The Nightingale

I let go of the podium and step back.

The audience surges to their feet, clapping wildly. I see how many of the older people are crying and it strikes me suddenly: These are the families of the men she saved. Every man saved came home to create a family: more people who owed their lives to a brave girl and her father and their friends.

After that, I am sucked into a whirlwind of gratitude and memories and photographs. Everyone in the room wants to thank me personally and tell me how much Isabelle and my father meant to them. At some point, Julien settles himself along my side and becomes a bodyguard of sorts. I hear him say, “It looks like we have a lot to talk about,” and I nod and keep moving, clinging to his arm. I do my best to be my sister’s ambassador, collecting the thanks she deserves.

We are almost through the crowd—it is thinning now, people are making their way to the bar for wine—when I hear someone say, “Hello, Vianne,” in a familiar voice.

Even with all the years that have passed, I recognize his eyes. Gaëtan. He is shorter than I remember, a little stooped in the shoulders, and his tanned face is deeply creased by both weather and time. His hair is long, almost to his shoulders, and as white as gardenias, but still I would know him anywhere.

“Vianne,” he says. “I wanted you to meet my daughter.” He reaches back for a classically beautiful young woman wearing a chic black sheath and vibrant pink neck scarf. She comes toward me, smiling as if we are friends.

“I’m Isabelle,” she says.

I lean heavily into Julien’s hand. I wonder if Gaëtan knows what this small remembrance would mean to Isabelle.

Of course he does.

He leans close and kisses each of my cheeks, whispering, “I loved her all of my life,” as he draws back.

We talk for a few more minutes, about nothing really, and then he leaves.

Suddenly I am tired. Exhausted. I pull free of my son’s possessive grip and move past the crowd to the quiet balcony. There, I step out into the night. Notre Dame is lit up, its glow coloring the black waves of the Seine. I can hear the river lapping against stone and boat lines creaking.

Julien comes up beside me.

“So,” he says. “Your sister—my aunt—was in a concentration camp in Germany because she helped to create a route to save downed airmen, and this route meant that she hiked across the Pyrenees mountains?”

It is as heroic as he makes it sound.

“Why have I never heard anything about all this—and not just from you? Sophie never said a word. Hell, I didn’t even know that people escaped over the mountains or that there was a concentration camp just for women who resisted the Nazis.”

“Men tell stories,” I say. It is the truest, simplest answer to his question. “Women get on with it. For us it was a shadow war. There were no parades for us when it was over, no medals or mentions in history books. We did what we had to during the war, and when it was over, we picked up the pieces and started our lives over. Your sister was as desperate to forget it as I was. Maybe that was another mistake I made—letting her forget. Maybe we should have talked about it.”

“So Isabelle was off saving airmen and Dad was a prisoner of war and you were left alone with Sophie.” I know he is seeing me differently already, wondering how much he doesn’t know. “What did you do in the war, Mom?”

“I survived,” I say quietly. At the admission, I miss my daughter almost more than I can bear, because the truth of it is that we survived. Together. Against all odds.

“That couldn’t have been easy.”

“It wasn’t.” The admission slips out, surprising me.

And suddenly we are looking at each other, mother and son. He is giving me his surgeon’s look that misses nothing—not my newest wrinkles or the way my heart is beating a little too fast or the pulse that pumps in the hollow of my throat.

He touches my cheek, smiling softly. My boy. “You think the past could change how I feel about you? Really, Mom?”

“Mrs. Mauriac?”

I am glad for the interruption. It’s a question I don’t want to answer.

I turn to see a handsome young man waiting to talk to me. He is American, but not obviously so. A New Yorker, perhaps, with close-cropped graying hair and designer glasses. He is wearing a fitted black blazer and an expensive white shirt, with faded jeans. I step forward, extending my hand. He does the same thing at the same time, and when he does, our eyes meet and I miss a step. It is just that, a missed step, one among many at my age, but Julien is there to catch me. “Mom?”

I stare at the man before me. In him, I can see the boy I loved so deeply and the woman who was my best friend. “Ariel de Champlain,” I say, his name a whisper, a prayer.

He takes me in his arms and holds me tightly and the memories return. When he finally pulls back, we are both crying.

“I never forgot you or Sophie,” he says. “They told me to, and I tried, but I couldn’t. I’ve been looking for you both for years.”

I feel that constriction in my heart again. “Sophie passed away about fifteen years ago.”