The Nightingale(174)

Phillipe gazed at her. “He will need to forget you, Madame, to start a new life.”

How keenly Vianne knew the truth of that. “When will you take him?”

“Now,” Lerner said.

Now.

“We cannot change this?” Antoine asked.

“No, M’sieur,” Phillipe said. “It is the right thing for Ari to return to his people. He is one of the lucky ones—he still has family living.”

Vianne felt Antoine take her hand in his. He led her to the stairs, tugging more than once to keep her moving. She climbed the wooden steps on legs that felt leaden and unresponsive.

In her son’s bedroom (no, not her son’s) she moved like a sleepwalker, picking up his few clothes and gathering his belongings. A threadbare stuffed monkey whose eyes had been loved off, a piece of petrified wood he’d found by the river last summer, and the quilt Vianne had made from scraps of clothes he’d outgrown. On its back, she’d embroidered “To Our Daniel, love Maman, Papa, and Sophie.”

She remembered when he’d first read it and said, “Is Papa coming back?” and she’d nodded and told him that families had a way of finding their way home.

“I don’t want to lose him. I can’t…”

Antoine held her close and let her cry. When she’d finally stilled, he murmured, “You’re strong,” against her ear. “We have to be. We love him, but he’s not ours.”

She was so tired of being strong. How many losses could she bear?

“You want me to tell him?” Antoine asked.

She wanted him to do it, wanted it more than anything, but this was a mother’s job.

With shaking hands, she stuffed Daniel’s—Ari’s—belongings into a ragged canvas rucksack, and then walked out of the room, realizing a second too late that she’d left Antoine behind. It took everything she had to keep breathing, keep moving. She opened the door to her bedroom and burrowed through her armoire until she found a small framed photograph of herself and Rachel. It was the only picture she had of Rachel. It had been taken ten or twelve years ago. She wrote their names on the back and then shoved it into the pocket of the rucksack and left the room. Ignoring the men downstairs, she went out to the backyard, where the children—still in capes and crowns—were playing on the makeshift stage.

The three men followed her.

Sophie looked at all of them. “Maman?”

Daniel laughed. How long would she remember exactly that sound? Not long enough. She knew that now. Memories—even the best of them—faded.

“Daniel?” She had to clear her throat and try again. “Daniel? Could you come here?”

“What’s wrong, Maman?” Sophie said. “You look like you’ve been crying.”

She moved forward, clutching the rucksack to her side. “Daniel?”

He grinned up at her. “You want us to sing it again, Maman?” he asked, righting the crown as it slipped to one side of his head.

“Can you come here, Daniel?” she asked it twice, just to be sure. She was afraid too much of this was happening in her head.

He padded toward her, yanking his cape sideways so he didn’t trip over it.

She knelt in the grass and took his hands in hers. “There’s no way to make you understand this.” Her voice caught. “In time, I would have told you everything. When you were older. We would have gone to your old house, even. But time’s up, Captain Dan.”

He frowned. “What do you mean?”

“You know how much we love you,” she said.

“Oui, Maman,” Daniel said.

“We love you, Daniel, and we have from the moment you came into our lives, but you belonged to another family first. You had another maman and another papa, and they loved you, too.”

Daniel frowned. “I had another maman?”

Behind her, Sophie said, “Oh, no…”

“Her name was Rachel de Champlain, and she loved you with all her heart. And your papa was a brave man named Marc. I wish I could be the one to tell you their stories, but I can’t”—she dashed tears from her eyes—“because your maman’s cousin loves you, too, and she wants you to come live with them in America, where people have plenty to eat and lots of toys to play with.”

Tears filled his eyes. “But you’re my maman. I don’t want to go.”

She wanted to say “I don’t want you to go,” but that would only frighten him more, and her last job as his mother was to make him feel safe. “I know,” she said quietly, “but you are going to love it, Captain Dan, and your new family will love and adore you. Maybe they will even have a puppy, like you’ve always wanted.”