The Paris Library(95)

“My dutiful daughter,” Papa said dryly. “Here to pay me a visit?”

I didn’t know how to act.

Offended? You suspect your own daughter?

Nonchalant? I’m here. Big deal.

Honest? Yes, I’m a thief.

“I’ve received letters asking why the police haven’t followed up on information from earlier ‘correspondence.’ It was puzzling, since we investigated each accusation. I couldn’t understand.” He looked pointedly at the letters I’d torn apart. “Now I do.”

My hand tightened on my satchel.

“You don’t have anything to say for yourself?” he said.

I shook my head.

“I could be arrested,” he said. “They sentence traitors to death.”

“But surely you won’t be blamed.”

“My God, how can you still be so naive?” He placed his palms on his desk and bowed his head, almost in defeat.

“But, Papa—”

“Anyone else I would arrest. Go home. And never come back.”

I left with just a handful of letters. The most important thing I could do, and I’d failed.





CHAPTER 39

Lily




FROID, MONTANA, AUGUST 1987

CORNERED IN THE closet, among the sweaters and secrets, I stared at Odile, still carrying her vanity case, elegant as always. The letters lay on the floor between us. Why aren’t you looking for undeclared Jews in hiding? My indications are exact, now it’s up to you.

“Who are you?” I asked.

Odile’s mouth opened, then closed and became a taut line. Her chin rose, and just as I looked at her differently, she looked at me differently. Guarded, and with great sorrow. When she didn’t say anything, I grabbed the letters and shoved them in her face. She didn’t move.

“Why do you have these?” I demanded.

“I didn’t burn them like the others.… I meant to.”

“I thought you were a heroine, that you hid Jews.”

She sighed. “Alas, no. Only letters.”

“From who?”

“From my father.”

“That’s crazy. Wasn’t he a cop?”

Her eyes were haunted, as if they’d seen a ghost. Silence filled the closet, the bedroom, our friendship. There was only the lonely caw of a lost seagull, the garbage truck plodding down the alley, the pounding of my pitiful heart.

“At the beginning of the war,” she said, “the police arrested Communists. During the Occupation, they rounded up Jews. People wrote to denounce neighbors. Some of the letters were sent to my father. I stole them so he couldn’t hunt down the innocent.”

“You didn’t write them?” Even as I asked the question, I knew that she hadn’t.

Odile stared at the letters trembling in my hand. “I don’t blame you for poking around my things because you’re bored or curious.” Her eyes grew cold until they were slits that regarded me like I was nothing. “But to believe I could write those words! What have I done to make you think I could be capable of such evil?”

She stared out the window, and I knew it was because she couldn’t bear to look at me. I had no right to dig in her closet, to rifle through her past. To bring up things she’d buried for a reason. The war, the role her father played, maybe even the reason she left France.

“To think I came home early because I missed you.” She sank onto the bed. She sat, not straight like in church, but with her back curled in sorrow.

“Go,” she told me. “And don’t come back.”

“No, please.” Shaking my head, I moved toward her. How could I have accused her of such a thing? I would make it up to her. I’d hoe her garden, mow her lawn, shovel all winter. I’d make her forget my foolish, impulsive question. “I’m sorry.”

Odile rose and left the room. I heard the front door open. She’d walked out.

In the living room, I closed the door, then put her books back, hoping I got them in the right order. Watching for her, I sat straight as Sunday on the couch. Barely daring to move, I waited for an hour, then two. She didn’t return.



* * *




HER TONE HAD sounded final. That’s what I said to Eleanor. I hoped she would yell, but she said, “Of course she’s angry. Now you see why Dad and I told you not to snoop.”

What I’d done was worse than snooping, but I was too ashamed to admit my real crime.

The next day, I knocked on Odile’s door, but she didn’t answer. That evening, I wrote a letter of apology and put it in her mailbox. When I left for school in the morning, I found it unopened on our doormat. At Mass, while some people prayed that we’d cream the Soviets before they creamed us, I got on my knees and begged for Odile’s forgiveness. After the service, she and Father Maloney chatted in the vestibule. She glowed as she spoke about Chicago. When I walked over, she excused herself and headed home instead of to the hall. The following week, I sat in her pew, childishly hoping that after the “Our Father,” when parishioners shook hands and said, “Peace be with you,” she’d at least look at me. But Odile stopped attending Mass.

At the hall, the ladies gathered behind the buffet, serving juice and doughnuts. Odile had missed a month of Sundays.