both a hard-eyed glare. ‘So, you are your father’s daughter after all.’ Mama shook her head, flicking her cigarette over the sink. ‘Unbelievable.’
Papa leaned into my ear and whispered, ‘I’m glad you’re home, Adèle.’ A parting kiss on my cheek, and he made way for the door.
‘Where are you going?’
Papa glanced at Mama, who had her hand cocked in the air, her cigarette spewing smoke from between two fingers.
‘I don’t live here anymore.’
‘You don’t?’
‘Humph!’ Mama shifted her legs, taking a drag from her cigarette. ‘Tell her why, Albert. Don’t leave her to guess.’
‘I work for the Vichy regime now. I sell the wine they want from an abandoned building next to Charlotte’s boutique. I made the office upstairs into a flat.’ A hesitant smile followed a short pause. ‘It’s where I’ve been living.’
My mouth gaped open, eyes shifting between Mama and Papa.
‘Do not worry,’ he said. ‘Only Charlotte knows the truth. I’ve told people I live in the city because of the long hours. Our marriage is still very much intact in the public eye.’ He looked at Mama and then whispered, ‘Sometimes we have to make difficult decisions for the good of the family.’
Papa started for the door but then stopped at the kitchen table and scribbled something on a piece of paper that had once been crumpled into a ball. When he was done, Papa stuck the pencil in the woodblock that usually held Mama’s cleaver.
‘One last note, Pauline,’ Papa said as he left.
Mama tossed her lit cigarette angrily into the sink, but then took a deep, withering breath full of sobs and tears. Together we watched him drive away.
‘I knew you’d be back after that old nun came to visit.’
‘Gertrude?’
‘Was that her name?’ Mama’s voice was as faint as the cloud of dust funnelling behind Papa’s car. Once he was completely out of sight Mama turned around and looked at me, her eyes puffy and red from crying. ‘I know what they’ve asked you to do, and you’ll be great at it. You might be his daughter, but you’re mine first.’
‘The sisters told you?’ I swallowed, knowing how she felt about Gérard, and wondering what the conversation with Gertrude must have been like. ‘You’re not angry?’
‘We do what we have to, Adèle. When we have to.’ She paused. ‘Elizabeth saw the strength in you. I do too.’
‘Mama, tell me how you know Mother Superior—Elizabeth—at the convent.’ I took the cloisonné lighter from my pocket. ‘She has the same lighter.’
‘Unused, I imagine. Elizabeth never did smoke.’
‘She said it was—’
‘Not now, Adèle.’ Mama squeezed her eyes shut. ‘My head hurts.’
I wondered what mysterious past Mother Superior shared with Mama. Something dangerous perhaps, something meaningful and profound I was sure. I couldn’t keep the lighter after knowing how important it was. ‘Maybe you can tell me some other time?’
Mama’s gaze trailed off.
‘I think the lighter belongs with you, Mama.’
She rubbed her head with one hand and grabbed the lighter with the other, slipping it into her pocket. ‘If that’s what you want.’
I picked up the note Papa had left for her on the table. Below an old message he had crossed out were the words to ‘À la Claire Fontaine’. I remembered Mama singing the song when I was a child, walking through Papa’s vines with Charlotte and me tagging along on her heels. When I realized what Papa had said with the lyrics, I offered her the note. ‘You should read this.’
Mama hit her forehead with the fleshy part of her palm. ‘No,’ she groaned. ‘I haven’t the strength for any more words.’ She tightened the tie on her crème peignoir and trudged upstairs to her bedroom. ‘Get rid of it, Adèle. I don’t want to see it when I come back down.’
I read the lines quietly to myself.
‘Long have I loved you. Never will I forget you.’
11
I sat at the kitchen table, eating the few pears Mama had left in the fruit bowl and what little bread she had on the table, taking drinks from an opened bottle of Papa’s wine.
In the silence of the quiet room and with the equally silent vineyard out the window, the absence of Papa felt very real. Before the war the fields would have been busy with field hands rotating barrels of wine in the barrel cellar before the autumn harvest. And Mama, she’d be singing, hanging up laundry on the line, waving to Papa in the field. Charlotte would be talking about her next art exhibit and the paintings she had