“There’s nothing you could have done,” Thérèse said to Jojo, and it was obvious that the comforting words cost her greatly. “Even if you’d known.”
He raised his head and said, “The letter. I sent a letter to the Bordeaux address nearly a month after we left Lamorlaye. Did she get it? Did your mother?”
Thérèse’s eyes clouded over. She pursed her lips and clasped her hands tightly in her lap. “I—found out only last year about your letter. My mother died in the seventies, and I kept her house as a summer retreat.” After another sip of her now-cold tea, she continued. “I decided to sell it last year, and as I was preparing some of my mother’s antiques to be appraised, I found your letter and Marie’s written account behind one of the drawers of her bureau. She must have found them when Marie died and left them there—I’m not sure why. She hated the boches—hated the Germans so much for what they’d done to Marie—but maybe she still thought that someday she’d find the courage to tell me the truth. I guess she died before she’d made up her mind.” She coughed a little from the exertion of so much speaking and leaned back on the cushions. “Your letter—it started me on a journey that ended in the stables last night. I had to know. I had to know.”
Jade looked at Jojo. “What did your letter say?”
“I told her that—”
“‘Dear Marie,’” Thérèse interrupted, eyes closed as she quoted Jojo’s letter verbatim. “‘I trust you and the baby made it safely to Bordeaux. Unfortunately, I cannot send you the papers as you requested. On the morning we evacuated, Generalmajor Müller ordered a thorough search of all the personnel who left the castle. I couldn’t risk being caught.’”
This time, it was Becker who voiced his disappointment. “You left them there?”
Jojo’s eyes fired up. “I left the folder in a place she could find. She still had friends in Lamorlaye. I thought—if she ever came back—she’d be able to locate it.”
“But your instructions were too cryptic for anyone other than Marie to understand,” Thérèse said.
“I needed to be sure that no one else would intercept the letter. I needed to keep those documents safe—for you.”
“There wasn’t anything selfless about it,” Thérèse said with disdain. “You left those papers there for the same reason you abandoned me in the first place and let Marie—a seventeen-year-old girl—take on the responsibility of raising me.”
A heavy silence settled over the room. “Yes,” Jojo finally said, eyes averted. “I did it all to spare myself.”
Thérèse seemed destabilized by his admission. Her indignation was less virulent when she addressed Beck and Jade, quoting more of the letter. “‘The folder is still at the castle. I left it in the small, dark hiding place we discussed as we were planning your escape. The place I suggested I hide you. If you know where to look, you’ll find it with no difficulty.’” Thérèse looked over to where Jojo sat, head bowed. “Do you know how many small, dark places there are in a castle? If Marie’s mind had survived the escape, she might have been able to find the folder, but since she was nearly killed for her association with you . . .”
Her words had the desired effect. Jojo leaned forward in his chair and covered his face with his hands, breathing harshly.
“Thérèse,” Jade whispered.
“He did what he could,” Beck interjected, his eyes on the broken man now rocking slightly back and forth in his chair. “He was a seventeen-year-old boy playing at grown-up war.”
“He—was—my—father,” Thérèse said, every word articulated with venom. “And he threw me away.”
The taxi ride back to Lamorlaye was silent. Jojo sat in the back next to Jade, his vacant eyes on the blurred trees and houses rushing by. Nearly sixty years of waiting for Marie to return had not yielded the relief he had hoped for, but a grief so miserable that it shrank his frame and blanked his expression.
“When did you return to Lamorlaye?” Jade asked gently.
Jojo didn’t move. A minute passed before his tired voice said, “As soon as I could without being recognized so easily. I wanted to be here if . . . if Marie came back.”
“But why?” This from Becker, in the front seat. He turned so he could see Jojo’s profile as he stared out the window. “You’d made it clear that you wanted nothing to do with Thérèse. Why did you come back?”
