Chateau of Secrets: A Novel (39 page)

Now Sister Beatrice and two other nuns prodded their wards gently along while the older children helped those who were younger, picking them up when they stumbled. Gisèle held the hand of the boy she’d found in Saint-Lô and the hand of a girl who wasn’t much older than Adeline. Josef carried the youngest child, a two-year-old boy, who’d fallen asleep on his shoulder.

Gisèle glanced over at the man beside her, towering over all of them in his uniform. The child now cuddled against his chest. At first, the children had been terrified of the German officer and initially Sister Beatrice had been furious at Gisèle for leading him to the orphanage. It hadn’t taken Gisèle and Josef long to convince her of the gravity of what might happen if they didn’t leave right away.

Soon Sister Beatrice was more angry that after all these years of hiding, when the Allied forces were so close to rescuing them, the Germans were coming after her children.

A light shone at the edge of the trees, and at first Gisèle thought it was the starlight, welcoming them, but she quickly realized that it was much too bright.

“Get down,” Sister Beatrice commanded, and the children sank to the ground.

Gisèle held her breath as four vehicles passed by them, waiting to hear the slamming of car doors, but only silence remained.

Josef motioned for all of them to wait as he stepped out onto the road. “Gisèle,” he whispered.

Seconds later, she joined his side. The taillights of the vehicles had disappeared, and no lights glowed in the valley below, not even in Saint-Lô.

“Why are they using their headlights?” she asked. An Allied plane could see them for miles.

Josef scanned the valley in front of them. “They are in a hurry.”

She shivered. When Josef didn’t return to the house, had the Nazis rushed out to find the orphanage without him?

He glanced down at his watch. “They’ll patrol the footpath below in a half hour.”

“Should we wait?” she asked. It would take the children at least twenty minutes to get down the hill.

He put his hand on the back of the sleeping boy in his arms. “When they find the orphanage vacant, they will comb the forest and valley until they find us.”

She remembered the lights when they were searching for the airmen. The barking of the dogs. The Germans had searched for weeks for Eddie and Daniel. If they didn’t get these children to the tunnel right away, they had no chance against the dragon.

“We must go,” she said.

Josef whispered to Sister Beatrice, and she arranged the children and adults into small clusters. Then, with the child in his arms, Josef led the clusters quickly down the hillside. Gisèle crossed the footbridge first and ushered the children across the footpath and back into the covering of the hawthorns while Josef waited on the far side of the river until everyone was safe in the trees.

But then she heard the hammer of the boots she’d heard outside her bedroom door hours ago.

“Halt!” A man shouted, and her heart plummeted.

The German patrol had arrived.

“Who is it?” a man barked in German.

Gisèle glanced at Sister Beatrice, who was tucked back in the limbs of an apple tree. The nun didn’t say a word, turning instead toward the children, outstretching her arms as if she could protect every child in her care. Gisèle clung to the rosary beads and the key around her neck as she murmured her prayers.

“It is Hauptmann Josef Milch.”

They were so close to the cellar. So very close . . .

Should she join Josef? No, that would only give away the location of the rest of the children. Perhaps Josef could convince the patrol that he’d been sent on official business.

But that would be impossible. Josef still held a child in his arms.

When the man spoke again, his voice was much lower, and she strained to hear his words. “The major is looking for you.”

“Benjamin?” She heard the relief in Josef’s voice.

“
Ja.
”

“Von Kluge ordered me to raid the orphanage.”

“I see you have followed his command.” And Gisèle could imagine him looking at the child in Josef’s arms. She prayed the man was a father. And that a seed of compassion remained in him.

“
Ja
,” Josef said, “but I will not send this child to the camps.”

She couldn’t hear Benjamin’s response.

“Where are the others?” Josef asked.

“The major sent everyone else out tonight.”

She shivered. Would others be awakened by German soldiers commanded to send them away?

One of the other children coughed from the trees, and the men stopped talking for a moment.

“I could not do as I was commanded,” Josef whispered.

“They will search everywhere for you.”

“They will not find me.”

After a long pause, Benjamin spoke again. “Godspeed.” She released her hold on the rosary beads, and Sister Beatrice’s arms relaxed beside her.

Seconds later, Josef marched through the branches. The child had awakened, but his arms were clutched around Josef’s neck.

“Why did he let us go?” Gisèle asked.

Josef held back a branch so it wouldn’t cut the child. “He is a friend.”

Another fleet of aeroplanes charged down from the north, and with the ground trembling under their feet, she directed the children swiftly through the thorny trees.

R
iley and I found the abandoned manor house hidden back in the forest north of Saint-Lô, hemmed in by an iron fence and canopy of trees. The sisters who worked there, Marguerite told us, had hidden Jewish children among their wards.

The front gates were open, and Riley parked his rental car inside before he dug out his camera. I took a picture of the front of the house with my phone, but I would wait to text it across the Atlantic. If it did jog my father’s memories, I wanted Mom to be near him.

The front door was locked, but there was no knob or latch on the back door, so I pushed it open. The ceiling sagged precariously over ten wooden tables and benches, convincing me not to step inside, but I stood at the doorway and took another picture.

