Miracle (13 page)

Maman gazed at him in horror. “Oh, no, no.”

He hugged her. “It’s all right, Maman. I love you. I love you.”

Antoine reached them a second later. Stiff and silent, he directed everyone to the van. Maman huddled in the front seat and buried her face in her hands. She remained frozen and stonelike, until they were halfway up the mountain. Then she snapped her head up and gazed fixedly out the window. “Stop, Antoine. Stop at that curve. I want to see heaven.”

Sebastien traded a bewildered look with Bridgette. Antoine parked the van on the side of the road. Everyone got out, watching Maman worriedly. “Heaven, Maman?” Antoine asked.

“Oh, yes, yes! Come and see!”

Antoine took her hand. They walked up the road to the curve. On its outer rim was a narrow ledge. The lip of the ledge was guarded by a low wooden barricade; beyond it the mountain plunged several hundred meters to a grove of trees.

Moving as if entranced, Maman staggered through the snow and stopped close to the barricade. She raised her voice in the old Breton language, which only she understood; it was no more French than a Welshman’s tongue, to which it was related. She appeared to listen, then squared her shoulders. Wearily she lifted her hand to the blue sky, the mountains, and finally to her children, as she turned to face them.

“I asked Saint Yves-of-the-Truth to put the right where it should be and the wrong where it should be. And he has answered me. Content I shall be. Come here, my loves.”

Sebastien and Bridgette clambered through the snow to her, and she engulfed them in her slender arms, along with Antoine. All of them cried, even Antoine. Maman laughed too brightly in the midst of it. “Let your maman do something useful, for once. Let me drive the rest of the way to the chalet.”

“Maman,” Antoine began with gentle reproach.

“Sssh! Let her drive!” Bridgette said firmly.

Sebastien nodded. “Yes!”

Antoine gave in with a tense shrug. Maman went confidently to the driver’s seat of the van. Antoine settled on the left beside her. Bridgette took a place in the backseat again, but Sebastien climbed over the seat and sat on the floor of the storage area, where the skis were stacked. He needed to think about everything he’d heard at the lodge, and he wanted privacy to do it. He felt as if he was bleeding inside.

Maman started the car. But then she twisted in her seat and held out her hands to Antoine. “My firstborn,” she said tenderly. “Your papa and I made you during the war. We made you three days after we met. We made you the night after we were married in my parish church.”

“Yes, Maman,” he said awkwardly.

She twisted toward the back and took Bridgette’s hands. “My first daughter. I wanted a girl so much that time, and the saints gave me such a beauty!”

Bridgette patted Maman’s hands. “I love you, too.”

Next Maman stretched her hands out to Sebastien. He stood up and reached over the seat, feeling frightened for reasons he didn’t understand. Her dark brown eyes gleamed at him. “And you—you are my magic. I gave you my grandfather’s name. You’re the only one Papa would let me give a Breton name. Sebastien. It was the name of a saint, you know.”

“Maman, let’s go home,” Sebastien urged.

She nodded. “Yes. Yes!”

Sebastien sat down on the floor again and wedged himself into a corner behind the seat. He didn’t feel as old as he had at the lodge. Right now he wanted to hide like a child. Maman put the van in gear and stepped on the accelerator.

The unexpected jolt threw Sebastien into the skis. He fought for a handhold as they poked him sharply. The tires squealed on the road. Bridgette made a horrified sound as the van skidded. Sebastien crashed into the wheel well with a force that knocked the breath from him. Dazed, he heard Antoine shouting, “No, no, no,
please
!”

Sebastien slammed into the back of the seat as the van hit the barricade. Bridgette’s keening screams filled his ears, but for one second the momentum slowed. Then wood shrieked as the barricade split open. The ragged pieces clawed at the sides of the hurtling van like fingernails on a chalkboard.

Sebastien fell in strange directions. The world had turned upside down. Something sliced across his chin. He threw his hands out mindlessly and hit the handle of the van’s back doors. Suddenly he looked up into blue sky. He was flying, but when a cloud surrounded him he came to a stop.

Half conscious, he lay still for a minute. His own violent shivering made him aware finally that he lay on his back in a snowbank. He lurched into a sitting position as his senses returned. The front of his white ski jacket was covered in
blood, and when he touched a hand to his chin he felt a deep gash.

Far down the hillside the van was crushed between two trees. It lay on its side, a mangled hulk. Sebastien started toward it—falling, crawling, feeling nothing but terror.

“Maman! Antoine! Bridgette! Where are you?”

He circled the van, staring at its slowly revolving wheels. And then he screamed. Where the windshield had been, Antoine hung half out of the van, face-up, his body bent as if giant hands had snapped his backbone like a twig. His arms dangled beside his head, and he was covered in broken glass and blood. “Get up! Get up!” Sebastien begged. Antoine’s eyes remained unblinking, blank.

