Chateau of Secrets: A Novel

by Melanie Dobson

  I was supposed to be calling Austin, telling him I’d arrived, telling him how much I missed him. Instead he was texting me, in the middle of the night from New York, begging me to forgive him.

  The memory of him kissing the lips of Starla Dedrick in the elevator looped through my mind. Was she sleeping beside him now as he texted me? Or had he snuck away while she slept?

  The moment I saw Austin with Starla at the Plaza, my perfectly structured future had crumbled. I didn’t know when I would speak to him again—if I would speak to him again—but there was so much more I wanted to say, conversations I’d rehashed over and over during my excruciatingly long flight across the Atlantic. None of it would change the fact that our engagement was over. There would be no wedding now. No marriage. Austin might become Virginia’s governor, but I would not be the governor’s wife. In hindsight, I knew I should have seen this coming, but I had thought his indifference to me in the past months was due to the busyness of his campaign. Apparently he had plenty of time for recreation. It just didn’t involve me.

  How could I have been so stupid?

  I closed my eyes, imagining for a moment how he would position this new wrench in his campaign. Olivia would have a cow, no doubt. He’d probably make her handle the announcement of our breakup to the media and his staff. Still, the media would have questions that only he could answer.

  Somehow Olivia and Austin would spin this in a positive light, probably making me look like a fool in the process. I shouldn’t have cared, but I did.

  How long had he been sleeping with Starla? For all I knew, they’d never even broken up after college. Perhaps Olivia had been covering for him all along.

  All it would take was a call from me to one of the morning shows to set a scandal in motion. Or I could sell the gritty details to a tabloid. I had contemplated that very thing on the plane, the sweetness of letting the world know that Austin was scum.

  But what woman really wanted to let the world know her fiancé had rejected her? It would be bad enough to tell my parents what happened. I didn’t want to be part of the world’s analysis of why my fiancé had cheated on me. The sweet taste of my revenge would sour quickly and somehow Olivia would position me as the villain instead of the victim.

  Is she walking back to me? Yeah, she’s walking back to me.

  The driver grinned as he sang the final lyrics to “Pretty Woman,” and when I glanced up at the rearview mirror, he winked at me. Cringing, I leaned my head back on the seat and gazed out the window at the crowds of Parisians emerging for work. Thanks to my grandmother and my college professors, I spoke fluent French, but I didn’t want this man to know I could speak his language.

  I wouldn’t be walking back to Austin, nor did I have a job to return to in the fall. At some point I’d have to call Marissa and my other bridesmaids to let them off the hook in August, but I would start with my parents.

  Still, how did you tell your family that the man you planned to marry was sleeping with another woman? That he had probably loved her all along?

  The driver pointed up and I saw the golden Flame of Liberty before we descended into the infamous Pont de l’Alma tunnel where Princess Diana’s car crashed when I was in elementary school. In that moment, my heart empathized with the princess—a young woman chosen to marry the future king of England, a devoted wife and mother who played her part well for fifteen years, smiling for the cameras even as her marriage was disintegrating.

  Had the prince swept Diana off her feet even as his heart belonged to another woman—a woman the Crown wouldn’t permit him to marry?

  The next time my phone rang, my mom’s picture flashed up on the screen. Either she was worried about me or she knew something—it was two in the morning there and my mom rarely stayed up past eleven.

  With a cleansing breath to calm myself, I answered her call.

  “Austin was just here, looking like heck,” she said. “What happened?”

  It took a lot of gall for him to petition my parents. “You don’t want to know.”

  “I do want to know,” she replied. “He said you’d fought . . .”

  “Did he happen to say about what?”

  “It doesn’t matter, Chloe. Everyone fights before their wedding. That’s why they call it jitters.” A woman rode up next to the cab on a bicycle, a girl strapped in a seat behind her. The child’s hands were stretched out to reach around her mother’s back. “Austin said he’s still planning to marry you.”

  I groaned. “That’s awfully kind of him.”

  “He thought your dad and I might be able to convince you to reconcile.”

  The driver watched me in the mirror, and I highly doubted his insistence that he didn’t speak any English. “We’re not reconciling.”

  “He said there was a misunderstanding. Surely it can be resolved—”

  I stopped her. “I don’t think so, Mom. I found him in New York with an old girlfriend.”

  Silence reigned on the other end of the line before she spoke again. “Having dinner together?”

  “They weren’t dining when I found them.”

  “Oh my—”

  “And he didn’t seem the least bit remorseful about their pillow talk at the Plaza.”

  “I’m—I’m so sorry, honey.”

  “Me too.”

  The shock in my mother’s voice turned to anger. “If he can’t be faithful now, he never will be.”

  I knew I’d made the right choice, but why did my heart still ache?

  When we ended the call, the taxi driver glanced in the mirror. “Do you want to get a drink?” he asked in French.

  I continued pretending not to understand him, like he pretended not to understand English.

  “Thriller” started playing on the radio, and his attention was diverted to the song. As he drummed his thumbs on the steering wheel, my phone flashed again.

  We need to talk, Austin wrote.

