Chateau of Secrets: A Novel (41 page)

She wouldn’t tell Lisette about Michel’s death, not until they were safe in the tunnel.

The door to the apartment building had been torn from its hinges, and she rushed toward it.

“
Bonjour
, Gisèle.”

She whirled around, and Philippe stepped out of the shadows.

“There are a lot of people searching for you,” he said.

“I don’t know why—”

“Are you looking for your daughter?” His voice was cruel. Malice wrapped around every word.

Her heart froze. “Where is she?”

“Far away.” He clicked his tongue. “You shouldn’t keep secrets from me.”

She glanced wildly around them. Where had Adeline gone? Perhaps she could catch whoever had taken her.

But she couldn’t move, couldn’t run. The Nazis had taken everything from her. Everyone she loved. She’d done all she could to protect them and yet it wasn’t enough. The dragon was still crushing them.

“The château is mine, Gisèle.”

She felt sick. After all this, he wanted the house. “You can have it.”

“Thank you.” She saw the muzzle of his gun, pointed at her, and then the glint of a diamond on the end of his cuff, surrounded by black onyx and gold. She flashed back to the night she’d found her father in the tunnel. Her brother showing her what he’d found in the cave. The cuff link she’d thought a German officer left behind.

“Philippe—” She clutched the sides of her skirt. “When did you replace that?”

He lowered the gun a few centimeters. “Replace what?”

“Your cuff link.”

He shook his head. “It doesn’t matter.”

Her resolve hardened. “You went back to the château, didn’t you? The night we got stopped in Saint-Lô.”

“Perhaps—”

“Did you kill my father?”

In his silence, she knew. The Germans hadn’t killed her father that night. It was her cousin who’d beaten him up by the lake. And then pulled the trigger. Michel was right—Philippe would do anything to get the Duchant property.

A child cried for her mother, and Gisèle’s heart clenched. She had fought as hard as she could and she had lost. She had pushed through her fears, but still she’d failed.

She heard the shuffle of feet and a little boy stepped in front of her. Michel. He must have followed her from the tunnel. “Don’t touch her,” he said.

Philippe’s gaze flickered down to the boy. “You seem to be collecting children, Gisèle.”

She put her arm around the boy’s shoulders, pulling him close to her. “He hasn’t done anything wrong.”

“Bravery I admire, but not stupidity.”

The boy lurched forward, his fists clenched in front of him, but she held him back. She was so proud of him, standing resolute in front of her, ready to die for someone he loved.

A German soldier stepped into the smoky light. “I will take over.”

Philippe’s pistol shook. “She is mine,” he replied in German.

Josef wrapped his fingers around her arm. “No, she is Oberst Seidel’s.”

She’d never heard Josef speak with such authority, as if there was no doubt that Philippe had to obey.

But Philippe refused to concede. “I will take her to the
Oberst
.”

A bomb hit the prison behind her cousin, and in seconds, the centuries of stone collapsed into rubble. If Philippe didn’t shoot them, it wouldn’t be long before one of the soldiers or a bomb took all of them. The bombs didn’t differentiate between enemies and allies.

“I said I will handle this.” Josef yanked on her arm, and she lurched toward him. “You are Philippe Borde, are you not?”

Philippe’s eyes narrowed. “How do you know my name?”

“Major von Kluge is searching for you.” He glanced both ways before he spoke again. “He fears he might have been mistaken about the death of Michel Duchant.”

Philippe dropped the gun to his side. Then he raced the other way.

Josef clasped both arms behind her back and did the same with the boy, prodding them both down the sidewalk. His two prisoners until they reached the end of town.

Then the three of them ran.

It wasn’t until much later, when they reached the
chapelle
, that she saw fresh blood pooling on Josef’s sleeve.

“A
fter the war . . .” Lisette whispered. “Gisèle never returned or tried to contact us. I didn’t think she cared about what happened to Adeline. Or to me.”

I reached over for Lisette’s hand and we sat in silence for a moment, processing Eddie’s story, which collided with both of ours.

“Hauptmann Milch was a hero,” Lisette said.

“Why did you tell Riley that you didn’t know him?”

“There were a lot of German men named Josef.”

I sipped my tea. “But you knew who he was talking about in the interview.”

“I figured Josef wanted to keep his story secret, like I didn’t want anyone to know mine.”

I let her words settle for a moment as I stared at Eddie’s face, paused on the computer screen. “The orphan boy was my father, wasn’t it?”

“The Germans put me on a train,” Lisette said. “I don’t know what happened after I left.”

But I knew Stéphane was right. My father wasn’t the biological child of Jean-Marc and Gisèle Rausch, nor had he helped Gisèle rescue the Jewish orphans. He was one of the orphans.

An insect landed on the table, and Lisette watched it for a moment. “In the last days of the war, the Nazis went crazy, deporting everyone they thought to be Jewish or those who they thought were harboring the Jews or members of the French Resistance. They raided the orphanage, but all the children were gone.”

“Where did they go?” I asked.

She shrugged. “Perhaps your father knows.”

I understood that my grandparents might have been afraid to tell people their son was a Jew after they immigrated, in case there was another war, but why had they harbored the secret for so many years after the fighting ended? They should have been proud of his heritage.

“What happened to Adeline?” I asked.

