The Nightingale(153)

“In twenty minutes,” he said.

Vianne pulled her hood back up over her scarf-covered hair and stepped out of the alleyway. As she left town and walked along the muddy road toward home, she tried to imagine why her father was here. She knew—or supposed—that Isabelle was living with him in Paris, although even that was conjecture. For all she knew, her sister and her father lived separate lives in the same city. She hadn’t heard from Isabelle since that terrible night in the barn, although Henri had reported that she was well.

She hurried past the airfield, barely noticing the aeroplanes that were crumpled and still smoking from a recent bombing raid.

At Rachel’s gate, she paused and glanced up and down the road. No one had followed or seemed to be watching her. She slipped inside the yard and hurried to the abandoned cottage. The front door had been broken long ago and now hung askew. She let herself inside.

The interior was shadowy and limned in dust. Almost all of the furniture had been requisitioned or stolen by looters, and missing pictures left black squares on the walls; only an old loveseat with dirty cushions and a broken leg remained in the living room. Vianne sat down, perched nervously, her foot tapping on the rush-covered floor.

She chewed on her thumbnail, unable to be still, and then she heard footsteps. She went to the window, lifting the blackout shade.

Her father was at the door. Only he wasn’t her father, not this stooped old man.

She let him into the house. When he looked at her, the lines in his face deepened; the folds of his skin looked like pockets of melting wax. He ran a hand through his thinning hair. The long white strands rearranged themselves into spikes, giving him a strangely electrified look.

He moved toward her slowly, limping just a little. It brought her whole life back in an instant, that shuffling, awkward way he had of moving. Her maman saying, Forgive him, Vianne, he isn’t himself anymore and he can’t forgive himself … it’s up to us to do it.

“Vianne.” He said her name softly, his rough voice lingering over it. Again, she was reminded subtly of Before, when he had been himself. It was a long-forgotten thought. In the After years, she had relegated all thoughts of him to the closet; in time, she’d forgotten. Now she remembered. It scared her to feel this way. He had hurt her so many times.

“Papa.”

He went to the loveseat and sat down. The cushions sagged tiredly beneath his meager weight. “I was a terrible father to you girls.”

It was so surprising—and true—that Vianne had no idea what to say.

He sighed. “It’s too late now to fix all that.”

She joined him at the loveseat, sat down beside him. “It’s never too late,” she said cautiously. Was it true? Could she forgive him?

Yes. The answer came instantly, as unexpected as his appearance here.

He turned to her. “I have so much to say and no time to say it.”

“Stay here,” she said. “I’ll care for you and—”

“Isabelle has been arrested and charged with aiding the enemy. She’s imprisoned in Girot.”

Vianne drew in a sharp breath. The regret she felt was immense, as was the guilt. What had her last words to her sister been? Don’t come back. “What can we do?”

“We?” he said. “It is a lovely question, but not one to be asked. You must do nothing. You stay here in Carriveau and stay out of trouble, as you have been. Keep my granddaughter safe. Await your husband.”

It was all Vianne could do not to say, I’m different now, Papa. I am helping to hide Jewish children. She wanted to see herself reflected in his gaze, wanted just once to make him proud of her.

Do it. Tell him.

How could she? He looked so old sitting there, old and broken and lost. There was only the barest hint of the man he’d been. He didn’t need to know that Vianne was risking her life, too, couldn’t worry that he would lose both his daughters. Let him think she was as safe as one could be. A coward.

“Isabelle will need you to come home to when this is over. You will tell her that she did the right thing. She will worry about that one day. She will think she should have stayed with you, protected you. She will remember leaving you with the Nazi, risking your lives, and she will agonize over her choice.”

Vianne heard the confession that lay beneath. He was telling her his own story in the only way he could, cloaked in Isabelle’s. He was saying that he had worried about his choice to join the army in the Great War, that he had agonized over what his fighting had done to his family. He knew how changed he’d been on his return, and instead of pain drawing him closer to his children and wife, it had separated them. He regretted pushing them away, leaving them with Madame Dumas all those years ago.