Chateau of Secrets: A Novel (42 page)

“I have a plane ready to fly you out of here,” Eddie said. “To London.”

“We must find them first.”

“The trains already left,” Josef said.

Her heart felt as if it had shattered.

Another bomb hit nearby and she heard the terrible crash of a building caving in upon itself. Loneliness pierced the fragments of her heart.

“It’s only a matter of days before we defeat the Nazis,” Eddie said. “Then you can search for your friends.”

“I’ll search with you,” Michel said beside her.

She looked back and forth between Josef and this boy who risked everything to save her. And she realized that she was no longer alone.

If Josef was right, if the trains had left, they would never be able to find either Lisette or Adeline. At least not now.

Josef rested his head back against the wooden arm of the pew. “We will find them after the war.”

Gunfire ricocheted outside her beautiful
chapelle
, and she didn’t want to move. All this killing, this horror, would it never stop?

Eddie held her chin in his rough hands, looking her in the eye. “You and Josef must hurry.”

She pulled Michel close to her. “This boy belongs with us.”

Another bomb rocked the ground, and Eddie urged all three of them out of the
chapelle
. “Go quickly.”

She would pray all the way to London for Lisette and for Adeline. And the moment the fighting was over, she would find both of them.

D
ad and I spent hours searching through the boxes in his parents’ attic. It seemed my grandparents had kept every piece of memorabilia they’d collected since they reached the United States, along with all of Mémé’s classroom papers, bills, and sixty years’ worth of the
Farmers’ Almanac
. Rain streaked down the dormer windows of the attic, and my dad and I laughed and cried together as we remembered.

I thought Dad would ask Riley to stop the documentary when he found out his father was an officer in the Wehrmacht. Instead he called Riley after I flew home from France and thanked him for telling the story of Josef Milch. In Dad’s eyes, Henri Sauver—his father—was a hero.

Riley’s documentary about the Jewish soldiers was scheduled to air the first of the year, and now he was trying to track down other orphaned children who had been rescued during the war.

But before he started filming his new documentary, there was another project he wanted to complete first.

My father opened a file and then he whistled. “Bingo.”

I scooted over to him and saw a birth certificate for Henri Sauver. Born in Paris. August 8, 1918.

“Josef must have forged that,” I said.

Instead of using Milch, he’d changed his German last name to a French one that meant “salvation.”

There was a marriage license for Gisèle and Henri in the folder, and the birth certificate for Michael Sauver. It slowly occurred to me that Josef had forged my father’s birth information as he had Adeline’s.

I leaned back against a post. “They never adopted you.”

“Perhaps not legally,” he said. “But they were my parents.”

“They should have made it legal . . .”

My father shook his head. “It doesn’t matter now.”

But it did matter, at least for their case against Stéphane. My grandfather had forged the papers for Dad’s birth, perhaps to bring him to the United States with them, but châteaus in France were passed down through the bloodline of the old families. Even if Josef had the best of intentions, the French courts wouldn’t side with a German officer who had taken one of their children and run away.

Josef Milch had rescued an entire orphanage of French children and raised one of the orphaned Jews as his own child. But he still should have legally adopted my dad.

“Look at this,” Dad said.

I leaned over and saw the other papers in his hands. They were carbon copies of letters, inquiring after Lisette Calvez, André Batier, Nadine Batier, Charlotte Milch, Odette Laval, and Adeline Rausch. I slowly read through the responses to Henri’s letters.

Lisette Calvez had returned to Paris in May 1945, one letter reported, but Odette Laval had been killed in Paris during the blitzkrieg. Nadine Batier died on a train before she reached Buchenwald, three months before André died. Charlotte Milch was killed in the gas chamber at Dachau. And according to the last
letter from the French government, they had found no record of a child named Adeline Rausch.

My grandparents hadn’t forgotten those they loved, the people they had left behind. They’d found out what happened to everyone except Adeline. No wonder that, in these years when memories blurred, my grandmother thought Adeline was still lost in the trees.

