“I am Nathaniel Lerner,” said the older of the two men. He had gray hair and skin the color of tea-stained linen. Age spots discolored large patches of his cheeks.
“And I am Phillipe Horowitz,” said the other man. “We are from the OSE.”
“Why are you here?” Vianne asked.
“We are here for Ari de Champlain,” Phillipe said in a gentle voice. “He has relatives in America—Boston, in fact—and they have contacted us.”
Vianne might have collapsed if Antoine had not held her steady.
“We understand you rescued nineteen Jewish children all by yourself. And with German officers billeted in your home. That’s impressive, Madame.”
“Heroic,” Nathaniel added.
Antoine placed his hand on her shoulder and at that, his touch, she realized how long she’d been silent. “Rachel was my best friend,” she said quietly. “I tried to help her sneak into the Free Zone before the deportation, but…”
“Her daughter was killed,” Lerner said.
“How do you know that?”
“It is our job to collect stories and to reunite families,” he answered. “We have spoken to several women who were in Auschwitz with Rachel. Sadly, she lived less than a month there. Her husband, Marc, was killed in Stalag 13A. He was not as lucky as your husband.”
Vianne said nothing. She knew the men were giving her time and she both appreciated and hated it. She didn’t want to accept any of this. “Daniel—Ari—was born a week before Marc left for the war. He has no memory of either of his parents. It was the safest way—to let him believe he was my son.”
“But he is not your son, Madame.” Lerner’s voice was gentle but the words were like the lash of a whip.
“I promised Rachel I would keep him safe,” she said.
“And you have. But now it is time for Ari to return to his family. To his people.”
“He won’t understand,” she said.
“Perhaps not,” Lerner said. “Still.”
Vianne looked at Antoine for help. “We love him. He’s part of our family. He should stay with us. You want him to stay, don’t you, Antoine?”
Her husband nodded solemnly.
She turned to the men. “We could adopt him, raise him as our own. But Jewish, of course. We will tell him who he is and take him to synagogue and—”
“Madame,” Lerner said with a sigh.
Phillipe approached Vianne, took her hands in his. “We know you love him and he loves you. We know that Ari is too young to understand and that he will cry and miss you—perhaps for years.”
“But you want to take him anyway.”
“You look at the heartbreak of one boy. I am here because of the heartbreak of my people. You understand?” His face sagged, his mouth curved into a small frown. “Millions of Jews were killed in this war, Madame. Millions.” He let that sink in. “An entire generation is gone. We need to band together now, those few of us who are left; we need to rebuild. One boy with no memory of who he was may seem a small thing to lose, but to us, he is the future. We cannot let you raise him in a religion that is not yours and take him to synagogue when you remember. Ari needs to be who he is, and to be with his people. Surely his mother would want that.”
Vianne thought of the people she’d seen at the H?tel Lutetia, those walking skeletons with their haunted eyes, and the endless wall of photographs.
Millions had been killed.
A generation lost.
How could she keep Ari from his people, his family? She would fight to the death for either of her children, but there was no opponent for her to fight, just loss on both sides.
“Who is taking him?” she said, not caring that her voice cracked on the question.
“His mother’s first cousin. She has an eleven-year-old girl and a six-year-old son. They will love Ari as their own.”
Vianne couldn’t find the strength even to nod, or wipe the tears from her eyes. “Maybe they will send me pictures?”
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?”