopped, holding a hand to her forehead. “My adoptive mother. But not Marie. Marie was not my . . . Marie didn’t raise me. I grew up thinking of her as a sister. It was her mother who took care of me. And it wasn’t until—it wasn’t until last year that I found out about . . .” She took another deep breath and pulled herself up straighter against the cushions.

Jade squeezed her hand again. “If you need to take a rest . . .”

“No,” Thérèse quickly replied, shaking her head. “We might as well get it all out now. And Jojo . . .” She looked at the man whose lips were pressed together in dismay. “Jojo has waited long enough.”

Becker wasn’t sure he wanted to hear the rest of the story. From the look on Thérèse’s face, it wouldn’t be pleasant, and he wondered how much more Jojo could take.

“Marie made it to the bridge at the back of the property, following the river and holding me above the water. But when she got there, she saw soldiers watching the grounds on the other side and she knew she’d be seen if she tried to forge ahead. So . . . she stayed hidden there for nearly an hour.” Thérèse’s fingers wrung the handkerchief she held. She took a moment before continuing. “It appears that I woke up while we were hiding there. I was a newborn—there was little she could do to quiet me. And when I began to cry . . . when I began to cry, Marie placed her hand over my mouth. To save me. To save us both. She held it there so tightly and for so long that I lost consciousness.” She looked directly at Jojo. “She thought she’d killed me—suffocated me to death. You can imagine what those moments before I breathed again felt like to her.”

Thérèse seemed to gather courage before continuing, her gaze turning inward again. “Eventually, some kind of disturbance near the castle gates made the guards move away for just a few minutes—enough for Marie to carry me the rest of the way to safety. We made it to the Catholic church and waited there until two days after the evacuation. She didn’t want to take the risk of encountering any Germans who might have stayed behind. The priest finally took a stroll into town and confirmed that they were all gone.”

She paused, closing her eyes for a moment as her hand fluttered to her neck. “Marie’s plan was to make it to Chantilly with me and take a train from there in the direction of Bordeaux. Even if there were no trains going all the way there, she wanted to get as far away from Lamorlaye as she could on that first day. She’d figure the rest out wherever she got off the train.”

AUGUST 1944

Though Marie had walked from Lamorlaye to Chantilly on many occasions, she’d never done so with a newborn in her arms. All she carried with her was the evaporated milk formula she’d stolen from the nursery and enough fresh cow’s milk, donated by the priest and packed in ice, to last for the day. As they entered the town, the sounds of celebration grew. People filled the streets, singing raunchy songs about the
boches
and screaming crude chants at the top of their lungs. Children danced around light poles while adults gathered in squares and on street corners, many with glasses of wine and bottles of beer in their hands, telling tall tales about what they’d witnessed. The Allies hadn’t arrived yet, but the scene was set for their victory parade.

As she rounded the corner to the train station, Thérèse tightly bundled and sleeping soundly against her chest, Marie saw that she hadn’t been the only one with a desire to leave in the first days after the Germans’ evacuation. The station was crowded and pulsed with a nervous energy that briefly made Marie reconsider her plans. But when Thérèse stirred and whimpered against her, she squared her shoulders and stepped into the line leading to the ticket counter.

She’d been standing there for just a handful of minutes when a woman she vaguely recognized grabbed her arm and pulled her out of line.

“Filthy tramp!” she cried, her pupils dilated and her cheeks flushed. “You worked up there in the baby factory with the Nazis!”

“Leave her alone,” a man said behind Marie.

“She’s a traitor!” the woman screamed, pointing at Marie and scanning the crowd to gauge their reaction. “Go ahead! Ask her. Ask her if she worked at the manor!”

Marie felt fear crawling up her spine. Though she sensed movement in the crowd around her, her eyes narrowed into a sort of tunnel vision filled by the angry woman’s flushed face. “I’m—My name is Marie Gallet. I live in Lamorlaye,” she stammered, trying to establish a connection that would cut through the postliberation hysteria.

The woman’s lips curled inward as she moved so close that Marie could feel her breath on her face. “You worked for the
boches
—probably slept with them too. You’re a slut, girl, and we don’t like your type around here.” She cleared her throat and spit in Marie’s face.

Marie was momentarily paralyzed with shock. She held Thérèse more tightly and looked around for help, finding only averted gazes and disapproving glares. The woman still stood there, her finger pointing at Marie, uttering vulgarities, but there was no hint of rescue in the faces Marie scanned. She wiped the spit from her eye and cheek and opened her mouth to protest, but her attacker wasn’t finished yet.

“You’re a tramp. A filthy traitor—working for the
boches
and servicing their men! Shame on you. Shame on you, you foul pile of trash!”

Others began to mumble their agreement as Marie moved slowly away from the large woman. She backed toward the door, hoping to make it out into the street before the situation escalated any further, but the liberation frenzy that had gripped the town took a rapid turn toward violence. She’d nearly made it to the door when a middle-aged man took his turn spitting on her.