Tangled Ashes (34 page)

“Whore!” he cried, shoving her so hard that she stumbled and had to catch herself on the wall, Thérèse cradled in one arm.

All around the small station, voices began to rise in vicious tirades.

“But—I’m not German!” Marie cried as someone grabbed her arm and began to drag her into the square outside the station. “I only worked for them to feed my family! I’m—”

“Shut up, you slut!” another man yelled, pushing her to the cobblestones, her elbows taking her full weight as she braced to protect the baby.

“Wait!” Marie cried, pain shrieking up her arms. “Wait—I’m one of you! My name is Marie! Marie Gallet! I’m not a traitor! I’m not a—”

She didn’t know where the blow came from. A foot connected with her stomach, narrowly missing Thérèse, and left her gagging and writhing, in so much pain that she couldn’t speak. The crowd around her was growing, and as she squinted through tear-blurred eyes into the faces of her tormentors, she was horrified to find familiar ones among them. An elderly lady stepped forward and snatched a bawling Thérèse from her grasp.

“No!” Marie cried. “No—not the baby!” Another kick, this one to the kidneys, knocked the air from her lungs and left her semiconscious, struggling to breathe. She wanted to protest. She wanted to beg for mercy. She wanted to plead her case, but the screams around her were so loud and the blows were coming so close together that she couldn’t do a thing in her own defense.

Someone finally grabbed her by the hair and pulled her to her feet. Her stomach and ribs burned with agony. The voices swirled around her, the faces swam before her eyes. Someone yelled, “Here! Bring her here! We’ll show her how we feel about traitors.” She stumbled as they pulled her across the cobblestone square, and when her legs gave out, they pulled even harder, dragging her by the hair toward a restaurant across the way. And there, as the voices of her tormentors rose in a hysterical cacophony of mass malevolence, she saw scissors in someone’s hand and felt them plunge into her hair. The laughter and cheering that arose were the last sounds she heard as her mind finally succumbed to unconsciousness.

It was a full day later when Marie woke. She’d come to a few times before, but never enough to take stock of her surroundings. With consciousness came full awareness of her pain, and the ache in every part of her body doubled her over. She leaned over the edge of the couch on which she lay and retched onto the floor.

“Now, now,” came a soothing voice. A hand patted her shoulder. “Try to take deep breaths and it’ll pass.”

Marie couldn’t open her eyes. They were too swollen, and the light in the room was too bright. But there was a kindness in the voice that she instinctively trusted.

“The baby,” she mumbled through tumid lips. “Thérèse.”

“Your baby’s safe,” the voice said.

Marie felt a cool, wet rag being placed on her forehead and was grateful for the relief.

“There wasn’t much I could do to stop them from hurting you,” the wispy voice said, tinted with sadness, “but I didn’t think anyone would turn on an old woman for rescuing your baby.”

Marie struggled to open her eyes and finally got one eyelid up far enough to see the frail, kind-faced woman who sat on a chair next to the sofa where she lay. “You took the baby—I remember you.”

Something painful passed over the lady’s face. “Oh, dearie, how I wish I could have spared you, too. But the anger . . . the anger and the violence . . . they were just so . . .”

“You couldn’t have stopped them,” Marie said. “I saw the look on their faces.” She closed her eyes again and moaned at the shooting pain in her abdomen.

Thérèse let out a soft gurgle somewhere in the room. “You see,” the elderly lady said, moving to the bassinet by the window, “she’s just fine. Your baby is just fine.”

And at those words, Marie slept.

J
OJO STOOD BY
the window as Thérèse spoke. He’d moved from the chair as she’d begun to describe the assault, his gait unsteady and his jaw clenched. Jade still sat on the bed, her hand on Thérèse’s arm, and Becker sat in a chair at the foot of the bed, too stunned to do much more than remind himself to breathe.

Marie stayed with Madame Sajot for another month while she recovered, spending her waking hours writing down her memories for Thérèse to read when she was old enough to understand. It was as if she knew that her story would only exist for a limited time in her mind before it became lost in a miasma of survivor’s guilt. When Marie grew too tired, her kind, compassionate rescuer took over for her, writing down the harrowing events Marie recited in great detail. She was still determined to get on a train to Bordeaux just as soon as she was strong enough, but she didn’t want to take the memories with her when she left. After the first few days, she began to speak less, retreating into silence as her hair began to grow back and her bruises began to fade. Much as Madame Sajot tried, there was no rescuing Marie from the lethargy she slipped into. After a couple of weeks, the older woman began asking questions in town about the Gallet family that had moved to Bordeaux, and it wasn’t long before she had located them. Marie’s mother got there days later, frantic with worry. As soon as it could be arranged, she took Marie and Thérèse home to Bordeaux with her.