Had the children here survived the war or had the Nazis taken them away?

I knew it took a lot of courage for my father to share his troubled dreams with me. It was humbling to forget one’s childhood, especially when it was replaced with a confusing set of memories and dreams that prompted only questions. Snatches of children grouped together. Escaping in the night. The airplane ride to the States.

Another thought thundered through my mind.

Stéphane had said that my father wasn’t the biological son of Gisèle Sauver. The Duchant heir.

Was it possible that my father hadn’t come with his mother to help the orphans? It was plausible that he may have been one of the children needing help. Perhaps he was supposed to replace the child that Mémé lost.

If that was the case, no wonder his childhood was like a prism. Mémé, in her love for him, had invented a beautiful story about his father—the French soldier who died in the war—and a childhood growing up at the château. A story she deemed safe. She had wanted him to forget the truth and he had. Until he began to dream.

Turning, I wandered over to an old playground. With his camera on his lap, Riley was spinning slowly around on the rusty merry-go-round. He looked up at me, and I saw tears in his eyes. All the pride I’d seen in his pictures online, the cockiness that I’d once accused him of, all of it had been stripped away.

Riley wiped his tattooed arm across his face before he slowed the merry-go-round. I sat down beside him. The seconds passed in silence, the two of us watching the branches sweep across the roof of the old manor house. Somehow, in the mystery of this house, I suspected there was healing as well.

“What happened to your daughter?” I asked.

He took a deep breath. “I told you that I moved away from home before I finished high school.”

I nodded.

“I wanted to act, but there was another reason I left. My girlfriend was pregnant, and I talked her into having an—” He choked on the word. “I wanted her to end her pregnancy. We were too young to have a child . . .”

I crossed my arms over my chest, not knowing what to say.

“Twelve years ago, I drove Helena to the clinic.” He stood up, his eyes on the swing set. “And then I didn’t even wait a week. I packed up my beater of a car and didn’t just walk away from my girlfriend. I ran, all the way to New York.”

I stood beside him, and he pushed a rusty bar on the merry-go-round, watching it swirl around. “My parents were furious, and I tried—I tried desperately to forget them and Helena and most of all, my lost baby. I threw myself into my own search for success, and when I failed miserably, I tried drinking and drugs and more women, as if that could somehow patch up my bleeding soul. It wasn’t until my grandfather came to find me that I knew I had to stop running.

“My grandfather rescued people, but I—” His voice broke again as he pushed the rail. “I thought I’d killed my child.”

My skin bristled.

“I didn’t think I could forgive myself, but then—” His voice cracked. “Helena was killed in a house fire two years ago, outside Chicago. She died making sure her nine-year-old daughter wasn’t trapped in her bedroom.”

I shivered. “She didn’t abort?”

He shook his head.

My arms slowly fell back to my sides, the wonder in his voice drawing me into his story.

“She lied to me in the clinic and then after I left, she and her family moved away. Last year, my father got a call from Helena’s father. His wife had grown ill, and they couldn’t care for their granddaughter anymore. My parents didn’t tell me what happened, but they invited her to live with them.”

I leaned back against a tree, trying to bear his burden like he had with Madame Calvez.

“Last week, when I called home to ask about my grandfather’s video, my daughter answered the phone.”

“What is her name?”

“Abigail.” He pushed the merry-go-round again. “Her name means ‘the father’s joy.’ ”

“Oh, Riley,” I pleaded. “You have to go home.”

“I can’t go back now. I wanted to abort her.”

I tugged at his sleeve until he looked back at me. “You are no longer that man. God has given you a second chance.”

He sat back down on the merry-go-round.

“Abigail needs her dad,” I said. “But even more, I think you need Abigail.”

Chapter 57

G
isèle tried to rub the pain out of her head. They’d been in the tunnel for more than four hours, and most of the children were asleep now on the floor. Adeline was at Lisette’s apartment, but what if the Germans took Adeline from her, thinking the child was Gisèle’s? Would they punish both Lisette and Adeline because Gisèle had disappeared?

She had to sneak out to Lisette’s apartment and bring them both back here.

Josef studied her as he picked up two of the canteens left on the floor. “I will get water for the children and another flashlight.”

Gisèle motioned him farther down the path so they could speak without any of the children hearing. The flashlight they’d found in the tunnel was still glowing, but Josef was right. The batteries wouldn’t last much longer. Still, she didn’t want him to leave. “They’ll find you,” she whispered, terrified at what the Germans would do to him.

“The children are safe,” he said, his eyes upon her, tenderness in his voice. “You are safe.”

“Adeline isn’t safe.”

“I will search for her.”

How she wished she and Josef were both students at the university, five years ago. They could laugh and flirt and toast to tomorrow where neither of them had a care. The cares of today felt impossible. Overwhelming. They must find Adeline, but she did not want to lose Josef. It felt as if her heart would tear into two tattered pieces.

“Michel will return soon,” she insisted. “He will help us find her.”

He raked his hand through his hair, his voice sad again. “I fear your brother won’t be returning.”

Her pulse quickened. “Why not?”

“Major von Kluge was expecting another convoy today from Germany, but the resistance fighters blew up the tracks.”

“What about Michel?”