connections. The Germans run the Occupied Zone. If they join with the Free Zone outright and you’re not on the winning side, what will become of you?’
‘Papa can’t tell me who to marry.’
‘You go ahead and tell yourself that. But there will be a wedding.’
‘But why me?’ I said, and he laughed deeply from his throat, looking at my bare toes and running his eyes up my body.
‘You don’t know?’ he said, and I scooted back.
Gérard popped his head up above the grass, and after realizing we were hidden from Papa’s peeping eyes, he pushed me down low until I was completely flat and his body was on top of mine, his muscly build like a truck compressing on my chest.
‘Get off!’ He kissed me, nearly biting my tongue as he dug his way into my mouth. I kicked my legs out from under his, struggling to break free, when the back door swung open and closed with a squealing crack. He sat up and wiped his lips with the back of his hand, laughing. Mama stood on the patio, glaring at us, which made me think Papa had just told her the news.
‘Relax, Adèle. I’ll save the rest of that for next week.’ He looked at his watch. ‘I have to go, as it turns out. A big arrest. Nicholas Fenoir.’
I stood up in a daze, stepping away from him. ‘The cripple?’
‘I suppose we did cripple him last time. I’m an aggressive interrogator, what can I say? He won’t have to worry about being a cripple where he’s going.’
‘But he has a family and small children.’
‘Yes, and I knew him growing up.’ He smiled, his teeth taking up most his face. ‘Doesn’t matter. He’s a résistant, Adèle. Anyone who fights the regime is an outlaw. Punishable by death. The Reich wants it this way. I have informants hidden here and there, you see? And we all know how the Reich feels about the Jews.’
Gérard dumped his glass in the grass and then wadded up the blanket and lobbed it at my feet. ‘See you at the wedding,’ he said, recorking the half-drunk bottle of wine and sticking it under his arm. He went to kiss my cheek, and I jerked away.
‘So, it is true.’
‘What?’
‘The Vichy police… they are… you are—’
‘Don’t hurt yourself, Adèle,’ he said. ‘Maybe you should think before you talk.’
Collaborators. Just like Pétain’s regime.
‘What happened to you, Gérard?’ I said, remembering the boy who used to buy wine from my father, the one who said please and thank you and treated women kindly.
He glared at first, and then straightened. ‘What’s happened to all of us, Adèle?’
He walked down the grassy slope to his motorcycle. I wanted to be mad at Papa, tricking me as he did. But by the look on Mama’s face, I figured he’d get it from her better than from me.
Gérard tossed the wine bottle into his sidecar and then put on his helmet. ‘One week!’ he shouted just before he drove away.
Mama stormed back into the kitchen, the screen door clacking against the doorframe. I dropped to my knees with the realization of what had just happened, wishing the ground would crack open so I could disappear.
I heard a yell and my hands slipped from the grass with my thoughts jolting to the present. Birds spooked by the sudden noise flew out of the chateau’s eaves, their wings flapping with great haste over my head toward the vineyard. I stood when I realized it was Papa’s voice. The morning sunlight beamed through Mama’s kitchen windows, and I saw her leaning over the sink, her arms bracing its porcelain edge. Papa stood behind her dressed in Sunday clothes, a black valise clenched in his hand, his voice spilling through the screen door and echoing off the patio.
‘Politique,’ he said, ‘will get you killed.’
I scuttled through the grass and watched them through the screen door.
Mama turned around, her hands on the sink behind her, her slept-on, bobbed brown hair tucked behind her ears. ‘Don’t lecture me about politics. You are not a true Frenchman.’
Papa’s cornflower blue eyes looked black and hard as marbles from where I stood. He ran a light finger over what was left of his ear, a souvenir from the Battle of Gallipoli. It was the first time I’d seen him touch it, preferring to keep it hidden under a tuft of hair that had started to grey.
‘I’m the truest of Frenchman.’
‘Then act like it, Albert!’ Mama tightened the tie on her