The French War Bride (40 page)

Again, Caroline and Bruce exchanged a glance. My palms grew damp.

“She wasn't happy,” Caroline admitted. “She and Kat are thick as thieves.”

“She had been looking forward to playing a leading role at a big wedding,” Bruce said dryly.

“She will come around,” Caroline said. “Don't worry about it. Jack takes everything Mother says with a grain of salt.”

“Should be with a shot of vodka,” Bruce grumbled.

“How about Dr. Thompson?”

Caroline pulled a serving bowl down from the cabinet. Bruce bent to play with Elise, who was on a blanket, banging a wooden spoon.

“It was a difficult visit,” Caroline said. “He is very weak.”

My heart squeezed. “Did Jack tell him about . . . our marriage?”

Caroline nodded, her eyes somber.

“What did Jack say?” I was anxious to hear how he talked about us.

“That he knew he'd broken Kat's heart, and that he felt horrible. The doctor made some moaning sounds and closed his eyes.”

“What did Jack do?”

Caroline hesitated.

“Tell me,” I urged. “I need to know. Please be very blunt.”

“He cried.”

Tears sprang to my eyes. My hand flew to my chest, where my heart felt like melting wax.

“Jack said that you all will leave Wedding Tree once Mother gets better.”

Jack leave Wedding Tree? All he could talk about in Paris was coming back to his hometown. He'd made Wedding Tree sound like Eden! In fact, he'd talked about the town and the doctor and the practice they would have together far more than he'd talked about his fiancée. I couldn't imagine him even considering the idea of moving.

“What did Dr. Thompson say?”

“His voice is like a grunt, but he talked very slowly and was quite clear. He said, ‘You can't leave now. The town needs a doctor.'”

“How did Jack respond?”

“Well, Mrs. Thompson showed up just then. Kat had come home, and of course, she'd told her all about . . . about . . .” Caroline hesitated, obviously searching for a kind way to put it.

“About me.”

She nodded.

“And . . . she was angry?”

“Oh . . . furious! She gave Jack a real tongue-lashing. Used some very un-Christian words and actually threw him out of the room. She was especially angry that he'd led Kat on for months in his letters.”

“Oh, dear!”

Caroline pulled some napkins out of the drawer. “So I hope you don't mind, but I dropped by Kat's house on the way home. I thought it might help her to know what you'd told me—that Jack had written to her before the marriage, and that you hadn't mailed the letter because you thought you might not be able to leave France. I told her that you then received her letters, so you'd forged Jack's replies, because you didn't want to ruin Jack's chances with her when it looked like you couldn't leave France.”

“And?”

“Well, she was surrounded by her minions.”

“I don't understand.”

“Kat was Miss Popularity in high school. She still is. She had six friends with her, trying to console her, all outraged at Jack on her behalf. The worst one is Minxy.”

“Minxy?”

“That's her nickname. Her father gave her a coat with a mink collar when she was in junior high and the name stuck.” Caroline placed the napkins around the kitchen table. “Anyway, I pulled Kat aside and told her what you'd told me. She immediately trotted back to her friends and repeated everything I'd said.”

“Did it help?”

“Well, I think it took the edge off their anger at Jack. But several were skeptical. Minxy didn't think anyone could forge handwriting convincingly enough.”

“I'll show you. Get a piece of paper and write something, and I will write in your handwriting.”

She grabbed an envelope and pen from the counter and wrote her name and address.

I took the envelope, studied it for a moment, then carefully wrote her name and address beneath it, matching her handwriting nearly exactly.

Caroline picked it up. “This is amazing! If I hadn't seen you write it, I would think I wrote this myself!”

I lifted my shoulders. “It's a skill that came in handy during the war. And here is Jack's handwriting.” Jack's script was fresh enough in my mind that I didn't need an example in front of me.
I wrote Jack's letters,
I scrawled.

“That's incredible!” Caroline picked up the envelope. “Can I take this to Kat and show her?”

“Of course. And I have something else she should have.” I straightened and rubbed my hands on the apron. “I have the letter that Jack wrote to her—the one I did not mail.”

Her eyes rounded. “You brought it with you?”

“Yes. It is in my suitcase. It was never mine to keep, and now, of course, I know I should have mailed it. Would you take it to her?”

“Oh, of course! Oh, that will be so helpful!” Caroline clapped her hands together. “I'll take it to her right after dinner—along with this example of how well you can imitate handwriting.”

2016

M
y fingers grip the arms of Amélie's chair so tightly it is a wonder my fingernails don't cut the fabric. She forged the letter from Jack? And she'd done it after arriving in Wedding Tree? She is more duplicitous and conniving than I had even imagined! “I can't believe you just lied and lied, then forged a letter!”

