Her father looked past her, and she saw the relief that lifted his countenance. Isabelle recognized that look: it meant he was getting rid of her. Again. “They are here,” he said.
“Don’t send me away,” she said. “Please.”
He maneuvered her through the crowd to where a dusty black automobile was parked. It had a saggy, stained mattress strapped to its roof, along with a set of fishing poles and a rabbit cage with the rabbit still inside. The boot was open but also strapped down; inside she saw a jumble of baskets and suitcases and lamps.
Inside the automobile, Monsieur Humbert’s pale, plump fingers clutched the steering wheel as if the automobile were a horse that might bolt at any second. He was a pudgy man who spent his days in the butcher shop near Papa’s bookstore. His wife, Patricia, was a sturdy woman who had the heavy-jowled-peasant look one saw so often in the country. She was smoking a cigarette and staring out the window as if she couldn’t believe what she was seeing.
Monsieur Humbert rolled down his window and poked his face into the opening. “Hello, Julien. She is ready?”
Papa nodded. “She is ready. Merci, Edouard.”
Patricia leaned over to talk to Papa through the open window. “We are only going as far as Orléans. And she has to pay her share of petrol.”
“Of course.”
Isabelle couldn’t leave. It was cowardly. Wrong. “Papa—”
“Au revoir,” he said firmly enough to remind her that she had no choice. He nodded toward the car and she moved numbly toward it.
She opened the back door and saw three small, dirty girls lying together, eating crackers and drinking from bottles and playing with dolls. The last thing she wanted was to join them, but she pushed her way in, made a space for herself among these strangers that smelled vaguely of cheese and sausage, and closed the door.
Twisting around in her seat, she stared at her father through the back window. His face held her gaze; she saw his mouth bend ever so slightly downward; it was the only hint that he saw her. The crowd surged around him like water around a rock, until all she could see was the wall of bedraggled strangers coming up behind the car.
Isabelle faced forward in her seat again. Out her window, a young woman stared back at her, wild eyes, hair a bird’s nest, an infant suckling on her breast. The car moved slowly, sometimes inching forward, sometimes stopped for long periods of time. Isabelle watched her countrymen—countrywomen—shuffle past her, looking dazed and terrified and confused. Every now and then one of them would pound on the car bonnet or boot, begging for something. They kept the windows rolled up even though the heat in the car was stifling.
At first, she was sad to be leaving, and then her anger bloomed, growing hotter even than the air in the back of this stinking car. She was so tired of being considered disposable. First, her papa had abandoned her, and then Vianne had pushed her aside. She closed her eyes to hide tears she couldn’t suppress. In the darkness that smelled of sausage and sweat and smoke, with the children arguing beside her, she remembered the first time she’d been sent away.
The long train ride … Isabelle stuffed in beside Vianne, who did nothing but sniff and cry and pretend to sleep.
And then Madame looking down her copper pipe of a nose saying, They will be no trouble.
Although she’d been young—only four—Isabelle thought she’d learned what alone meant, but she’d been wrong. In the three years she’d lived at Le Jardin, she’d at least had a sister, even if Vianne was never around. Isabelle remembered peering down from the upstairs window, watching Vianne and her friends from a distance, praying to be remembered, to be invited, and then when Vianne had married Antoine and fired Madame Doom (not her real name, of course, but certainly the truth), Isabelle had believed she was a part of the family. But not for long. When Vianne had her miscarriage, it was instantly good-bye, Isabelle. Three weeks later—at seven—she’d been in her first boarding school. That was when she really learned about alone.
“You. Isabelle. Did you bring food?” Patricia asked. She was turned around in her seat, peering at Isabelle.
“No.”
“Wine?”
“I brought money and clothes and books.”
“Books,” Patricia said dismissively, and turned back around. “That should help.”
Isabelle looked out the window again. What other mistakes had she already made?
* * *
Hours passed. The automobile made its slow, agonizing way south. Isabelle was grateful for the dust. It coated the window and obscured the terrible, depressing scene.
People. Everywhere. In front of them, behind them, beside them; so thick was the crowd that the automobile could only inch forward in fits and starts. It was like driving through a swarm of bees that pulled apart for a second and then swarmed again. The sun was punishingly hot. It turned the smelly automobile interior into an oven and beat down on the women outside who were shuffling toward … what? No one knew what exactly was happening behind them or where safety lay ahead.
The car lurched forward and stopped hard. Isabelle hit the seat in front of her. The children immediately started to cry for their mother.
“Merde,” Monsieur Humbert muttered.
“M’sieur Humbert,” Patricia said primly. “The children.”
An old woman pounded on the car’s bonnet as she shuffled past.