As always, Sophie talked all through supper. She was like her Tante Isabelle in that way—a girl who couldn’t hold her tongue.
When at last they came to dessert—ile flottante, islands of toasted meringue floating in a rich crème anglaise—there was a satisfied silence around the table.
“Well,” Vianne said at last, pushing her half-empty dessert plate away, “it’s time to do the dishes.”
“Ahh, Maman,” Sophie whined.
“No whining,” Antoine said. “Not at your age.”
Vianne and Sophie went into the kitchen, as they did each night, to their stations—Vianne at the deep copper sink, Sophie at the stone counter—and began washing and drying the dishes. Vianne could smell the sweet, sharp scent of Antoine’s after-supper cigarette wafting through the house.
“Papa didn’t laugh at a single one of my stories today,” Sophie said as Vianne placed the dishes back in the rough wooden rack that hung on the wall. “Something is wrong with him.”
“No laughter? Well, certainly that is cause for alarm.”
“He’s worried about the war.”
The war. Again.
Vianne shooed her daughter out of the kitchen. Upstairs, in Sophie’s bedroom, Vianne sat on the double bed, listening to her daughter chatter as she put on her pajamas and brushed her teeth and got into bed.
Vianne leaned down to kiss her good night.
“I’m scared,” Sophie said. “Is war coming?”
“Don’t be afraid,” Vianne said. “Papa will protect us.” But even as she said it, she remembered another time, when her maman had said to her, Don’t be afraid.
It was when her own father had gone off to war.
Sophie looked unconvinced. “But—”
“But nothing. There is nothing to worry about. Now go to sleep.”
She kissed her daughter again, letting her lips linger on the little girl’s cheek.
Vianne went down the stairs and headed for the backyard. Outside, the night was sultry; the air smelled of jasmine. She found Antoine sitting in one of the iron café chairs out on the grass, his legs stretched out, his body slumped uncomfortably to one side.
She came up beside him, put a hand on his shoulder. He exhaled smoke and took another long drag on the cigarette. Then he looked up at her. In the moonlight, his face appeared pale and shadowed. Almost unfamiliar. He reached into the pocket of his vest and pulled out a piece of paper. “I have been mobilized, Vianne. Along with most men between eighteen and thirty-five.”
“Mobilized? But … we are not at war. I don’t—”
“I am to report for duty on Tuesday.”
“But … but … you’re a postman.”
He held her gaze and suddenly she couldn’t breathe. “I am a soldier now, it seems.”