The Nightingale

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.

What a burden such a choice must be. For the first time, she saw her own childhood as an adult, from far away, with the wisdom this war had given her. Battle had broken her father; she had always known that. Her maman had said it repeatedly, but now Vianne understood.

It had broken him.

“You girls will be part of the generation that goes on, that remembers,” he said. “The memories of what happened will be … hard to forget. You will need to stay together. Show Isabelle that she is loved. Sadly, this is a thing I never did. Now it is too late.”

“You sound like you’re saying good-bye.”

She saw the sad, forlorn look in his eyes, and she understood why he was here, what he’d come to say. He was going to sacrifice himself for Isabelle. She didn’t know how, but she knew it to be true just the same. It was his way of making up for all the times he’d disappointed them. “Papa,” she said. “What are you going to do?”

He laid a hand to her cheek and it was warm and solid and comforting, that father’s touch. She hadn’t realized—or admitted to herself—how much she’d missed him. And now, just when she glimpsed a different future, a redemption, it dissolved around her. “What would you do to save Sophie?”

“Anything.”

Vianne stared at this man who before the war changed him had taught her to love books and writing and to notice a sunset. She hadn’t remembered that man in a long time.

“I must go,” he said, handing her an envelope. On it was written Isabelle and Vianne in his shaky handwriting. “Read it together.”

He stood up and turned to leave.

She wasn’t ready to lose him. She grabbed for him. A piece of his cuff ripped away in her grasp. She stared down at it: a strip of brown-and-white-checked cotton lay in her palm. A strip of fabric like the others tied to her tree branches. Remembrances for lost and missing loved ones.

“I love you, Papa,” she said quietly, realizing how true it was, how true it had always been. Love had turned into loss and she’d pushed it away, but somehow, impossibly, a bit of that love had remained. A girl’s love for her father. Immutable. Unbearable but unbreakable.

“How can you?”