Leap of Faith (3 page)

“When will you send her away?” Sophie asked in a whisper, after Marie-Ange left them. She couldn’t even begin to imagine parting with her.

“The day after tomorrow,” he said, as the old woman sobbed. “I will drive her to Paris myself, and put her on the plane. She will fly to Chicago, and then change planes. And her aunt will have someone pick her up and drive her to the farm. I believe it is where Mr. Hawkins grew up,” he said, to reassure her, but her own loss was too great now to be comforted. She had lost not only employers she admired and loved, and the boy she had cared for since his birth, but she was about to lose the child that she had adored since the moment she first laid eyes on her. Marie-Ange was a ray of sunshine to all who knew her. And no pension would ever compensate her for what she was about to lose now. It was almost like losing her own daughter, and in some ways harder, because the child needed her, and was so open and loving.

“How will we know if they are good to her?” Sophie asked with a look of anguish. “What if she’s not happy?”

“She has no choice,” he said simply, “it is her only family, Madame. She must live there, and it is a good thing that Mrs. Collins will take her.”

“Has she children of her own?” Sophie asked, clutching at some hope that Marie-Ange would find comfort and love there.

“I believe she is quite elderly, but she sounds intelligent and sensible. She was surprised when I called, but willing to take the child on. She said to send her with warm clothes, it is cold there in the winter.” It might as well have been on the moon for all Sophie knew of Iowa. She couldn’t bear the thought of sending Marie-Ange away, and vowed to send all the warm clothes she could, and everything Marie-Ange loved in her room, toys and dolls, and photographs of Robert and her parents, so she would at least have familiar things with her.

She managed to fit it all into three huge suitcases, and the lawyer made no comment at the number of bags when he came to pick up Marie-Ange two days later. And as he watched her, he felt his own heart ache. She looked as though she had received such a lethal blow that she was barely able to tolerate or absorb what had happened. There was a look of shock and agony in her eyes, which only grew worse as she sobbed in Sophie’s arms, and the old woman looked equally distraught as she held her. He stood there for ten minutes, feeling helpless and uncomfortable as they cried, and then finally gently touched the child’s shoulder.

“We must go now, Marie-Ange. We don’t want to miss the plane in Paris.”

“Yes, I do,” she sobbed miserably. “I don’t want to go to Iowa. I want to stay here.” He did not remind her that the château would be sold, along with everything in it. There was no reason to keep it, with Marie-Ange being so young and going so far away. Her life at the Château de Marmouton was over, and whether or not he said it, she knew it. She looked around desperately before they left, as though trying to take it all with her. And Sophie was still sobbing uncontrollably as they drove away, and she promised to write to Marie-Ange daily. The car was already gone when the old woman fell to her knees in the courtyard, sobbing in anguish. And after they left, she went into the kitchen, and then back to her cottage, and packed her things. She left it immaculate, and took a last look around, and then she walked outside into the September sunshine, and locked the door behind her. She had already made plans to stay with her friends at the farm for a while, and then she would have to go to Normandy to stay with her daughter.

On the long drive to Paris, Marie-Ange did not speak a single word to her parents’ lawyer. He made a few attempts at conversation at first, and finally gave up. She had nothing to say, and he knew that there was little, if anything, he could say to console her. She would just have to learn to live with it, and make a new life with her great-aunt in Iowa. He was sure that in time, she would be happy. She could not remain disconsolate forever.

They stopped for lunch along the way, but she ate nothing at all, and when he offered her an ice cream at the airport late that afternoon, she shook her head and declined it. The blue eyes looked huge in her face, and the curls looked slightly disheveled. But Sophie had put her in a pretty blue dress, with a smocked front, that her mother had bought her in Paris. And she was wearing a little matching blue sweater. She was wearing her best patent leather shoes, and the gold locket that had been her last gift from her brother. It would have been impossible to guess, from looking at her, that she had spent the entire summer running barefoot and bedraggled through the orchards. She looked like a tragic little princess as she boarded the plane, and he stood for a long time watching her, but she never turned to wave. She didn’t say anything except a polite “Au revoir, Monsieur,” when she shook his hand, and the stewardess led her away to board the plane that would take her to Chicago. He had explained to them quietly that she had lost her entire family, and was being sent to relatives in Iowa. It was easy for them to see that she was desperately unhappy.