“Chloe!” Marissa shouted from the base of the stairs, and I hurried down to my best friend. Her hair was tied back in a knot, and the apron she wore over her jeans and T-shirt was coated with flour. She held out my cell phone and I saw two missed calls from Riley.

“Do you know what happened?” I asked.

“Of course not,” she said with a laugh. “Your mom is trying to show me how to make a lemon soufflé.”

As Dad and I worked, Marissa and my mother had been inspired to concoct all sorts of French desserts in Mémé’s kitchen.

I called Riley back.

“Turn on your TV,” he said.

“Are you certain?”

He sighed. “No.”

I’d been avoiding the television all day, but with Riley on the phone, I finally braved the network news. Red and blue balloons trickled down the screen, and I saw Austin Vale on a stage with both of his parents and his sister, all their arms raised in victory. In the close-up shot, his smile almost stretched across the television screen.

Austin hadn’t just charmed me. He’d charmed the entire Commonwealth of Virginia.

In that moment, I thanked God for filling the empty places inside me with contentment and peace. I was incredibly grateful to
be in my grandparent’s home tonight with people I loved instead of on that stage, forcing a smile alongside the new governor-elect and his dysfunctional family.

The camera panned across the front of the crowd, and I searched the screen for Vos and Wyatt. I didn’t see Austin’s brother or brother-in-law, but there, two rows back from the front, sat Starla Dedrick, pampered and pressed. She wasn’t smiling.

“Are you okay?” Riley asked.

“I’m relieved,” I said, muting the volume on the TV. “Immensely.”

“No regrets,” he asked, part question and part statement.

Marissa and my mother laughed in the kitchen. “Not a single one.”

“I was thinking . . . ,” he said.

“Thinking about what?”

“Thinking that I would like to come back to Virginia soon.”

My stomach fluttered. “I’m sure Mémé would love to see you again.”

“Yes, well . . .” He paused. “I want to visit her, of course, but then, I wondered if I could come down to Richmond to spend time with you, or better yet . . .”

“Yes?”

“I was thinking you might want to come up here and meet Abigail.”

I sat on the bottom step. Riley’s relationship with his parents was slowly mending, and it seemed he’d begun to forgive himself for his selfishness in the past. He hadn’t known his daughter was alive, but the guilt for encouraging his girlfriend to abort their daughter had turned into guilt for abandoning her.

Even though Abigail was too young to hear the entire story, Riley had begged her forgiveness for missing the first eleven years
of her life. Their reunion had been bumpy, he said, but Abigail was slowly beginning to forgive him.

“Or we could all meet in France,” he said, and I could hear his smile.

“Why are you going to France?”

“Lisette wants me to do an interview with her about Philippe Borde and the undercover work of the Milice.”

“Stéphane will be furious when he finds out.”

“It’s Lisette’s story to share,” he said. “Besides, it’s a good excuse for me to return to Normandy. I hear there’s decent food over there.”

I laughed. “Pretty good wine too.”

“And a whole lot of cows.”

“You should definitely go back to see the cows.”

“Come to France with me,” he said, his voice low.

I glanced at the television screen again, at Austin’s victory smile. Instead of the lights of the television cameras, the glamour of the celebration parties to follow, my heart longed for Normandy, for the beauty and the history and the time to savor all of God’s gifts, for the stories that I knew about and the stories that remained untold.

“Perhaps I will . . . ,” I said.

But this time I wouldn’t be running away.

This time I would be running alongside Riley and his daughter, I hoped, to the place where my heart had begun to mend.

Three Months Later

A
ll five of Louise’s children attended the memorial service for Gisèle Duchant in the Chapelle d’Agneaux, each of them telling my father how much they appreciated all she had done. Lisette read a beautiful tribute to her and so did my dad. I’d tried to read the tribute I wrote, but Riley had to step up and read it for me.

