T looked across the hitch to Nanée. “I became French when I married Danny. I’m no longer British, and Peterkin never has been.”
Dagobert, sensing Nanée’s alarm, nudged her arm and snuggled up under her hand. She petted his just-washed fur as she tried to calm herself. She had her American passport. Her American neutrality. She would remain safe enough even in a Nazi-occupied France, at least for a few days. But T was married to a man who had helped so many who defied Hitler. Peterkin—Pierre Ungemach Bénédite—was the son of a man who could so easily be on one of those lists the Nazis brought to each country they conquered, to be arrested for defying the Reich.
T said, “I can petition to have my British nationality reinstated and leave France only if Danny is . . .”
Is dead.
A desire to flee washed over Nanée. Even armed with her American neutrality, she was afraid of what was to come, what life would be like living under German occupation. It was an irrational fear, and it wasn’t. She was helping Danny by helping his family, and the Gestapo were no kinder to those who helped their foes than to the foes themselves.
Nanée focused on the rough scratch of Dagobert licking her wrist, the soothing warmth of his love. She could take Peterkin. No one could fault her for helping a child. And taking Peterkin to safety in the United States would allow her to leave with her dignity intact.
Good lord, was she really concerned with her dignity?
She hugged Dagobert to her as if he were her child, hearing her father’s voice, What a brave girl you are. She was seven again. At Marigold Lodge. They’d made a bonfire down by the lake, or the staff had made it for them, and she and her brothers were sitting on a fallen tree they called the log sofa, roasting marshmallows. The adults sat in chairs brought down for the season and a photographer from one of the Grand Rapids papers was taking photos for their society pages when the fire popped, spraying a magnificent spark cloud. A red ember struck Nanée’s palm, so startling her that she only stared at the burn as Daddy stooped to her level, took her hand, and kissed the spot. “What a brave girl you are,” he said. “You don’t even cry.” And the next morning, a photograph of the moment ran in the newspaper, with a caption suggesting Nanée was cut from the same strong cloth as Daddy was—a photograph he framed and set on his desk. He’d left Marigold Lodge to her too. The house and the land all the way to the log sofa and the lake. To my brave girl, he’d written in his will, as if what that newspaper had written about Nanée had ever been one bit true. Still, after Daddy died, she’d asked her mother to send her that photo. But the photograph Mother sent her was the one of Nanée with Daddy after she won that shooting contest when she was fourteen, and when she asked again for the newspaper photo, her mother had no idea what she was talking about.
Nanée looked from T’s pleading face back to Dagobert, and pulled on his ears. He shook his head that way he did.
“We’ll be okay, T,” she said. “We’ll get a ship from Bordeaux to England. We’ll just lose your papers. No one can doubt you’re British. No one can doubt Peterkin is your son.”
EVEN COASTING DOWNHILL to conserve gas, they arrived at Brive on fumes, and waited an hour in line at a station only to have one of the cars ahead of them take the last of the fuel. It was early in the afternoon. There was, at least, a decent hotel where, at dinner that same night—all of Brive by then choking with refugees—T said she had bumped into someone she knew. “A rather vile woman Danny once nearly came to blows with. An archreactionary. Her husband has probably already settled into a high place in Pétain’s defeatist government. But she has a car, and she has gas, and she’s trying to get to her beast of a fascist husband in Bordeaux.”
“Surely it hasn’t come to that, all of us crowding into a car with a fascist,” Nanée said. “We’ll just buy some of her gas.”
“She won’t sell a drop, and she can’t take all of us, or won’t. She has room only for one more. And she’s agreed to take you.”
“Me? She doesn’t even know me!”
“She sees an advantage to having an American passport in her car. There’s room for you, and for Peterkin on your lap. Take him for me, Nan. For Danny and me. Take him to America with you.”
“But . . . but we don’t even have a passport for him.”
“It will be chaos. With the French government falling, the Americans will be loading ships to get their citizens to safety.”
“But T—”
“I’ll take Dagobert with me back to La Bourboule,” T insisted. “The children there already love him. We’ll all take good care of him.”
She hugged Nanée fiercely, as if Nanée had already agreed.
“Thank you, Nanée, for saving my son.”
Monday, June 17, 1940
A ROAD SOMEWHERE IN BRITTANY
Luki sat right up next to Tante Berthe in the car, which felt a little less scary; Tante Berthe was driving very fast. Luki was wearing Brigitte’s white dress that she wore for her first communion, and Tante Berthe was saying again that Luki was to say she was Catholic, and yes, Pemmy too, Pemmy was a Catholic kangaroo professor.
“You’re not going to be a Jewish girl, you understand that, right?”
Luki nodded even though she didn’t understand at all, except that she knew it was important because Tante Berthe kept repeating it. Only Luki and Pemmy were moving this time, to live with Tante Berthe’s sister, or all her sisters, at a church where Luki would kneel even though Papa didn’t kneel. She was afraid if she said she didn’t understand again, it would make Tante Berthe cry, but she didn’t want to lie either. Papa said she was never to lie. So she just nodded, which she didn’t think was a lie because a lie was words.
The car hurried along. Outside the window, cows ate the grass.
“If Pemmy was a cow,” Luki said, “she would eat grass. But Pemmy isn’t a cow.”
“If Pemmy ran out of other things to eat, she could eat grass. Sometimes we have to pretend we’re a little different than we are.”
Luki giggled, imagining Pemmy eating grass right from the ground. Pemmy did not think this was very funny, but Flat Joey Letters giggled with her.
“Luki,” Tante Berthe said, “if anyone asks you, you can tell them your papa kneels. He would want you to. It will keep you safer.”
“Pemmy wishes Papa would come get us.”
Tante Berthe hugged her close with one arm, her other hand still on the steering wheel.
“I tell Pemmy it’s okay even though we can’t take Papa’s letters,” Luki said, “because still he wrote them. He’s not with the angels, because he wrote us letters, even if we had to put them all in the fire.”