Another silence, weighty and somber, lumbered by. “When the war ended—” He coughed, a deep, rasping sound that garbled out of his sunken chest. “When the war ended,” he began again, straining for the right words, “I found I had nothing. No family. No . . . what do you call it? Dignity. No honor. No friends. Nothing that belonged to me. Nothing. And I—I couldn’t get the baby out of my mind. Nor her mother. I couldn’t . . .” He paused, his jaw working. “I couldn’t understand why I had cared so little.”
“You could have gone to Bordeaux,” Jade said quietly. “Tried to track her down. You had the address she’d given you, didn’t you?”
He nodded and took another wheezing breath. “I wrote to her. Many times. From Germany. And there was never any response. And then—I tried to send a telegram but was told the address was—” he paused, racking his mind for the correct term—“no longer valid. I hoped . . . I hoped the letters had reached her and that she was just having trouble coming back here for the papers.”
“So you waited?” Becker asked.
He felt an almost physical punch to the gut when Jojo’s gaze, tired, hollow, but impossibly keen, connected with his. The elderly man spoke his next words with as much strength and conviction as his weary body could summon. “She was my daughter. I learned too late what that means—what that should mean. We are made for . . .” He paused, intent on using the right words to define his journey. “We are made to be connected—to be intertwined with others. We are made for belonging. Unless we have that—unless we allow that—we have nothing.”
Becker glanced at Jade, whose face seemed cast in stone, then back into the sharp blue-gray eyes that hadn’t strayed from his. He felt something implacable softening inside. The sensation terrified him.
The police returned to Jojo’s gatehouse the next day to close the file on the château’s fire. Becker and Fallon joined them, as much to support the old man as to ask a few questions of their own. When they exited the small structure a little over an hour later, they found Jade and Sylvia waiting for them on the steps of the castle while the twins played by the river.
“Did you have an interesting conversation?” Sylvia asked as the men walked up to the steps.
Fallon chuckled and sat down next to his wife. “You have no idea, my dear. That man’s life is fit for the movies.”
Becker propped a foot on the bottom step and gazed up at the château’s facade. “For a man who hasn’t spoken much in decades, he’s sure been talking a lot.”
“Well, don’t keep a good story to yourself,” Sylvia coaxed. “What fascinating tidbits did you learn?”
Becker sighed, raking his fingers through his hair. “Those noises I’ve been hearing at night?”
“Jojo?” Jade asked, turning to face Beck.
“Yep. But only because he was following Thérèse.”
Sylvia was appalled. “What was a woman like Thérèse doing scrounging around a castle in the wee hours of the morning? That’s preposterous.”
“The folder,” Jade said.
“The folder.” Beck smiled a little at the futility of it all. “All Jojo told Marie was that he’d left it in a small, dark hiding place they’d discussed . . . and Thérèse spent her nights looking in every small, dark place she could think of. Officer Vivier didn’t say much about it, but there’s a bit of a psychiatric history there.”
It was all coming together in Jade’s mind. “The crawl space under the patio? Was that her too?”
Fallon shook his head in reluctant admiration. “And the well, and the cellar under the ballroom—it must have taken true desperation for her to climb out of there with the rope.
”
Beck nodded. “And all the while, the file was in the gatehouse, with Jojo. He’d removed it from the well himself when he returned to Lamorlaye after the war.”
“That still doesn’t explain the fire,” Sylvia said.
“Did Thérèse start it?” Jade asked.
Fallon nodded. “She wanted to give the stables one last search. That’s where the soldiers had been billeted, after all.”
Becker took over. “The cops said she took a lantern from the drive while the rest of us were celebrating in the dining rooms. She was on the landing of the second floor when the wood gave out beneath her. She fell through to her waist, and the lantern landed hard and shattered.”
“You can imagine how fast the wood floors and wallpaper caught fire,” Fallon said. “She pulled herself out and got as far from the flames as she could, but those hallways were blocked off years ago. She must have passed out on her way to the other end of the corridor.”
