Beck jumped to his own rescue. “I wouldn’t say I fear them,” he interjected.
“So what is it? You dislike them?”
“Not . . . entirely.”
“You distrust them.”
“Probably part of it. One minute they’re sky-high, and the next they’re pouting in the time-out chair.”
“So you see yourself in them. Is that what you’re saying?”
Beck hung his head and managed a half smile. “They don’t like me much.”
“Oh, being liked is the easy part. Pay attention to what they’re saying. Get down on their level and ask them questions. Get a little silly when you can, and establish firm boundaries. I’m sure you’ve noted that though they hate the time-out chair, they’re really quite fond of the woman who puts them in it most often! The two are not exclusive.”
Becker considered her words and nodded, lips pursed. “And if I do that, children will suddenly love me?”
“Maybe not. But they won’t be as hesitant to come near you. Predictability also goes a long way with the twins—and with adults, too, if truth be told. Once you master that and actually communicate with them, you might find that your distrust turns to a sort of . . . reluctant fondness.”
“Reluctant fondness.”
“With room for improvement. But that’s already a big step up from mutual suspicion!”
Sylvia leaned her head back in her chair and observed her husband and children as they watched three swans floating on the placid surface of the nearest reflecting pond. “They’re really not very complicated creatures,” she said. “They need to feel known, they need to feel loved, and they need to feel safe. Look at Philippe out there. He’s the toughest little boy I’ve ever known—and I used to teach kindergarten, so I’ve met a few! He acts like there’s no fortress he wouldn’t be ready to storm and like there’s nothing anybody can say that could possibly pierce his invisible armor.” She looked at Beck. “Right?”
He hadn’t actually spent much time analyzing the boy, nor had he been tempted to, but he figured a mother is always right when it comes to her children. “Sure,” he said.
If Sylvia noticed the evasiveness of his answer, she didn’t mention it. “Well, for all his bravado, that child is as fragile as his sister. Probably more so because he fears it so much. You see, Mr. Becker, when he feels backed into a corner or unsafe, he does what all men tend to do.”
Beck didn’t like where this was going, but he knew a shift in topics was not in the stars for him. “Okay.”
“He fakes it. He puffs out his little chest and waves about with his little arms and raises his little voice and makes believe he’s so tough.” She smiled a little sheepishly and took a bite of Brie.
“Talking about me again?” Beck said, his eyes narrowed with suspicion, but strangely unthreatened by the obvious parallel she was drawing.
“You? No, I assure you I’m speaking of Philippe.” She glanced over at her son. His father had just lifted him to hang from a tree branch, and he was dangling there doing his best to mimic Tarzan’s cry. He came across sounding like a pubescent hyena instead. “I’m concerned about what he said to you—that day in your office when he brought you the knife.”
“The saber,” Beck corrected.
“The saber. Indeed.” She leaned sideways in her chair, a move that visibly cost her much effort. “Eva told me what he said to you, Mr. Becker. And I want you to know that it was fear that made him lash out. Not genuine dislike.” A lengthy silence settled between them. They kept their eyes on the twins’ escapades and let it stretch. When Fallon finally herded the children back toward their picnic spot, Sylvia said, “I guess that was my attempt at apologizing for my son’s behavior. And begging your indulgence—as yours sometimes isn’t much better.” She cocked an eyebrow. “Right?”
Beck hung his head a little. “You could probably say that. Actually, Jade would certainly say that.”
“Which brings me to the second reason I brought up this topic.”
Becker threw up his hands. “Great! Kick me while I’m down!”
“Jade.” Sylvia said the name with so much affection that it gave him pause.
“What about her?”
“She’s going to be . . . taking a couple of days off. Probably Monday and Tuesday. We’ll make sure your meals are provided, of course, but . . .”
“This is about meals?”
“No, Mr. Becker,” she said, her gaze soft and compassionate. “She’s a dear girl. A much-loved extension of our family, really. And . . . well . . . I don’t know what your thoughts are about her, but I beg you, Mr. Becker, to keep that blasted temper in check when you’re with her.”
