and grew into an honourable man, there’d still be one thing missing.’ I shut the door.
‘What’s that?’
‘My fluttering heart,’ I said.
I walked down the hill to the chateau where Mama sat in an old chair she’d dragged out to the patio. A half-drank cup of chamomile tea sat on the armrest. She had a notebook in her lap and a pencil in her hand. She looked up as I neared, almost surprised. ‘Did he give you anything for me?’
The warmth of Luc’s touch was still on my mind, and I found it difficult to concentrate on her words. The scent of the hot spring moistened on my skin didn’t help. ‘Who?’
Her eyes crossed. ‘Albert, of course.’
‘Papa?’ My mind scrambled.
‘Isn’t that where you’ve been? With your father?’ She wrote on the paper even though her eyes were on me. ‘You said you weren’t going to leave me.’
‘No…’ I said.
‘No, you weren’t with him?’ Her brow protruded from her forehead. ‘Or, no he didn’t give you anything?’
I hesitated. ‘Both.’
‘Humph!’ She went back to writing, a long letter by the looks of it, waving for me to leave.
I took a wet rag from the counter and cleaned myself up. Looking out the window, it was hard not to think about where Luc was, where he had gone after he drove away. Our trees had gone bare from the cooler weather, and leaves rustled in piles under Mama’s clothesline. Winter would be here soon.
On the other side of the field I saw a thin ribbon of smoke rising over the hill. The longer I studied it, the more I could smell the faint acridity of the burn lingering in the air, which didn’t smell like kindling. A fighter plane buzzed overhead, then another and another, flying south. I leaned over the counter, straining to see out the window. Vichy planes never sounded that menacing. Germans.
Mama shuffled in as the windows rattled, ripping the page she had written on from her notebook. ‘There’ll be more rabbits for us this winter. Won’t be making pies for the neighbours.’
‘Why is that, Mama?’ I said, watching the planes fly by.
‘Because the Brochards are dead.’
I whipped my head away from the window. ‘What?’
Mama nodded. ‘There was no sound. Only the smoke is left. Killed himself and the little ones—figured out his wife wasn’t coming back. Things will be different now since the invasion. He knew it. We all know it. Didn’t want the Germans to do what he could do himself with dignity.’
I turned back around. The planes had flown off, but the smoke from the Brochards’ farm clouded into a fresh haze. ‘The children?’
‘They were Jews.’ Mama sat down at the table and relit a cold cigarette. ‘Doesn’t matter if they were French. If the Germans want them, Vichy will hand them over.’ She patted her apron pocket, pressing it against her thigh to make the lump of paper thinner, flatter, which made me wonder how many letters to Papa she had stashed in there. ‘When will you see your father?’
I watched her as she sucked on her dying cigarette, bringing it back to life, the crackle of its ember the only sound in the room as she sat in a chair. I had come close to dying more times than I ever thought I would in one lifetime, but seeing that smoke hovering over our vineyard lit another fire, this one deep within my soul.
‘Does it matter?’
Mama’s eyes bounced, but she said nothing. Then she glanced over my hair where it was flat from the spring, as if she just now realized that not only had I been gone all night, but I had been somewhere far away.
I pointed to her pocket. ‘How many letters did you write that you’ll never send?’ My voice peaked and her eyes bugged from her head. ‘Stubbornness is not a virtue, Mama.’
She gasped. ‘Adèle!’
‘What good are unread letters if you’re dead?’ I bent down in front of her, my eyes level with hers. ‘Living is not a luxury meant for us all.’
Mama sat in silence, taking a shaking puff from her cigarette. ‘Your father chose the regime over me, Adèle.’
I shook my head. ‘Did it ever occur to you he thinks choosing the regime is choosing you? Do what we have to, when we have to. Right?’
The blood drained from her face, leaving her very pale.
I motioned for her to hand me the letters. ‘You can’t change yesterday. But today is what you make it.’