it was wonderful to run into you like this. I’ll be traveling a bit for the next few months. To Spain, then Portugal, perhaps even farther afield to Morocco. But when I return, we really do have to introduce our husbands. I just know they’ll get on. And I’m sure your husband will want to hear all about our childhoods. There really are so many stories to tell.”
“Indeed,” I said. A few months. How long was a few months? Could I get out of Paris before she returned? Or could I see to it that she never returned? She could not tell Victor about my mother—or, worse, the things I couldn’t even bring myself to think about.
Victor was terrified of “episodes,” as he called them. Mental illness. Of what had happened with his father. Of what had happened to me in Switzerland. If he knew that it ran in my family, that my mother had been sick since I could remember, that my brother Peter, the second oldest, had never been able to work a day in his life because of his streaks of mania, then what? Would he leave me for good? Would he be waiting for signs of it in Lucie? Would he love her less, afraid that she was wired more like a Holland than a Michelin? That thought alone made me want to jump into the Seine and just keep swimming.
I had told Victor, the very first night we’d met, that both my parents had died. That they were long dead. It was much easier than the truth. He could never know the truth. Never. But Dorothy was ready to deliver it to him like a Christmas hog. That was painfully obvious.
After that terrible chance encounter, I spent many sleepless nights trying to think of a solution. Then one day, Victor had left a newspaper on the table that he said featured a disparaging article about Michelin, focusing on their activities in the colony. In Indochine. No one in Victor’s family had any desire to live in the colony. But they clearly needed someone on the ground who might be able to prevent another communist uprising. I put the leftist paper back on the table and started to formulate a plan.
The following day I summoned my courage and had lunch with Victor’s mother. Would Victor keep his employment much longer without André to advocate for him, I asked, or would he be pushed out like an old tire? I told Agathe that if Victor could prove himself in the colony, make himself indispensable, then surely he would be rewarded upon his return.
She nodded while sipping her tea, the cogs of her brain spinning slowly. I watched, fighting the urge to scream that good logic aside, she owed me after what she’d done when Lucie was born. And if she cared about me keeping my sanity in the long run, she had to help me.
“I think it’s a very smart idea,” she’d finally said after slowly draining the entire cup of tea. “It’s one I’ve often had myself.”
“Yes, I assumed you had,” I replied, even though I was quite positive that no such thought had ever entered her head.
“You suggest it to Victor, and I’ll second it when he comes to ask for my opinion. I’ll also push for it down in Clermont-Ferrand if need be.”
“Thank you,” I said, bowing my head slightly in the type of show of reverence that Agathe adored.
Six months later, Dorothy had not called on me and I was on a boat to the Far East.
FOURTEEN
Jessie
October 3, 1933
“I know you’ve had Lucie to look after, but have you been getting up to much in my absence?” Victor asked me over breakfast the morning after he returned.
We had fallen asleep early the night before, while still discussing his discovery on the plantation.
“I’ve been to the Officers’ Club a bit,” I said, “but Lucie loves to play here, so we often do.” I certainly did not intend to tell Victor about who I had met at the Officers’ Club.
“Now that I’m back in Hanoi for a spell, I can go with you to the club if you’d like.”
I nodded but didn’t look at him.
After Trieu had cleared our breakfast and closed the glass doors behind her, Victor gestured for me to come closer.
“And Marcelle?” he asked quietly.
“I do think it was just an unfortunate coincidence,” I said just as quietly, remembering our lazy hours by the pool together. “We went to the club together