Though he felt his privacy was being invaded, there was something about Sylvia that made it impossible for him to resent her. “I know I’ve hurt her,” he said, surprising himself again with the genuineness of his answer. “And I know I need to be—kinder,” he added.
“That would be a lovely start,” Sylvia said. “And one more thing,” she added, as the children rounded the last corner of the pond and made their way back to their mother. “We never, at any age, outgrow the rules that apply to children. We need to feel known, we need to feel loved, and we need to feel safe. That’s true for Philippe. It’s true for Jade. And, Mr. Becker, like it or not, it’s true for you.”
In retrospect, the picnic had been the lull before the storm. With daylight on Monday morning came several items of bad news. The first came from Thérèse. She’d arrived early that day with photos of the antiques she’d purchased to furnish the castle. With the deadline becoming a greater concern, she needed to have the interior decorating planned and ready to go the moment the rooms became available. She found Beck working on the grand staircase.
“I’m afraid I have some news,” she began, looking like she was braced to sprint away if Becker unleashed anything unpleasant on her.
Beck looked up, eyebrow raised. “Well? Spit it out.”
“I received a phone call from Christophe last night. It appears . . .” She took a breath and blurted, “He and his men have decided not to work here anymore.”
This got Beck’s attention. “Come again?”
“After the—how shall I put this—after the unpleasantness the other day, I think he opted to focus his energies on some other projects in the area.”
Propping his fists on his hips, Beck gave Thérèse an evaluating stare. “You mean he walked off the job.”
Much as she clearly wanted to deny the statement, it was obvious that there was no way around it. “Yes,” Thérèse said, her pointed chin bobbing up and down. “It’s really quite unfortunate.”
“Unfortunate?” Beck heard the volume of his voice rising and reeled himself back in. “This means that Jacques and his crew of incompetents are going to have to fix Christophe’s mess!”
“I realize that.”
Beck rubbed his scalp and gave the situation some consideration. With the dwindling time remaining, there was no way they could find another crew. He looked at Thérèse. “Anything else?”
“Just—one more small item.”
“What is it?”
“It’s Jade, Mr. Becker. Monsieur Fallon wanted me to remind you that she won’t be coming into work today but that Madame Fallon will be dropping off your meals.”
Beck was about to thank Thérèse for the information and let her go when he realized that she might be the informant he was hoping for. “Thérèse,” he said, coming down a few steps to the entryway where she stood, “do you have any idea what’s wrong with Jade?”
She looked flustered. “No, of course not. I’m sure it’s a private matter, and I wouldn’t want to pry.”
“But you’ve noticed it, right? How pale she is? How she seems tired? And her eyes—they’re . . .”
He was halted in his questioning by Thérèse’s surprised expression.
“Something I said?” he asked.
“Not at all. I’m just wondering how many men wou
ld notice such subtle changes as coloring and . . . eyes.” There was little of her usual high-strung energy in the comment, as if Beck’s question had lulled her into a more human countenance.
“I was just wondering,” Beck said, hoping the birdlike woman wouldn’t read too much into his questions. “But since you don’t know any more than I do,” he said, “I’ll just get back to work.”
JULY 1944
THE MOOD IN the manor was somber. While the nurses and aides tried to keep the expectant mothers comfortable and calm, there were meetings in the offices upstairs that lasted for hours. Though the SS tried to spare the residents from the drama in the news, Marie made it a point to keep her friend abreast of the biggest developments. They’d take long walks in the Japanese garden, their conversations muted by the waterfalls and foliage.
“Didier’s uncle is in the Resistance,” Marie said one July morning. “He says the Allies have landed in Normandy. Thousands and thousands of them.”
Elise, with just over two months to go before her due date, held her friend’s arm as they walked slowly down the shaded paths. “Are they coming this way?”
