different.’ I looked at my hands, rolling them around. ‘Mama, how did you tell him? Gérard, I mean. How did he find out? The day of the wedding? At the altar? I didn’t put it past Mama to wait until the very last minute.
‘That was my intention,’ she said. ‘Only Gérard sent a note that afternoon asking you to meet him for dinner. I wanted him to wait all night for you, but after I told your father where you’d gone, Charlotte went in your place. I heard he was waiting outside the restaurant, pacing, getting very upset. It’s because of her he didn’t go out after you. Charlotte never told me what she said, but whatever it was, it was enough to get him to calm down.’
I sighed, relieved, thankful Charlotte was successful. I knew that if Mama had waited for the ceremony I was doomed, and I’d never get a chance to read the numbers on the back of that cigar box.
She got up from my bed and walked to the door. ‘He was such a different boy before the war. His family… simple spa owners with a service to sell.’
‘Do you think so, Mama? Or did the armistice just give people an opportunity to expose their true selves?’
Mama stopped, both hands bracing the doorframe. ‘I don’t know,’ she said, looking over her shoulder. ‘I really don’t.’
*
After a light breakfast of eggs with jam, I slipped on a clean dress and got ready to go to Papa’s wine store near the Gare de Vichy. Two sweeps of rouge across my cheeks and a dab of smooth red on my lips—half the makeup I used to wear, but after being at the convent for so many weeks it felt a little heavy.
Mama gave me a pair of her thickest pumps to hide the blisters I got from walking all night. ‘Set your hair,’ she said. ‘It will make you look more like a woman who went to find herself rather than a child who ran away.’
I agreed and smoothed my hair into barrel curls.
I rode up to Papa’s store and found him sweeping RAF leaflets from his pavement with a wiry broom, working his way from Charlotte’s storefront to his. Old men with tales from the 1914 war ripe in their heads chatted over dingy bistro tables sipping Papa’s wine. Their eyes followed me as I walked up to the front door, then one of them rode off on his bicycle after he saw my face. ‘Nunnery,’ I heard in whispers. ‘Humiliated.’
Vichy police patrolled the street, looking in shop windows and studying the people in the cafés. I held my head up.
‘Adèle!’ Papa propped his broom up on the side of the store. ‘Bienvenue, ma chérie! Bienvenue!’ He kissed both my cheeks, and the police walked by, pushing us out of their way.
‘Come in.’ He held his door open, smiling. I was surprised to find Papa’s store was actually a wine bar, with tables for people to sit and drink. The space smelled like tangy grapes, not the aged wine he was known to produce at the vineyard, but he seemed happy with it, pointing to the diverse blends of wine he had from the Auvergne region. I couldn’t help but notice the empty wine crates from Germany stacked against the wall. Papa watched me as I read the labels stamped on the front.
‘To keep certain people content,’ he said. ‘Customers can sit and have a glass or buy a crate. Mostly the regime and the police, and…’
I looked up.
Papa was made from the stain of French grapes—I would have never thought he’d sell German wine over his own. ‘Papa,’ I said. ‘Wine from Germany…’
‘We do what we have to, Adèle,’ he said while moving the crates, turning the stamps toward the wall. ‘When we have to.’
‘What did you say?’ I regretted the cynical tone in my voice.
‘We do what we have to…’
‘You sound like Mama.’
‘Sometimes we have to pick our battles. Wine from Germany is no battle of mine.’
I stared at him, wondering where my father had gone. It was more than just the day suit he was wearing, which months ago would have been field clothes soiled from having his hands in a grape barrel. My father would have called the German wine vin de merde. Shit wine, just like Beaujolais made from the Gamay grapes he had warned Charlotte and me to stay away from as children.
Papa took a deep breath. ‘I’m glad you’re home, ma