Jojo turned toward Thérèse, tears in his eyes. “Marie,” he said. “Did she . . . ?”

Thérèse took a deep breath and smiled faintly. “She had good days and bad days. . . .” She hesitated. “I’m not sure what was worse. The chronic pain in her body—or the pain in her mind. I think I was five when she packed a suitcase and left. She’d come by every few months but never stayed long. She died in a hotel room in Quimper when I was twelve. Pneumonia, they think. Mother packed up her room and never spoke of her again.”

“I didn’t know,” Jojo said, still standing at the window. He seemed to sway, and Becker jumped up to steady him, but he brushed the helping hand aside. “I’m fine,” he said, his tone hard and his words clipped despite the frailty of his voice. “I’m seventy-four years old and fine. Marie never really made it past seventeen. . . .” When he swayed again, Becker took his arm and escorted him back to the chair.

“There’s nothing you could have done,” Thérèse said to Jojo, and it was obvious that the comforting words cost her greatly. “Even if you’d known.”

He raised his head and said, “The letter. I sent a letter to the Bordeaux address nearly a month after we left Lamorlaye. Did she get it? Did your mother?”

Thérèse’s eyes clouded over. She pursed her lips and clasped her hands tightly in her lap. “I—found out only last year about your letter. My mother died in the seventies, and I kept her house as a summer retreat.” After another sip of her now-cold tea, she continued. “I decided to sell it last year, and as I was preparing some of my mother’s antiques to be appraised, I found your letter and Marie’s written account behind one of the drawers of her bureau. She must have found them when Marie died and left them there—I’m not sure why. She hated the
boches
—hated the Germans so much for what they’d done to Marie—but maybe she still thought that someday she’d find the courage to tell me the truth. I guess she died before she’d made up her mind.” She coughed a little from the exertion of so much speaking and leaned back on the cushions. “Your letter—it started me on a journey that ended in the stables last night. I had to know. I had to know.”

Jade looked at Jojo. “What did your letter say?”

“I told her that—”

“‘Dear Marie,’” Thérèse interrupted, eyes closed as she quoted Jojo’s letter verbatim. “‘I trust you and the baby made it safely to Bordeaux. Unfortunately, I cannot send you the papers as you requested. On the morning we evacuated, Generalmajor Müller ordered a thorough search of all the personnel who left the castle. I couldn’t risk being caught.’”

This time, it was Becker who voiced his disappointment. “You left them there?”

Jojo’s eyes fired up. “I left the folder in a place she could find. She still had friends in Lamorlaye. I thought—if she ever came back—she’d be able to locate it.”

“But your instructions were too cryptic for anyone other than Marie to understand,” Thérèse said.

“I needed to be sure that no one else would intercept the letter. I needed to keep those documents safe—for you.”

“There wasn’t anything selfless about it,” Thérèse said with disdain. “You left those papers there for the same reason you abandoned me in the first place and let Marie—a seventeen-year-old girl—take on the responsibility of raising me.”

A heavy silence settled over the room. “Yes,” Jojo finally said, eyes averted. “I did it all to spare myself.”

Thérèse seemed destabilized by his admission. Her indignation was less virulent when she addressed Beck and Jade, quoting more of the letter. “‘The folder is still at the castle. I left it in the small, dark hiding place we discussed as we were planning your escape. The place I suggested I hide you. If you know where to look, you’ll find it with no difficulty.’” Thérèse looked over to where Jojo sat, head bowed. “Do you know how many small, dark places there are in a castle? If Marie’s mind had survived the escape, she might have been able to find the folder, but since she was nearly killed for her association with you . . .”

Her words had the desired effect. Jojo leaned forward in his chair and covered his face with his hands, breathing harshly.

“Thérèse,” Jade whispered.

“He did what he could,” Beck interjected, his eyes on the broken man now rocking slightly back and forth in his chair. “He was a seventeen-year-old boy playing at grown-up war.”

“He—was—my—father,” Thérèse said, every word articulated with venom. “And he threw me away.”

The taxi ride back to Lamorlaye was silent. Jojo sat in the back next to Jade, his vacant eyes on the blurred trees and houses rushing by. Nearly sixty years of waiting for Marie to return had not yielded the relief he had hoped for, but a grief so miserable that it shrank his frame and blanked his expression.