“They only landed a couple weeks ago, but . . . yes. Yes, I think they are!” She couldn’t contain her excitement, though she knew the news would not be entirely welcome to her friend. “Elise, they’re fighting the Germans, liberating towns as they go, and they’re rolling toward Paris. Do you know what that means?”
Elise stopped and pressed a hand into her back. “All I care about right now is popping out this baby. . . .”
“Elise!”
“What?”
“Would you just—I don’t know—think beyond your baby for a minute?”
“And think about what?”
“Your country!”
Elise smiled. “I don’t want to think about my country,” she said. “Or about the Allies or Normandy or anything! I’ve got this child to bring into the world.”
“And then? Elise, this baby is only going to be yours for four or five days after you give birth. After that, it’s the Führer’s and you’re out of the manor. And then what?”
Elise never responded well when Marie tried to talk about life after the baby. Marie wondered whether she was having second thoughts about giving it up for adoption, now that she had spent the past months feeling it move inside her.
“I’m not talking about this,” Elise said. “Not today.”
The two girls strolled in silence for a few moments, each lost in thoughts of a future they couldn’t fathom. It was Marie who finally spoke.
“Elise . . .” She hesitated. In the months she’d spent keeping her friend company, she had tried to avoid reporting anything to her that might trouble her. She’d learned that lesson the hard way when she’d told Elise that her parents had moved to Brest to live with her grandparents, fearful that the situation in Lamorlaye would deteriorate if a liberation movement were ever under way. It had taken days for Elise to get over the shock of the news, and when she’d finally come out of her depression, she’d been more militant than ever, vowing that her parents were dead to her anyway and that the only family she needed was Karl and his beloved Reich.
Marie had been selective ever since then in reporting the stories she heard in whispered conversations behind closed doors, afraid of sending her friend into another tailspin. But as news of an Allied invasion had started to spread over the radios and in the broad communication network of the Resistance, she’d wondered if her sensitivity had been misguided. Elise needed to know. If Paris was liberated, if the boches were sent running, what would become of her friend and the baby she carried?
“Elise,” Marie said again, with more conviction this time, “there are some things you need to understand—before you have the baby. Before the Allies get here. Before you and Karl make any more plans together. While you’ve been in the manor, the world has been falling apart. Because of your Hitler. And not just in Paris.”
“The Führer is fighting for us, Marie. For all of us.”
“But at what cost?”
“‘Strength lies not in defense, but in attack,’” she said with near reverence, her words a verbatim quote from the man whose folly had caused so much destruction.
Marie’s blood ran cold. “You don’t know what you’re talking about, Elise.”
“I do,” Elise protested, her tone lighthearted and bright. “You’re forgetting that I spend much of the day reading.”
“But what you read isn’t the truth. It’s the boches’ sugarcoated version of their crimes! It’s lies, Elise. Surely you realize that!”
“Oh, Marie. Always so dramatic.”
“Dramatic? Telling you that ‘bad things’ are happening is not dramatic. But if I were to tell you the truth, if I were to tell you that thousands of people have been ripped away from their homes and sent to work camps in overloaded trains, never to be heard of again—that would be dramatic! Telling you that people right here in Lamorlaye, some of the families we’ve known forever, have been kicked out of their homes and forced to live on the streets because everyone is too scared to take them in? Telling you that there are torture chambers in Paris where members of the Resistance are put through hell just for the fun of it and long after they’ve confessed all they know? Or telling you that your precious Führer has said it’s okay to rape women and get them pregnant and keep them prisoner in places not much different from this one as long as it expands his Aryan race? That, Elise,” Marie concluded, breathless, “would be dramatic.”
Elise had stopped walking and was staring at her friend with mounting horror. “You’re lying,” she said.
“Elise, there are trains full of French men and women being sent to work camps, and no one knows where they really are. Francis’s father was taken just last week, and he’s not the first and surely won’t be the last. They don’t ask any questions—the men and women and children just get rounded up and carted off without any explanations.”