  I powered off my phone and stuffed it deep into my handbag. Part of me wanted to speak to him again, to say everything I’d forgotten to say at the Plaza, but the thought of talking to him made my stomach churn.

  In France, I would have to forget about Austin.

  In France, perhaps I would find a little bit of myself.

  And for Mémé’s sake, I hoped I would find out what happened to the girl she’d lost.

  Chapter 19

  The boy clung to Gisèle’s hand in the alley as she smoothed back his messy hair. Then she removed the identity document, stamped with an incriminating J, from around his neck and ripped it into tiny pieces.

  He didn’t want to take off the vest, but she finally coaxed him to remove it. She used it to wipe the smudges of dirt off his face before stuffing the vest and slivers of paper deep into the trash can.

  “What is your name?” she asked.

  When he didn’t answer, she knelt beside him. “Are you scared?”

  This time he gave her the slightest of nods.

  She was terrified, but she didn’t tell him. Instead, she gently squeezed his hand. “If anyone asks, you must say you’re my brother.”

  Gisèle prayed quietly as she pushed her bicycle slowly through the town center. The boy walked beside her, clutching her hand, her bread displayed prominently in the basket so the Germans knew the reason they were here.

  There were no automobiles on the street; the government was rationing gas along with food. She didn’t care much about the gas—she had no need to go anyplace farther than a bicycle ride—but she missed sugar and coffee. Though she could hardly mourn such things when the boy beside her didn’t even have bread.

  They neared the town center. The stone courthouse that the Germans had taken for their headquarters was on one side of the street, the gray prison on the other. A long red banner was draped over the front windows of their headquarters, displaying a black swastika.

  Two soldiers guarded the entrance to the headquarters while three soldiers smoked nearby.

  She refused to look at
the soldiers, but she knew they were scrutinizing her and her companion. A smile on her face, she leaned down to the boy and whispered for him to laugh. While the soldiers watched, they both forced their quiet laughter.

  The Jews in Saint-Lô no longer laughed.

  “Halt!” a soldier ordered, and she tightened her grip on the boy’s hand as fear gripped her heart. She’d worked hard the past two years not to draw attention to herself, to appear as if she was complying with the law of their occupiers even as she worked covertly to help those resisting. She’d yet to have to stand face-to-face and confront their enemy.

  Her teeth chattered as she smiled at the soldier. He looked to be about her age. “Yes, monsieur?”

  He held out his hand. “Your papers,” he demanded, his French poor.

  She opened her satchel and pulled out her identity card. He scanned it quickly and then looked at the boy’s neck for his document. Only the smallest children weren’t required to wear their papers. “Where is his Kinderausweis?”

  She sighed. “We left it at home,” she explained in French. “I keep telling my brother that he has to wear his card, but you know boys—”

  He stopped her and lifted a small radio, asking for a translator. She pretended not to understand his German.

  Moments later, a woman stepped out of the headquarters, her yellow scarf flapping behind her. Gisèle’s heart plummeted when the woman waved. She’d known Lisette had been conscripted to work as a secretary for the Germans, but she hadn’t spoken to her in months. As Lisette rushed up beside her, she prayed the younger woman wouldn’t betray her and the child.

  Lisette spoke to Gisèle instead of the soldier. “What happened?”

  Gisèle pressed her lips together before she replied, trying to steady her voice. “My little brother and I came to town to buy bread.”

  “Your little bro—” Lisette’s gaze dropped and a soft gasp escaped her lips. “He looks like Michel.”

  “Could you please tell this man—”

  The soldier stepped between them, talking rapidly in German to Lisette. Her friend turned back to her. “He’s asking about his identity card.”

  “We forgot it,” Gisèle said.

  Lisette’s eyes grew wide. “You can’t forget your papers!”

  “But I did.”

  Lisette chewed at the edge of a fingernail before addressing the soldier again. “She said she will bring the document back to you.”

  He eyed Gisèle again, ignoring the boy, and she cringed at the lust in his gaze. She’d heard horrific stories of what some of the Nazis had done to the Frenchwomen. A few wooed the local women. Others forced themselves on them.

  “Where does she live?” he asked.

  Before Lisette could translate the man’s words, a dozen soldiers poured out of the prison, and Gisèle stared as they crossed the street. In the midst of them were four men in tattered clothes, their hands tied behind their backs, heads bowed. Her heart raced even faster as she stared at the prisoners, trying to see their faces.

  What if they’d caught Michel?

  One of the men glanced over at her, and she recognized him—a former banker in Saint-Lô. He seemed defeated with his head down, but fire blazed in his eyes.

  The soldier before her stopped one of the guards. “Who are they?”

  “Resistance,” the man spat.

  With that single word, her interrogator grunted at her, telling Lisette that Gisèle must carry her brother’s card with her. Then he followed his fellow soldiers and the prisoners away from the town center.

  She turned to Lisette. “Where are they taking the men?”

  “It doesn’t matter,” Lisette whispered, nudging her down the sidewalk. “You have to get that boy away from here!”

  With a quick nod, Gisèle tugged on the child’s hand. They hurried to the north edge of town, trailing about three hundred meters behind the pack of soldiers. She had to get this boy to safety, had to visit Nadine, but her priorities shifted again. Before she did anything else, she needed to make certain her brother wasn’t among the prisoners.