Lisette’s hands trembled as she sipped her tea, the cup clattering against the saucer when she placed it down. Then she nodded slowly, as if she’d decided to trust me with the rest of her secrets. “Adeline was just a baby when Gisèle and I found her. Her mother was Jewish and her parents were deported during the war. Gisèle cared for her at the château during the war.” She scooted back on her chair. “Did you know Philippe tried to marry Gisèle?”

I shook my head.

“She refused, but Philippe was deeply in debt and he needed the Duchant property to maintain his lifestyle. After he took the life of Vicomte Duchant, he determined to kill both Gisèle and her brother so the château would be his.” She paused. “Have you heard of the Milice?”

Again I shook my head, feeling foolish for knowing so little about what Mémé had faced. And for being frustrated at her for not telling me what happened.

“The Milice were the French version of the Gestapo and they were a nasty bunch. Philippe joined them during the war and
began to research Gisèle’s story. He found out that Jean-Marc Rausch, the man she’d said she married, had been fighting in northern France on their wedding day. He tried to deport Gisèle before the Allied troops freed Saint-Lô, but she ran away. And she left Adeline in my care.”

“Mémé thought you’d been deported—”

“At the time, all I knew was that she was gone and Philippe was at my apartment. I had known him from before, back when he visited the château . . .” When she paused, I told her I understood. She didn’t need to tell me more. “No one in Saint-Lô knew he was with the Milice except me. Philippe knew that the Germans would be gone soon and he feared the French would send him to prison when they found out about his role. He had me arrested, but he kept something—someone—for when I returned.”

I shivered. “Adeline.”

“She was collateral for my silence.” She looked down at her hands. “Philippe’s mother died soon after the war. He moved into the château, and I went to Paris with Adeline. For almost seventy years, I guarded his secret and he guarded mine.”

I glanced out the window. “Monique’s mother was Adeline.”

“I changed her name back to Louise,” she said. “She knew her biological parents were killed during the war, but she didn’t know that her mother was Jewish. The Germans had already attacked our country twice. I wanted to protect her, in case they returned again.”

“What happened to Louise?” I asked.

Lisette smiled. “She grew up in Paris and trained to be a nurse for the Red Cross. In 1966, she married a fine man. A doctor. They had five children who decided they wanted to change the world in their own way.”

“You never married?”

“The only man I ever wanted to marry was killed in the war,” she said. “But my friends in Paris thought I was a widow.”

I reached for my cup and took a long sip of the tepid tea. “Isabelle said the government gave you the cottage.”

She nodded. “The children of deported Jews began receiving compensation from the government ten years ago. By that time, Louise had passed away and I didn’t want money, so I asked them for the cottage where her parents had lived before the war. No one had lived in it since 1942, and I think the local officials were pleased to have someone renovate it. I was pleased that my grandchildren and great-grandchildren could learn a bit of Louise’s story.”

My phone beeped and I saw a text from Riley. It was a photo, he said, that Benjamin Tendler had emailed to him. A picture of Benjamin and his friend Josef Milch.

I stared at the two men in uniform, standing in front of the hedgerows. All my life I’d been told that Henri Sauver was a French soldier, a resister of the Germans, but as I stared at the photo of the German officer next to Benjamin, there was no denying the truth. My grandfather had served Hitler in the war.

What would have happened if my grandparents’ American neighbors found out that Henri had been an officer in the Wehrmacht? And that his son, my father, was a Jewish orphan?

They had to guard their secret.

I texted Riley back, asking him to wait to finish the documentary. I wasn’t afraid to let the world know my father’s family was Jewish, but I was horrified to tell anyone that the grandpa I loved had been a Nazi.

Chapter 61

J
osef collapsed on a pew in the
chapelle
. He’d been shot in the shoulder, the blood seeping through the American bandages. As one of Eddie’s friends worked on him, Gisèle wondered silently if the Americans had been the ones to shoot him as well.

“We have to take him to a hospital in London,” the man said.

She knelt beside Josef, taking his hand. She couldn’t lose him too.

He kissed her hand. “I’m not going to leave you.”

At one time she couldn’t imagine loving a German officer, but she loved Josef Milch with all of her heart. She loved him for the way he cared about the Jewish children, for the way he served under an evil man in order to protect his mother, for the way he fanned an ember of warm light for those trapped in the darkness, for risking his life to save her.

“Well, I was going to ask you to marry me,” Eddie said from behind her. “But a man knows when he’s been defeated.”

She looked back at the American pilot through her tears. “You’ll make someone a fine husband, Eddie.”

He shrugged. “Maybe after this war is over.”

She squeezed Josef’s hand. “The Allied soldiers are taking the children to London.”

Flak echoed outside the
chapelle
and she heard a bomb explode nearby. She leaned closer to Josef. “I must find Lisette and Adeline before Philippe does.”

He shook his head. “They are already gone.”

“But where—”

“Benjamin said they’d been taken to the trains.”

Dear God.
She felt as if she would be sick. “They’re deporting Adeline?”

“I’m so sorry, Gisèle.”

She looked toward the door. “We must get to the trains.”

“It’s too late.”

She found Eddie’s eyes again, hoping he could find Adeline and Lisette as he had Josef, but all she saw was remorse in his gaze. “The Germans still control the train station.”

She shivered. “We can’t leave her and Lisette.”