Miracle (12 page)

“No, it’s not, but it’s all I’ve been able to manage so far.”

“You may find as you grow older that you prefer your relationships to be one-sided—in your favor, of course. They’re much simpler that way.”

“No, no.” She scrubbed tears from her bruised face and winced. “It’s sad to live like that.” Vaulting to her feet, her control fleeing, she said, “Good night.”

“Good night,” he told her grimly. Confusion and self-rebuke were not emotions he liked to feel.

She gazed at him, her expression stern. “Don’t you ever get hurt?” He nodded. Her hand rose carefully, and one fingertip traced the scar under his chin. “Before you leave maybe you’ll tell me how you got this,” she murmured. “You and me are sort of a matched pair, now. I feel sorry for us both.”

He stayed on the balcony for a long time after she went to bed, his emotions in chaos. A reckless voice whispered,
Take her with you. Teach her everything you know. Let her teach you everything you’ve forgotten
.

Lifting his fingers to his scar, he cursed.
No
, Sebastien thought with bitter resolve. What a fool he was for involving himself with Amy, a vulnerable young woman who would never fit into his world. He would not become his father, ruthless and selfish, ready to ruin a life just to satisfy a moment’s whim. He would not be doomed to watch the magic die again.

He was ten years old, and his life was wonderful. “Maman!” he called in an imperious tone. He was important and well loved, and he knew it. “I want you to go skiing this afternoon! Antoine and Bridgette and I are going to teach you!”

His mother turned from the astrology chart that she had spread across a handsomely carved desk. Behind her a large window gave her a Renaissance halo of sunshine. The snow-draped Alps rose craggy and majestic in the distance. Snow crowded the window ledge outside, and far
beyond stood the white winter forest. Sebastien had never seen anything more beautiful than his dark-haired mother posed before the window.

She smoothed a hand down her plain white sweater, pausing for a second to touch a gold crucifix on a thick chain. Her fingers also brushed across the tokens of her most important saints—more than a dozen of them—spaced along the links of a second gold necklace. Then she tugged the hem of her navy skirt over her knees before finally laying her hands in her lap, signaling him that she was ready to listen patiently.

Maman was a wonderful listener, though she often looked confused when he told her about his studies at school. Maman was very old-fashioned; she had stopped going to school when she was only a little girl. She was so old-fashioned that she never wore slacks, even at home with the family. Sometimes Papa sent clothes from the design houses in Paris and made her wear them, but never slacks. At times Papa’s comments about her clothes caused her to cry.

But today she seemed happy. She smiled at his attempt to draw her from the chalet. “No shush-shush for me, Sebastien.” Her Breton accent lay heavy on the first syllable of his name. No one he knew spoke French the way Maman did, or made up new words such as
shush-shush
. No one practiced astrology or prayed to so many saints. Papa called her a Catholic witch, but Maman was no witch. Maman was special.

“I’ll teach you to be modern, Maman,” he assured her now. Laughing strangely, she came to him and fussed with the lint on his brightly colored sweater. He was nearly as tall as she, so she didn’t have to bend much to kiss his forehead.

“Modern I will not be,” she answered. “I am not smart enough.”

“Yes, you are!”

“I am smart enough to be a good mother, yes?”

“Yes.”

“Plenty for me, then.” She hugged him close and he smiled against her soft shoulder.

Antoine and Bridgette bounded into the room then and joined forces with him. Maman
would
come to the slopes with them this afternoon, if only to watch. Papa would be so pleased to have her there, they were certain. Perhaps he would stop spending so much of his holiday with his old friends in the village.

“I’ll go and watch,” she finally agreed, “if the younger ones don’t need me.”

“Oh, Maman, the babies have fine nannies to look after them,” Bridgette said with mild impatience. Sebastien goosed his sister and made her squeal. She was sixteen this year, and
someone
had to keep her from becoming too arrogant.

“Fiend!” she yelled at him, but grinned a second later. “I’ll ask Maman’s saints to make you sprain your ankle on the slopes.”