Mémé’s body now rested in the small plot by the
chapelle
, beside her parents and her brother. And my father had arranged for the remains of Grandpa to be returned to France as well, so he could be put to rest beside his wife. His epitaph read:

Henri Sauver, also known as Hauptmann Josef Milch

A man of God

And a protector of God’s children

As the priest recited the Rite of Committal in front of Mémé’s grave, my father clutched my hand. After my return from France last summer, I’d waited for months to tell Mémé about Adeline. With peace in her heart, I feared she would finally let go of this life for the paradise beyond.

I don’t know if Mémé understood when I shared Adeline’s story, but three days later, Pamela opened the window in Mémé’s room and when she turned around, my grandmother was gone. It was as if she’d hitched a ride on the breeze and sailed away to those who’d been waiting for her for so long.

I imagined Josef and Adeline and Michel and my great-grandparents crowding around her, kissing her on both cheeks, showering her with their hugs. I imagined her remembering again all that happened in her life, but with joy instead of pain, for in the end she’d conquered even death.

I imagined Christ welcoming her with open arms, saying the simple but profound words.

Well done
.

Along with Mémé’s will, Dad had received a letter from his mother explaining much of her story in case Philippe—or his son—tried to fabricate it. No one else except Philippe had known Henri Sauver was a former Nazi officer. Just as Philippe kept Madame Calvez’s secret, he kept the secret of Josef’s and Michel’s histories, as long as Gisèle didn’t expose that he’d murdered Vicomte Duchant. And allowed him live in the château.

Philippe hadn’t told Stéphane all the details of the past before he died, but he’d told his son that Michel wasn’t a Duchant by birth so Stéphane could fight to retain the château.

Gisèle had clung to the good memories of her home and the
chapelle
she loved, but with the exception of honoring her brother almost twenty years ago, she never wanted to return. Still, she wanted to keep the château for her son, hoping he and his family would love France as she had once loved it.

Enclosed with her letter and will was another paper, stamped by the Commonwealth of Virginia. In 1948 Henri and Gisèle had legally adopted Michel, and—much to the dismay of
Stéphane Borde—adopted children in France now received the same inheritance as biological kids. Both the United States and the French government would treat Michel Sauver as Gisèle’s legal heir.

Two days ago, after Stéphane had dropped his lawsuit, Dad offered to let Lisette stay in the house year-round, but she declined; her memories inside the château were too overwhelming. This evening Monique was taking her back to Paris.

But Dad was dreaming again—this time about using the château to house other orphans, older kids in need of a home. Mémé’s spirit may have been embracing those she’d lost during the war, but her legacy was alive here in Saint-Lô.

When the service was over, Abigail and Isabelle raced off to play in the park. They’d become inseparable since they had met at the airport. Both of them needed a good friend.

As Dad and I walked away from the cemetery, he slipped something into my hand. “She wanted you to have this.”

I smoothed my fingers over the amber beads of Mémé’s crucifix “Are you certain?”

He nodded. “Look at the cross.”

I held it up and realized it was also a key.

He nudged me toward the
chapelle
door. “She said to find Cair Paravel.”

The ruined castle in Narnia, before it was rebuilt.

Riley’s hand enclosed mine as the two of us stepped into the
chapelle
and then through the iron gates at the side. Dust clung to the old sink and table in the sacristy and it streaked across the large closet at the side of the room.

I thought of the times my grandmother had read the Narnia books to me and how fascinated I’d been with the magical world behind the wardrobe. Oftentimes we’d create our own worlds where good always triumphed over the bad, where death had no victory.

Cair Paravel could only be found in one place within the
chapelle
.

I opened the door to the large wardrobe and the smell of mothballs flooded out. I pushed aside the robes and other vestments, and at the very back, I knelt down and searched the wall until I found a tiny keyhole on a panel. Riley shone the light from his video camera into the closet, and I used the cross to open the door.

We’d found Mémé’s tunnel.

Riley’s light illuminated the walls for us as we descended under the ground. They were packed with dirt, the air musty and cold. We crept forward until the passage opened into a room with old newspapers, shoes, blankets, and cigarette butts scattered like muddy snowflakes on the ground.