The chief stewardess had been overcome with sympathy for Marie-Ange, and had promised to keep an eye on her on the flight, and to get her safely on the next flight once they reached Chicago. He thanked her politely, but it made his heart ache to think of what Marie-Ange had been through. And he was glad that she had a great-aunt at least to take her in and bring her comfort.

He stayed until the plane left the ground, and then went out to begin the long drive back to Marmouton, thinking not only of the child, but of the work he still had to do, disposing of their belongings, the château, and her father’s business. And he was grateful, for her sake at least, that her father had left his affairs in good order.

Marie-Ange stayed awake most of the night on the flight, and only after they urged her several times did she pick at a small piece of chicken, and take a few bites of bread. But other than that, she ate nothing, and she said nothing to them. She sat staring out the window through most of the night, as though she could see something there, but there was nothing to see, nothing to dream of now, nothing to hope for. At eleven, she felt as though her entire life were behind her. And when she closed her eyes at last, she could see their faces as clearly as if she had seen them in the locket. She had a photograph of Sophie with her, as well, and her daughter’s address. Marie-Ange had promised to write to her as soon as she reached her great-aunt’s farm, and Sophie had promised to answer.

They reached Chicago at nine P.M. local time, and an hour later, she was on a flight to Iowa, with her three huge suitcases checked in with the baggage. And at eleven-thirty, the plane touched down in Fort Dodge, as Marie-Ange stared out the window. It was dark outside, and hard to see anything, but the ground looked flat for miles around, and the airport seemed tiny, as a stewardess led Marie-Ange down the steps to the runway, and walked her into the terminal, where a man in a broad-brimmed cowboy hat was waiting. He had a mustache, and serious dark eyes, and Marie-Ange looked frightened of him when he introduced himself to the stewardess as her great-aunt’s foreman. Mrs. Collins had given him a letter that authorized him to pick Maries Ange up, and the stewardess in charge of her handed him her passport. The stewardess then said good-bye to her, and the foreman took Marie-Ange by the hand, and went to get her bags. He was startled by the size and number of her bags, and smiled down at her.

“It’s a good thing I brought my truck, isn’t it?” he said, and she didn’t answer. And it suddenly occurred to him that she might not speak English in spite of her American father. All she had said was “good-bye” to the stewardess, and he had noticed that she had a French accent. But it was hardly surprising, she had grown up in France, and her mother was French. “Are you hungry?” he asked, pronouncing the words precisely so she would understand him, and she shook her head and said nothing.

He had a porter carry one of the bags to the truck, and he carried the two others, and on the way he told her his name was Tom, and he worked for her Aunt Carole. Marie-Ange listened and nodded, as he wondered if she had been traumatized into silence by her parents’ death, or if she was just timid. There was a look of sorrow in her eyes that tore his heart out.

“Your aunt is a good woman,” he said reassuringly, as he began to drive, with her bags in the back of his pickup truck, and Marie-Ange made no comment. She hated her already for taking her away from her home, and Sophie. Marie-Ange had wanted so much to stay there. More than any of them could fathom.

They rode together for an hour, and it was nearly one o’clock in the morning, when he turned off the highway onto a narrow road, and they bumped along for a few minutes. And then she saw a large house loom out of the night at her. She saw two silos, and a barn, and some other buildings. It seemed like a big place to her, but as different from Marmouton as though it had been on another planet. To Marie-Ange, it might as well have been. And when they stopped in front of the house, no one came out to meet them. Instead, Tom took her bags out of the truck, and walked into the farm’s old, somewhat dilapidated kitchen, and Marie-Ange stood hesitantly in the doorway behind him. She seemed as though she were afraid of what she would find when she entered. And he turned to her with a gentle smile and beckoned.

“Come on in, Marie,” he said, losing half of her name. “I’ll see if I can find your Aunt Carole. She said she’d wait up for you.” Marie-Ange had been traveling for twenty-two hours by then, and she looked exhausted, but her eyes seemed huge as she watched him. She jumped when she heard a sound, and then saw an old woman in a wheelchair, watching them from a doorway, with a dimly lit room behind her. It looked terrifying to a child of eleven.