“That’s where Jojo found her,” Becker finished.
“Jojo . . . ,” Jade said. “His name was Karl—how did he become Jojo?”
“That’s what I wanted to know,” Fallon said. “His full name is actually Karl-Joseph Gerhard. He gave up the Karl to erase that part of his past. When the police tried to evict him in the early fifties, the village rallied around him and Joseph became a sort of folk hero named Jojo.”
“And he’s been here ever since,” Jade said, her eyes on the gatehouse.
“Squatter’s rights,” Fallon explained. “The French are rather militant about them.”
Sylvia raised an eyebrow. “You got all that information in the hour you were in there?”
“It was a very informative hour,” he said with a chuckle, standing. “And an exhausting one at that.” He moved toward the river. “Philippe! Eva!” he called. “Put down those stones. We’re going home.”
“IT’S TODAY! It’s today! It’s today!” The kids came stampeding up the stairs with simultaneous shouts. They crashed into the hallway of Beck’s apartment and came to a sliding halt just inside his bedroom door.
“It’s today!” Philippe yelled, his eyes wide as saucers and his cheeks rosy with excitement.
“Yep,” Eva chirped, her red curls bobbing as she nodded her assent.
“You’re that excited to get me out of here, are you?” Beck asked, a grin belying the seriousness of his tone.
“Huh?” Philippe cocked his head to the side and considered the bewildering man in front of him.
“Mr. Becker thinks you’re excited because he’s leaving this morning,” Jade said as she appeared in the doorway. “And by the way, you two, did you stop to knock before you came careening in here?”
“Uh . . .” Philippe attempted to dodge the question with a feigned lapse of memory.
“Nope!” Eva said, effectively disarming her brother’s ploy. “My mommy’s having a baby!” she yelled, taking a couple steps forward so she stood just inches from Becker. “She’s having it right now in the hospital!”
“Yay! Yay! Yay!” Philippe chanted, stepping just as close to Becker as his sister and pumping his fist in the air.
Becker took a step back and glanced up at Jade. “Really?”
Jade nodded. “Three weeks early, but the doctor assures us everything will be fine.” Grabbing the children’s heads, she turned them around to face her and crouched down in front of them. “Are you listening carefully?” They nodded simultaneously. “We will go to the hospital just as soon as your father calls, but until then, you need to go down to the kitchen and color the cards you made for your new brother. Okay?” Another nod. “Okay. Now, scram!”
They left as discreetly as they’d come, their clatter as they descended the stairs doing strange things to Becker’s heartstrings.
Jade glanced at his suitcases. “Finished packing?”
“All but the carry–on.”
“You travel light.”
Beck laughed. “Yeah, I’m a firm believer in leaving ample space for duty-free booze.”
Jade narrowed her eyes at him.
“Joking,” he said, holding up a hand to ward off her diatribe. “Although the airport bars and the free wine on the plane are going to be . . . a challenge.”
Jade nodded. She’d spent enough time with him in the past three months to understand the power of the addiction.
“So,” Beck said, steering the topic into safer territory. “If the Fallons are at the hospital . . . ?”
“Mr. Fallon apologizes for not driving you to the airport himself. He had me order a taxi for you. It should be here at noon.”
The silence stretched until she laughed and smoothed a tendril of hair. “You know, for all the awkward standing we’ve done in this room, you’d think it would have gotten less uncomfortable by now. . . .”
“I’m not going to keep in touch,” Beck said, soft determination in his voice as he leaned back against the window frame and folded his arms across his chest. “After I leave,” he added. “I’m not going to stay in touch.”
Jade was silent for a moment as the words settled into finality. Then she seemed to draw herself up taller as she said, “Did I ask you to?”
“No, but . . . I just wanted you to know.”
She squared her shoulders and moved to stand directly in front of Becker.
“What’s with you people and personal space?” Becker asked before she could say anything.