“Sssh. My saints are kind,” Maman said firmly.

Antoine, eighteen and nearly as tall as Papa, grabbed her around the waist and whirled her until she laughed, much to Sebastien and Bridgette’s delight. “Then ask them to make all the girls notice how handsome I am!”

“It would indeed take the saints’ help for
that
miracle,” Bridgette observed. Sebastien laughed as Antoine chased her from the room. They were wonderful, his older brother and sister. Everyone knew that Antoine was Papa’s favorite because he was the eldest and would head the businesses someday; but Antoine never acted like the favorite, and Sebastien loved him for that.

He loved fiery Bridgette, too, and his tiny sister, Annette, who was four, and his younger brother Jacques, even though Jacques was a very noisy baby. Sebastien felt lucky to have such a fine family and such a wonderful life, filled with travel, hobbies, and school, though Father was away in Paris too often and Maman talked to herself oddly at times, when she had been at their château in the Loire for too many months without seeing Papa.

Several hours later they piled into the small van Papa kept at the chalet for skiing excursions. Antoine drove; Maman sat beside him, wrapped in a pretty fur coat, her dainty legs and feet protected by tall boots. Sebastien sat
in the backseat next to Bridgette and amused himself by staring at her tight ski sweater until she threatened to wring his neck.

As Antoine drove down the winding mountain road to the resort at its base Maman stared silently out the van’s window and seemed to daydream. Thirty minutes later they reached the cobblestoned parking area outside the great lodge, at the center of an exclusive little shopping district.

Philippe de Savin, tall and handsome, walked out of the lodge as they crossed its stone terrace. With him were several people whom Sebastien remembered vaguely from parties at their house in Paris. Antoine suddenly became brusque and whispered to Sebastien to hold Maman’s hand.

When Sebastien did so he found it trembling. Alarmed, he looked over at his mother’s pale, strained face. She was staring at one of the women among Papa’s friends. “
Madame la comtesse
,” she said softly. “I didn’t know you were visiting.”

The woman nodded without smiling, then turned and walked away. Papa looked angry. His other friends abruptly said that they had to finish their argument about the Americans’ President Kennedy—some admired him, some didn’t. They would settle the disagreement over hot rum inside.

After they left, Papa lowered an icy blue glare on Maman, He looked so strong and certain all the time; Sebastien wanted to be like him, but wished that he weren’t so stern. Maman’s hand clenched Sebastien’s until it hurt.

“
Here
you invited her?” Maman asked in a bitter voice. “Where the family would be?”

Papa frowned harder. “Go back to the chalet, Gwenael.”

He pivoted in his very formal, soldierly way—Papa had been a resistance hero during World War II—and walked back across the terrace. When he disappeared into the lodge Maman seemed to shrink and sag. Sebastien gazed from Maman’s tragic eyes to Bridgette’s tearful ones and Antoine’s furious glower.

“What is it?” Sebastien demanded. “You all know. Tell me. What’s wrong with Papa?”

Antoine grabbed him by one shoulder. “Come. We’ll bring Maman some hot chocolate. Bridgette, you and Maman sit down at a table.”

Sebastien protested by dragging his feet as his brother pulled him toward the lodge. Looking back he saw Bridgette, her arm around Maman, heading to a chair.

“What is it?” Sebastien asked again, and wrenched away from Antoine’s grip. “I’m old enough. Don’t treat me like a baby.”

Muscles flexed in Antoine’s clenched jaw. “So be it. I learned about Papa when I was only a year older than you.” They went inside the lodge through enormous double doors carved with Alpine landscapes. The room was filled with plush chairs and game tables. Waiters moved regally among patrons dressed in beautiful ski clothes. Other skiers stood around a large stone fireplace in the center of the room. The place smelled of wood smoke, fine liquor, and money. Papa and his friends were not in sight.

