Papa looked up, his eyes watering and blue, sliding the note across the table. There, scribbled in her best handwriting were the words to ‘À la Claire Fontaine’.
‘Our song, ma chérie. Long have I loved you…’ He couldn’t finish the words without breaking down. I put my hand on his.
‘Go,’ he said. ‘Tell her I’m coming home.’
24
I lurched to a stop near the patio and ran inside, only to realize something felt terribly off. The chateau was dead quiet—and in the middle of the day. The laundry was half-hung on the line outside, some of it dangling in loose dirt. The dog whimpered from behind the rubbish bin, her burnt little tail wagging cautiously between her legs, afraid to come any closer. That’s when I noticed what looked like two drops of blood spatter on the floor.
I gulped—Germans.
I ran upstairs to Mama’s bedroom. Two more drops led to three, then four—a trail—leading into her room, each one getting fatter, redder and less watery than the last. ‘Mama—’ I threw open the door and my hand flew to my mouth.
She sat in a chair bound with ropes tied to her wrists and ankles, a rag wadded in her mouth to keep her from screaming. ‘Mama!’ Her head hung off to the side, the mark of someone’s knuckles pressed into her left cheek. A shallow slash across her chest oozed blood onto her apron, metallic-smelling, warming with the midday sun coming in through the window.
I ran to her, taking the rag from her mouth and working to loosen the ropes. The one eye that hadn’t been bashed in, opening a hair. ‘Who did this?’
She mumbled, her head lifting.
‘What are you saying?’ I untied a knot from her wrist. ‘Who did this—’
‘He knows,’ she moaned. ‘I don’t know how, but he knows.’
‘Who? Knows what?’
The kitchen door slammed shut down below, the dog suddenly barking like a crazed animal. Four stomps of heavy feet—the dog yelped—and then there was pure silence. I raced to shut Mama’s door, locking it with a heavy bolt as the footsteps started up the stairs, one after the other. Thud. Thud. Thud…
I worked frantically on Mama’s wrists. ‘Germans? Is it a German—’ A kick to the lock and the door burst open behind me, cracking against the wall, and Mama straightened with a jolt, her eye large and wide looking over my shoulder, her whole body shaking.
‘Gérard.’
I flew to my feet and he grabbed my throat, pulling me to him, his wild eyes meeting mine before he threw me to the floor. ‘Not mine to torment,’ he growled, taking the little bit of rope I had managed to untie from Mama’s wrists and reaching for my hands. ‘A priest can’t tell the Milice what to do.’
‘Gérard. Don’t,’ I cried, one arm frantically searching for the gun Luc gave me, my fingers gracing the holster under my dress as he pinned my body down. ‘You don’t have… to do this.’
He wound the rope around my wrists, tying one to the foot of Mama’s bed and the other to the leg of her vanity as I screamed.
‘Shut up!’ he shouted through clenched teeth, punching my face with a closed fist—a piercing blow of pain that left the grit of broken teeth loose in my mouth.
He stood over me once I was tied down, first carefully hanging his blue Milice jacket on the back of a nearby chair and then unbuckling his belt buckle, ranting about the Catchfly and how I was a whore. He reached under my skirt and snatched the gun Luc had given me from its holster and stuck it behind his back. ‘I found your lover’s radio,’ he added, as Mama wept under the rag he had stuffed back into her mouth.
Gérard hooked his finger on the top button of my dress and began to pull, popping every button from its hole. He flipped back both sides like a coat to get a good look at me. ‘Just a necklace?’ He rubbed my heart pendant in between his roughened fingers, a glaring eye examining every curve before yanking it off and throwing it across the room. ‘Or a gift from your lover?’
He pulled a sharp knife slicked with Mama’s blood from a sheath tucked under his belt. Slowly, he cut my brassiere and panties from my body, pressing the tip of the knife into my skin, dragging it downward from my navel. ‘That’s for after,’ he said, sticking the knife back into its sheath. ‘First there’s this.’