  The soldiers turned down a narrow lane between the trees, and she hid her bicycle behind one of the hedgerows. She and the boy trailed far behind them, walking among the trees instead of using the trail. The men stopped in a clearing, and she backtracked with the boy almost a hundred meters.

  “Wait here,” she said, hiding him behind a bush.

  The boy didn’t argue with her. Instead he sat down and pulled his knees to his chest. She snuck back toward the clearing and watched in horror as the soldiers tied the men against four poles.

  She could see the men’s faces now. Her brother wasn’t among them, but her relief was fleeting. All of these men had families who loved them.

  Were the soldiers going to torture these men where no one could hear their screams?

  Her stomach reeled again; she felt as sick as she had the night they found their father.

  She glanced at the tall oak trees around the clearing. If only there was something she could do. Distract the soldiers in some way and help these men escape. What if she screamed and ran away? Would they follow her?

  Perhaps the Frenchmen could run away as well.

  But what if the soldiers found the boy in the brush? They would kill him too.

  Clutching her arms around her chest, she rocked back and forth, helpless. Was there nothing she could do to stop the Germans?

  This time the fear paralyzed her.

  The crack of a gunshot exploded in the forest, and the head of one of the men pitched forward. At the second shot, she ran, fear clinging to her like the talons of a hawk.

  She would never be able to fight the dragon.

  The boy was where she’d left him, his eyes wide.

  She held out her hand. “We must hurry.”

  Together they rushed down the lane, away from the madness. A few kilometers down the road, she found the path where she and her mother had once walked hand in hand, when the world seemed to make sense. She and the boy turned, and ahead of them was the tower of a stone manor peeking out above the trees.

  For the first time, she felt his hand tremble in hers. She might not be able to fight the dragon, but she prayed she could rescue this boy.

  — CHAPTER 20 —

  The Château d’Epines rose majestically above the trees that sheltered it, and I leaned back in my car seat to soak in the beauty—the magic—of the medieval château. Intricate strands of ivy wove around two turrets that climbed above the three stories of stone, and dozens of glass panes shimmered peach in the setting sunlight.

  I remembered sitting here with my parents and my grandmother twenty years ago, soaking in the mystery of it all. The château hadn’t lost the wonder for me, but after all these years, I still didn’t understand. On that trip long ago, why had Mémé and my father refused to go inside?

  Marguerite, the caretaker of our family’s property, parked the station wagon in the courtyard. She turned off the ignition and stared up at the château beside me. “It is lovely, yes?”

  I opened my door and the breeze awoke my senses. “Breathtaking.”

  “It was even larger, you know, before the war.”

  “I didn’t know.”

  Marguerite pointed toward the left. “There was another wing on the west side of the house, but Allied pilots bombed it during the German occupation.”

  “It’s so sad . . .”

  She nodded. “Thousands of civilians died in Saint-Lô, but the Allied forces had no choice. The Germans refused to leave.”

  “Refused to leave Saint-Lô?”

  Marguerite dumped the keys into her pocket and opened her car door. “They refused to leave our city and they refused to leave the château. The Allies had to almost flatten Saint-Lô and the surrounding villages before the Germans fled.”

  I needed to read the material Olivia had compiled for me. “I can’t imagine how horrible it must have been to have the Germans occupying the town.”


  “At first, people were shocked by the blitzkrieg,” Marguerite said, “but then Hitler commanded his men to be friendly to the French people and win them over with food depots and such until they decided that collaborating with the Nazis would be to their advantage. For two years, they were more like annoying neighbors than tyrants to the people here.”

  “What happened after those first two years?” I asked.

  Marguerite’s eyes focused back on the château in front of us. “The Nazi Party began to unravel.”

  My head tilted back again as my hostess stepped out of the car, my brain dazed from the shock of Austin’s betrayal and my few, fitful hours of sleep. Did the filmmaker want to know the stories about the German occupation? If so, I was afraid I didn’t have anything to tell him. Once again, I wished my dad had been able to make the trip.

  I stepped out onto the gravel drive and glanced behind me. The château wasn’t alone on the property. Along the driveway was a second house, a smaller, rambling structure where Marguerite and her husband lived, surrounded by a half-dozen outbuildings. Across from the château was a chapel. The cluster of old buildings reminded me of the ceramic French village Mémé used to display each Christmas on her mantel.

  My gaze shifted back to the forest that curved around the back of the house like a warm stole. I wondered if the lake Mémé had told me about was still there in the trees. In the morning, perhaps I could find her favorite place and quiet the racing in my mind.

  Marguerite slammed her car door and crossed over to my side. Her trousers and vest were a mossy brown color, her bushy eyebrows hedged above her green eyes. She was a large woman, but the extra pounds didn’t seem to do anything to diminish her energy. In exchange for a place to live and a monthly stipend, she and her husband had been entrusted to care for the property and keeping squatters from sneaking into the house.

  I slung my handbag over my shoulder. “Do you know where the lake is?”

  Her eyebrows slid up. “Do you mean the river?”

  I shook my head. “My grandmother said there was a lake in the forest.”