She completely ignored his question, squinting at him. “Lest you missed it the first fifteen times I said it, Mr. Becker, I don’t want you to keep in touch.”
“Because of the cancer thing?”
She raised her eyebrows. “Because of the cancer thing?” she repeated. “Yes, Mr. Becker, because of that thing.”
Becker pushed off the window frame and took her by the arms, moving her determinedly backward until she sat in the chair next to the dresser. He didn’t release her as he crouched down in front of her and said, eyes ablaze, “You’re not going to die.”
“What—?”
“You’re not going to die. You’re going to beat this cancer. You’re going to get your energy back and you’re going to stop being afraid of getting out there and living life.”
Her words were slow and measured, her eyes narrowed. “Who do you think you are to be lecturing me on quality of life?”
“No one,” he answered, releasing her as he stood. “I can no more lecture you on quality of life than you can lecture me on vulnerability, and yet . . .” He shook his head and looked out the window in amazement. “We’ve been doing nothing but that since the day you first walked through that door and I mistook you for Mrs. Fallon.”
“What are you saying?”
“I’m saying—and I’ve been giving this a lot of thought, trust me—I’m saying that I’m a messed-up freak of a man who isn’t fit to live around others.” He hurried to add, “But I was—once. I was able to . . . I was able to do everything I can’t do now. Trust, love, commit, expect success. And then I got kicked in the gut, completely broadsided, and . . . well, you’ve seen the results.”
Jade hadn’t moved a muscle since he’d deposited her in the chair. She stared, mute, her lower lip pinched between her teeth.
“See, I had this big speech prepared for you. I was going to order you around like some kind of despot. I was going to tell you to stop worrying about dying and to forget about your hair—it’ll grow back. And to keep telling yourself that, with or without cancer, you’ve got to keep fighting for all you want from life—”
“With or without breasts, too?” she asked quietly. “With or without those physical attributes men can’t seem to live without?”
Becker quelled the surge of denial and frustration that threatened to escape his lips. He saw the emptiness in Jade’s eyes, the sag in her shoulders as she spoke the words, and realized how very deep her anguish went.
“With or without breasts, too,” he said, his voice no louder than hers. “And I’m not saying tha
t because I can relate in any way. I’m saying that because—because you’re Jade. You’re not a body part—you’re a feisty, frustrating, loving, supportive, and . . . and exasperating person who is worth fighting for.”
A tear escaped the corner of Jade’s eye and rolled down her cheek.
“Wait—no,” Becker said, reaching out a hand to stop her. “This was supposed to be a pep talk, not a . . . not a . . .” He raked his fingers through his hair, incapacitated by her emotion.
“And then what?” she whispered. “I live my life, I finish my education, I get a great job, and . . .” Another tear followed the first. She swiped at it. “And I wonder every day if the cancer is really gone or if it’s just lying in wait. And then I meet a man and fool myself into thinking he won’t mind my—deformity. And I tell myself that I might have beat this thing after all, and I have children, and . . . and suddenly the cancer is back or the man moves on or my daughter discovers she has cancer too, only she got it from me. And then what, Becker? Tell me what the fighting’s for if it only leads to that?”
Becker leaned back against the wall, appalled by Jade’s pain, then slid down to sit on the floor. His eyes were on the ceiling, on the window, on the tacky framed paintings, but not on Jade. Not on the pain she’d managed to hide for so long that was now agonizingly clear and running down her cheeks in wet streaks. He ran his hands over his face and let out a loud, defeated sigh.
“I’m no good at this,” he said. After a moment, he added, “Every time I try to . . .”
Jade smiled through her tears and hunched a shoulder. “You gave it your best shot,” she said.
“No, I didn’t.”
“Becker . . .”
“That thing I was saying before? About you lecturing me and me lecturing you and neither of us being really qualified? I don’t know how to help you. I want to. But I don’t know how to. Mostly because I’m too warped to figure myself out, so how am I supposed to be—I don’t know—be solid for you?”
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