She lifts her shoulders in that graceful French way of hers, an expression that seemed to say
So what?
or
No big deal
. “I wanted to help preserve Jack's reputation as much as I could. I thought the note would be a convincing touch.”

Oh, it had been. It had been convincing, indeed! At the time, it had certainly convinced me.

Caroline had brought it to me the evening Jack returned to Wedding Tree, as Mother and I were cleaning up from a dinner we'd barely touched.

“Amélie and I talked at great length tonight,” Caroline had said. “She showed me how she can replicate handwriting—it's truly amazing! She could write exactly like me.”

“Well, isn't that a worthwhile talent,” I'd sniffed. “Almost as wonderful as pickpocketing.”

“She knows calligraphy. It's no wonder she could write letters that you believed came from Jack.” Caroline had reached in her purse and pulled out a folded piece of paper. “She gave me the letter that Jack wrote
you a year and a half ago—the one she didn't mail. She said you should have it.”

I'd snatched it out of her hand, and run into the living room. I'd sunk onto the chair by the window, unfolded it, and read it like a starved wolf devouring a squirrel.

Over the next weeks and months, I reread it so often I committed it to memory:

Dear Kat,

It breaks my heart to write this, but I must tell you that our engagement is off. I will put this in very straightforward terms: I am about to marry a Frenchwoman.

I know this must be a shock. It is shocking to me, as well. I find it hard to explain and I am sure you will find it hard to understand, but life is very different here, and I am very different. I go to another evacuation hospital closer to the front in two days' time; a similar hospital was just bombed, and I fear I will not make it home in one piece. Everything here is urgent and intense and uncertain. The uncertainty demands rapid action. Amélie and I fell into a madness of love and will marry at one o'clock today.

I regret making promises to you that I can't keep, but it would be unfair to you for me to even try.

I want you to be free to find a new love of your own. From this vintage point, our plans for the future seem like a childish fairy tale we told ourselves. Life must be seized as it happens.

I know that such a beautiful woman as you will be quickly snapped. I envy the man that you someday will marry, and I will always cherish your memory.

Love always, Jack

Right now, I am so angry at Amélie that I want to slap her. I hold my right hand with my left one to stop myself, because I know my impulse control is no longer very good.

That letter has been a huge consolation to me over the years, and now she is taking that away from me.

When I first read it all those years ago, I thought it was an admission that Jack had fallen into some kind of madness and acted rashly. I figured that he'd probably been seduced, had carnal relations and fallen under a spell of lust. I wondered if he had been drunk or somehow drugged or even shell-shocked. I wondered if he'd had a terrible fear of being wounded and wanted to spare me from caring for him as a cripple.

I drew special comfort from the fact he said I was beautiful and that he would envy the man I eventually married. That meant he wasn't over me, didn't it? That he'd never be over me. And the sign-off,
Love always
—a man wouldn't write that to someone he wouldn't always long for. That helped me make it through the hard days ahead of me.

And now . . . Amélie is snatching that sole consolation away from me by telling me Jack never wrote such things, that she wrote them herself after arriving in Wedding Tree.

But, then . . . of course. It should have become obvious to me when she told me they hadn't even met until shortly before Jack's return to the States. All the implications of that one fact, all the ways it changes what I know—or thought I knew—of the past, has not soaked in yet.

And oh, there are so many implications! My brain is not as agile as it once was—or perhaps it is just overwhelmed by receiving so much information so fast.

“You look upset,” she says to me.

“I am.” My voice holds an unflattering virulence. I try to modulate it. “Of course I am!”

“I thought that letter was a kindness to you.”

“Oh, really?”

“Yes. I deliberately wrote things I thought would soothe your rumpled feathers.”

“The phrase is ‘smooth your ruffled feathers,'” I correct in a curt tone. Some odd wordings in the letter are suddenly thrust into a new light.
Vintage point
—surely Jack would have known that the correct word was “vantage.”
Fallen into the madness of love
—Amélie probably meant “fell
madly in love.”
You will soon be snapped
—I'm sure she meant “snapped up.” I'd thought Jack had just been in a hurry or an emotional state and simply left out a word.

“Ah. Well, you understand the meaning,” Amélie says. “I confess, however, that your feelings were not the primary reason I wrote it. I did it for Jack. If he was to live and work in Wedding Tree, it was important that he be seen as an honorable man.”

“Honorable,” I scoff.

“Yes, honorable. Jack was not a perfect man, but he was a man of honor. He tried to do the right thing. When he made a mistake, he tried to correct it, even when that meant putting his own wishes aside for someone else's best interests.”