“Here. Come here.” Antoine led Sebastien aside. They watched the crowd. “Listen closely and try to understand. Maman loves our Papa more than anyone else in the world, even more than she loves us. You’ll realize that when you get older and see her through a man’s eyes.”

“Of course she loves Papa! And he loves her!”

“No. He is ashamed of her because she comes from common people. He thought she could fit in with his friends, but she never learned how. She’s no good to him as a hostess. She can’t help him entertain his important business contacts. All she can do is raise children. But he won’t leave her, because he knows that she would never give him a divorce. Maman is old-fashioned. In fact, sometimes I don’t think Maman even lives in the same century with us.”

“You’re lying! Lying! Why would he be ashamed of her?”

Antoine shook him roughly. “She was just a fisherman’s daughter he met on a holiday during the war! She was a good Catholic girl who wouldn’t screw him unless he married her! He thought he was going to die at Normandy, so the marriage wouldn’t matter. But he didn’t die—and so there he was, stuck with an ignorant little Breton girl not fit
to be more than a servant. Our maman. And me, a son he didn’t expect. So he made the best of it!”

Sebastien shoved him away. “How do you know all this?”

“Grandfather told me before he died. He was a cruel old man. He wanted to divide Maman from us children by making us feel ashamed of her. He said she trapped Papa into marriage. I’ve never told anyone this, but you.
We are mistakes
, do you understand? Papa loves us in his own way, but he doesn’t love Maman, and under different circumstances he would never have married her. He stayed with her out of duty and gave her more children to keep her mind off her loneliness!
So we are all just the result of Papa’s mistake.
”

Sebastien could scarcely comprehend the idea. Maman, unloved? Himself, unloved?
A mistake
?

“I don’t like how Papa conducts his affairs,” Antoine declared. “This time he’s been too careless.”

The
comtesse
strolled from a back room, and men turned to study her as she went to a table and spoke with the people there. Antoine made a sound of disgust and started forward, gesturing for Sebastien to follow. The
comtesse
saw them approach and stiffened. She ran a lovely hand, beautifully manicured, over hair the color of wheat and toyed with the ends that curled in a perpetual flip atop her shoulders.

“Hello again,” she said warily, as Antoine and Sebastien stopped in front of her.

Antoine gave her a mocking bow. “
Madame la comtesse
, I would like to present my brother, Sebastien. He is no longer a child.”

“What nonsense is this?” the
comtesse
asked impatiently.

Antoine turned to Sebastien. “Little brother, I present to you
madame la comtesse
. I went to bed with her when I was fourteen, but now she sleeps with Papa. She is the best-known of Papa’s whores.”

The
comtesse
slapped Antoine quickly and efficiently, as if she’d had great practice in slapping people who insulted her. Sebastien stared at her in shock. Papa had put his
zob
inside someone beside Maman? And his betrayal was another source of her unhappiness?

“If you ever speak to my maman again I’ll kill you,” he told the
comtesse
.

She laughed sharply and glared from him to Antoine. “I have no need to speak to your maman. Someday you boys will understand why your father needs me. He honors his mistakes. What more do you want?”

“She’s not a mistake, you whore! And neither am I!” Sebastien yelled. The room went silent. Heads turned. Philippe de Savin strode out of the back and moved swiftly through the crowd. His patrician face held an expression so fierce that people leapt out of his path. The
comtesse
stepped aside as he came to Antoine and Sebastien.

“You disgrace me,” he told them in a soft, deadly voice. “Take your mother and go back to the chalet. I’ll see you both before bedtime in my study.”

“Let the punishment fit your conscience,” Antoine told him. “But leave Sebastien out of it.”

“No,” Sebastien said. He was close to crying with fury. “I don’t care what he does or says to me now.” He looked at his father evenly. “I hate you.” Then he turned and walked outdoors with a measured, dignified gate. Once outside, however, he broke into a run and headed straight to Bridgette and Maman. “We’ll go home and have hot chocolate,” he told them, his voice trembling.