“Francis’s father?”
Marie nodded, letting the truth sink in. “Those stories you read aren’t true. Hitler isn’t making this world a better place. He isn’t building the foundation for better lives for all of us. People are starving right here in Lamorlaye. And they’re terrified. I can’t tell you how many of our friends huddle in the dark around their radios late at night listening to the BBC and praying—praying—that the Allies will get here soon. I’m sorry to tell you this, Elise, but the Führer who plans on stealing your baby has already stolen thousands of lives, and those weren’t given up voluntarily.”
“Why are you telling me this?” Elise asked, torn between denial and horror, her voice a whisper. She placed a hand on her stomach in the protective gesture of a loving mother. “Why are you telling me this?” Her voice rose and broke. Tears flooded her eyes.
“I wasn’t going to,” Marie admitted, taking her friend’s hand and pressing it firmly. “I didn’t think the Nazis would ever leave, and I figured you’d find it easier to live with them if you didn’t know all they were doing. But now—now that the Allies have breached the beaches of Normandy and are dead set on making it to Paris? Elise, when the Germans are run out of town, you’ll need to know—you’ll need to understand that . . .” Her voice trailed off.
“That I’ll be considered one of them,” Elise said with monotone sadness.
“You might be,” Marie corrected, trying to remain positive for her friend’s sake, but fearing much worse.
Elise’s eyes widened, and she grasped Marie’s hand more tightly. “Marie!” she said, horror in her voice.
“Is it the baby?” Marie asked, glancing down to see if her friend’s water had broken.
“No—I mean, yes. I mean—” The tears that had been gathering in her eyes dropped onto her cheeks. It was in a nearly inaudible voice that she whispered, “My baby will be one of them too.”
They stared at each other for a long moment, each trying to conjure a solution, before hugging in a frightened, desperate w
ay. Marie was the first to offer hope. “We’ll figure something out,” she said, her gaze determined. “If it comes to that—if the Allies get here and chase out the boches—we’ll figure it out.”
Elise nodded, her eyes still glazed with fear. “We’ll figure it out,” she parroted, dipping her fingers in one of the Japanese fountains and soothing her face with the cool water.
The girls walked back to the manor, hand in hand.
BECK STOOD NEXT TO the gaping hole in the ballroom floor with dread in his gut. That which he had most feared had, as the saying went, come to pass. Jacques and his crew had torn up some of the floorboards in the far corner of the room, and what they’d found had thrown a wrench in any expectation Beck had had that the project would finish on time. Though the boards themselves were in fairly good shape, the plaster where the walls met the flooring had offered a subtle, nearly missed clue that all was not well underneath. In the space where the floorboards had once lain, Becker saw what he presumed to be a widespread condition. Some of the joists that sat on heavy beams were still in decent shape, but a majority of them were so eaten away with dry rot that they wouldn’t have lasted much longer.
“Can we save any of them?” Thérèse asked.
Beck shook his head, his lips pressed tight in frustration. “If one’s infected, they all are. And that’s not counting the beams and the columns they rest on. We’ll have to check those, too. Worst-case scenario?” he said, rocking his head side to side and feeling something pop. “We get down there and find out the foundations are compromised. If there’s sitting water in the basement, we’re in big trouble.”
Fallon nodded. “So, lad. What do we do?”
Beck raised his shoulders in a gesture of defeat. “We probably reschedule your wife’s party,” he said. “Or at least move the venue to the dining rooms. I mean, we’ll get down there and figure out exactly where the problem lies, but . . . I don’t know. It doesn’t look good.”
The three of them stood there for a moment, each lost in thought. Beck subconsciously registered the intricate woodwork that bound the joists to each other with nothing more than wedges, pins, and dowels, each one perfectly cut to fit the giant puzzle hidden under the hardwood floors. The design mastery that had gone into it had been foiled by a microscopic organism that had slowly eaten the substance out of the wood and, most probably, started up the walls as well.
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