“And whose best interests did he serve by bringing you here?” My tone is sharp. “Yours?”

“Oh, no. He did it for Elise. He did not want to be married to me back then—not at all. He only stayed married to me because he feared I might be pregnant, and if I had been, he wanted to be able to claim Elise as his own, as well.” Amélie tilts her head at a speculative angle. “You know, if you had slept with him before he left for the war, I'm sure none of this would have happened.”

The utter gall of the woman! “Of course not,” I say indignantly.

“But you wanted to wait for a big wedding.” Amélie shakes her head. “I have never understood women who put the ceremony of getting married ahead of the actuality of being married.”

I will not let her hurt me with this line of reasoning. I refuse to deal in regrets. I lift my chin. “A wedding is a common girlhood dream.”

“Yes, I suppose. Did you have your dream wedding when you married your husband?”

“Oh, yes. We had a big extravaganza in Dallas. I had nine bridesmaids and a reception at the Dallas Country Club and a European honeymoon.”

“Well, then. Sounds like you had everything you ever could have wanted!”

“Yes. Everything and more.” And yet, I have always felt a vague
dissatisfaction. Lately I've been wondering if I wanted the wrong things, if I somehow sailed right past what was truly important. I have wondered if my dissatisfaction has to do with Jack.

Well, that is why I am here now—to find out.

“Go back to your story,” I urge her. “Tell me about your married life in Wedding Tree.”

“You know the beginning of it.”

“Yes, but not from your perspective. I want to know what happened between you and Jack.”

1946

E
lise and I went to bed early that first night. Jack didn't come home until after eleven. Bruce and Caroline were already in bed. I pretended to be asleep when he crept into the room, thinking that he might climb into bed with me if he thought I wouldn't know it. My heart pounded hard. Instead, to my disappointment, he pulled out a blanket from the closet and slept on the floor.

He left the house before the sunrise, leaving a note that he was going to the hospital to be there when the doctors for his mother and Dr. Thompson made rounds.

I decided to lay low for the day. “Elise is still getting well,” I said to Caroline that morning. “I want to keep her away from sick people until she's a little stronger, and I desperately need to do some laundry.”

Caroline had nodded. “Best to give things a little time to simmer down, anyway. I'll show you how to use the washing machine.”

—

Jack came home in the middle of the morning, when Elise was down for her increasingly short morning nap. The moment I saw his face, my spirits sank. His eyes blazed with anger, and his lips were pressed so hard together that his mouth nearly disappeared. He advanced toward me until I was backed against the stove. “You forged a letter from me?”

“I thought it would help your cause.”

“My
cause
? My
cause
is to live an honest life! Yet every time I turn around, there's a new lie I have to deal with.”

“I did it to shift the blame where it belongs—from you to me.”

He glowered at me. “Amélie, you forged a letter!”

“It was the type of letter you surely would have written if the circumstances were as we say, yes? In the real world, you would have written Kat before you married another.”

“Damn it, Amélie,
this
is the real world. That letter is a falsehood!”

“It is proof you are a caring man. I did it as a kindness. I don't see how that is so wrong.”

He threw out his hands. “It's wrong because it's a lie! You don't seem to grasp that simple, basic fact.”

“I do—of course I do! But in times of war, everything is turned upside down.”

“We are no longer at war!”

“Oh, no?” I glared back at him. “You and I seem to be very much at war right now.”

“This. Must. Stop!” He pounded the counter with the flat of his palm, accentuating every word. “No more lies!”

“Jack, we are living a lie.”

He raked a hand through his hair. “I get that. But no more new lies, Amélie! No more embellishments, no more exaggerations. Do you understand me?”

“I have never exaggerated anything.”

His mouth curled. “Dead babies on the ship? Come on.”

“It was the truth!”

He turned on his heel, walked away, and then paced back. “Look, I understand how hard—impossible, even—it can be to back down from a lie once you've told it and defended it. I'm not pressuring you to admit it. Just . . . no more.” He made a slashing gesture with his hand.

Despair filled my soul. “Jack, that was the truth!”

“I lose a little more respect for you every time you say that, so let's just not discuss it.”

Tears filled my eyes. It was so unfair—and yet, how could I blame him?

He leaned forward, his eyes hot as blue flames. “I refuse to live my life walking on eggshells, always afraid to find out what you've said or are about to say. If I learn of any more new lies, I'll get custody of Elise and send you packing back to France. If you're pregnant, I'll get custody of that child, as well. Are we clear?”

“Y-yes,” I stammered.

He stared at me, as if he were trying to see behind my eyes, into my mind, into my soul.

“I wish to God I could believe you,” he said.

He turned on his heel and left the house without another word.