“When did you return to Lamorlaye?” Jade asked gently.

Jojo didn’t move. A minute passed before his tired voice said, “As soon as I could without being recognized so easily. I wanted to be here if . . . if Marie came back.”

“But why?” This from Becker, in the front seat. He turned so he could see Jojo’s profile as he stared out the window. “You’d made it clear that you wanted nothing to do with Thérèse. Why did you come back?”

Another silence, weighty and somber, lumbered by. “When the war ended—” He coughed, a deep, rasping sound that garbled out of his sunken chest. “When the war ended,” he began again, straining for the right words, “I found I had nothing. No family. No . . . what do you call it? Dignity. No honor. No friends. Nothing that belonged to me. Nothing. And I—I couldn’t get the baby out of my mind. Nor her mother. I couldn’t . . .” He paused, his jaw working. “I couldn’t understand why I had cared so little.”

“You could have gone to Bordeaux,” Jade said quietly. “Tried to track her down. You had the address she’d given you, didn’t you?”

He nodded and took another wheezing breath. “I wrote to her. Many times. From Germany. And there was never any response. And then—I tried to send a telegram but was told the address was—” he paused, racking his mind for the correct term—“no longer valid. I hoped . . . I hoped the letters had reached her and that she was just having trouble coming back here for the papers.”

“So you waited?” Becker asked.

He felt an almost physical punch to the gut when Jojo’s gaze, tired, hollow, but impossibly keen, connected with his. The elderly man spoke his next words with as much strength and conviction as his weary body could summon. “She was my daughter. I learned too late what that means—what that should mean. We are made for . . .” He paused, intent on using the right words to define his journey. “We are made to be connected—to be intertwined with others. We are made for belonging. Unless we have that—unless we allow that—we have nothing.”

Becker glanced at Jade, whose face seemed cast in stone, then back into the sharp blue-gray eyes that hadn’t strayed from his. He felt something implacable softening inside. The sensation terrified him.

The police returned to Jojo’s gatehouse the next day to close the file on the château’s fire. Becker and Fallon joined them, as much to support the old man as to ask a few questions of their own. When they exited the small structure a little over an hour later, they found Jade and Sylvia waiting for them on the steps of the castle while the twins played by the river.

“Did you have an interesting conversation?” Sylvia asked as the men walked up to the steps.

Fallon chuckled and sat down next to his wife. “You have no idea, my dear. That man’s life is fit for the movies.”

Becker propped a foot on the bottom step and gazed up at the château’s facade. “For a man who hasn’t spoken much in decades, he’s sure been talking a lot.”

“Well, don’t keep a good story to yourself,” Sylvia coaxed. “What fascinating tidbits did you learn?”

Becker sighed, raking his fingers through his hair. “Those noises I’ve been hearing at night?”

“Jojo?” Jade asked, turning to face Beck.

“Yep. But only because he was following Thérèse.”

Sylvia was appalled. “What was a woman like Thérèse doing scrounging around a castle in the wee hours of the morning? That’s preposterous.”

“The folder,” Jade said.

“The folder.” Beck smiled a little at the futility of it all. “All Jojo told Marie was that he’d left it in a small, dark hiding place they’d discussed . . . and Thérèse spent her nights looking in every small, dark place she could think of. Officer Vivier didn’t say much about it, but there’s a bit of a psychiatric history there.”

It was all coming together in Jade’s mind. “The crawl space under the patio? Was that her too?”

Fallon shook his head in reluctant admiration. “And the well, and the cellar under the ballroom—it must have taken true desperation for her to climb out of there with the rope.”

Beck nodded. “And all the while, the file was in the gatehouse, with Jojo. He’d removed it from the well himself when he returned to Lamorlaye after the war.”

“That still doesn’t explain the fire,” Sylvia said.

“Did Thérèse start it?” Jade asked.

Fallon nodded. “She wanted to give the stables one last search. That’s where the soldiers had been billeted, after all.”

Becker took over. “The cops said she took a lantern from the drive while the rest of us were celebrating in the dining rooms. She was on the landing of the second floor when the wood gave out beneath her. She fell through to her waist, and the lantern landed hard and shattered.”

“You can imagine how fast the wood floors and wallpaper caught fire,” Fallon said. “She pulled herself out and got as far from the flames as she could, but those hallways were blocked off years ago. She must have passed out on her way to the other end of the corridor.”

“That’s where Jojo found her,” Becker finished.

“Jojo . . . ,” Jade said. “His name was Karl—how did he become Jojo?”