“That’s a silly-looking dress to wear to a farm,” the woman said by way of greeting. She had a harsh, angular face, and eyes that were only vaguely reminiscent of Marie-Ange’s father’s. And she had long bony hands that rested on the wheels of her wheelchair. Marie-Ange was startled to see that she was crippled, and a little frightened by it. “You look like you’re going to a party.” It was not a compliment, but a criticism, and Sophie had packed a great many other “silly” dresses like it. “Do you speak English?” the woman Marie-Ange assumed was her great-aunt asked brusquely, as the child nodded. “Thanks for picking her up, Tom,” she said to her foreman, and he patted Marie-Ange’s shoulder encouragingly as he left them. He had kids of his own, and grandchildren, and he felt sorry for the child who had come so far from home, for such tragic reasons. She was a pretty little thing, and she had looked terrified all the way from the airport, despite all his efforts to reassure her. He knew that Carole Collins was hardly a cozy woman. She had never had children of her own, and never seemed interested in talking to them. The children of her employees and friends meant nothing to her. It was an irony that, so late in life, she should find her path crossed with this child. And the foreman hoped it would soften her a little.

“You must be tired,” she said, as she looked at Marie-Ange, once they were alone in the kitchen, and Marie-Ange had to fight back tears, as she longed for the loving embrace of Sophie. “You can go to bed in a minute.”

Marie-Ange was tired, but more than that, she was finally hungry, but Carole Collins was the first person that night who did not offer her anything to eat, and Marie-Ange was afraid to ask her.

“Do you have anything at all to say?” she asked, looking straight at Marie-Ange, and the child thought it was a reproach that she had not thanked her.

“Thank you for letting me come,” she said in precise, but accented English.

“I don’t think either of us had much choice in this,” Carole Collins said matter-of-factly. “We’ll have to make the best of it. You can do chores here.” She wanted to get things straight right from the beginning. “I hope you brought something more sensible than that to wear,” she said over her shoulder, as she turned her wheelchair around with a practiced hand.

Carole Collins had had polio as a young girl, and never regained the use of her legs, although she was able to drag herself around on crutches with braces on her legs, but she chose not to. The wheelchair was less humiliating, and more efficient, and she had used it for more than fifty years. She had turned seventy that April. She had been widowed when her husband died in the war, and had never remarried. The farm had been her father’s, and she ran it well, and had eventually annexed it to her brother’s land after he died. John’s father had been her brother, and his wife had remarried and moved away, and was only too happy to let his sister buy her out. Carole Collins was the family’s only survivor. She knew a lot about farming, and absolutely nothing about children.

She was giving up her spare room to Marie-Ange, and she wasn’t pleased about it, although she seldom if ever had visitors anyway. But it seemed like a waste of a good room to Carole, and she led Marie-Ange to it, through the dimly lit living room, and down a long dark hallway, as Marie-Ange followed. She had to fight back tears every inch of the way, from grief, terror, and exhaustion. And the room she saw when Carole turned the light on for her was spare and barren. There was a cross on one wall, and a Norman Rockwell print on the other. The bed had a metal frame, a thin mattress, and there were two sheets and a blanket folded neatly on it, a single pillow and a towel. There was a small closet, and a narrow dresser, and even Marie-Ange could see that there would be nowhere to put what she had brought in her three huge suitcases, but she would have to face that dilemma in the morning.

“The bathroom is down the hall,” Carole explained. “You share it with me, and you’d better not spend too much time in it. But I guess you’re not old enough to do that.” Marie-Ange nodded. Her mother had always liked to take long, leisurely baths, and when they were going out, she spent a long time doing her makeup, and Marie-Ange loved to sit and watch her. But Carole Collins didn’t wear makeup, and she was wearing jeans and a man’s shirt, and her gray hair was cut short, as her nails were. There was nothing frivolous or particularly feminine about her. She just looked old and grim to Marie-Ange as they looked at each other. “I assume you know how to make your bed. If not, you can figure it out,” she said with no warmth whatsoever, and Marie-Ange nodded. Sophie had taught her to make her bed long before, although she was never very good at it, and when Sophie would help her, Robert always complained because he had to make his own bed.