Sebastien staggered to where the van’s underside lay exposed, dripping oil and fuel into the snow. He climbed atop the vehicle and looked through the hole where the side door had been. The seats were crushed together, and the van’s roof was flattened against them. Bridgette was twisted inside the wreckage, but one of her arms hung free. The hand fluttered as if an unseen puppeteer were jerking it crazily.

Bridgette was alive! Sebastien climbed inside as best he could. He yanked at the seats and searched with frantic eyes for his sister’s face. But when he pulled a torn piece of upholstery aside he saw what had happened to her head, and he knew that she couldn’t be alive. The hope inside his chest died, along with all other emotion. Numbly he climbed from the van and looked around. A dozen meters away Maman lay sprawled in the snow. With her fur coat twisted around her she looked like a small, broken animal.

When he reached her he slumped to his knees and touched her ashen face. Her eyes were shut. A bright red trickle of blood snaked from under the hair at her temple, making a puddle in her ear. Another streamed from one corner of her mouth. He wiped at it with the sleeve of his ski jacket. “Maman,” Sebastien whispered. “I’ll take care of you.”

She opened her eyes wide, as if startled. Her lips moved
soundlessly. He bent over and put his ear against them. “Forgive, forgive, forgive,” she murmured.

“An accident, Maman! It was an accident.”

“No. I had to do it. Forgive me, Philippe, forgive me.”

“Maman, it’s Sebastien. Papa isn’t here.”

“No, Sebastien is dead, too. All of them I killed, Philippe. I had to take them with me. I saw the
Ankou
with his scythe and his coach. He came for me and them, too. He demanded them. I gave them to him.”

Terrified, he shook her. “I’m Sebastien! The
Ankou
didn’t get me! I’m alive!”

“Sssh, sssh. He will return if you protest.” A froth of blood rose in her mouth and puffed gently with each word she whispered. “Saint Yves-of-the-Truth has placed the blame for everything on me. I take my punishment. Forgive.”

“Maman,
don’t
die. Don’t. I forgive you.” Sebastien put his arms around her and cradled her head. “I’m Sebastien. I’m alive. I’ll take care of you. I won’t let you die.” He huddled over her in the snow, patting her face, sobbing, fiercely repeating his pledge. She stared at him. Her eyes were still on him an hour later, when the first people came to help.

“Your maman has gone to sleep. Let her rest,” someone said, as a stranger closed her eyes.

Sebastien had stopped crying long before. His mind was filled with a confusion so terrible that it froze his grief. He sat back and looked at the rescuers in bitter, black rage. Fools. She wasn’t sleeping, she was dead. She had killed Antoine and Bridgette, and then she’d let herself die. He hated her for it, but he loved her, too. Only one thing was clear—Papa was to blame, and Papa would pay for his
mistakes
.

In the weeks and months afterward everyone commented on his courage. They marveled at his control, at the way he continued to be strong, never crying, never asking for the least bit of sympathy. He became intensely protective of little Annette and Jacques, but where before he had been very loving with the servants and with Pio Beaucaire, he became reserved.

Papa’s grieving attempts at friendship filled Sebastien with contempt, and he eventually told Papa with ruthless pleasure that Maman had driven over the ledge on purpose. Papa said he didn’t believe that, but the truth shone in his eyes.

Despair and anger consumed Sebastien. It was not safe to love people; they could kill you because of it; even your Maman could kill you. Guilt tortured him for years. Why hadn’t he died, too? Maman had insisted that he couldn’t escape, and yet he had, at least for a while. He would have to be very, very worthy of their sacrifice, to atone. He would punish Papa at every opportunity, but more than that, he would punish himself.

Finally, out of the torment and the shriveled emotions that nearly crippled him, came one bright, obsessive goal—he would mend people. He would save so many lives that he could make up for not saving the ones that had counted most to him.

S
ebastien de Savin was going so far away that he might as well have never existed. Amy’s thoughts were dark and desperate as she sat on the white satin bedspread and traced the quilted imprint of a flower, flowing and abstract, a designer’s fantasy. Dressed for work, she frowned at her denim shorts. One hand rose to tug angrily at the cheap white blouse she wore.

She pictured herself older, beautiful, wearing wonderful clothes. She stepped from a long black limousine into an alley of screaming, waving people. Sebastien, looking handsome and worldly in a black tuxedo, took her hand and walked beside her.

Real kind of you folks to come to the premiere of my movie
, she called, waving one hand regally, with all her fingers clamped together like Queen Elizabeth.
My escort? Why, he’s a doctor. A French doctor. And let me tell you, folks, he worships the ground I walk on
.

Her daydream ended with the sound of Sebastien’s brisk, formal knock at her bedroom door. Amy jumped up and ran to it, her heart hammering.
See, folks? He can barely stand to be away from me
.

He stood in the doorway adjusting a silver cufflink on one sleeve of a crisp dress shirt. His gray trousers were sharply creased. The leather of his soft gray dress shoes gleamed. His hair had been brushed until the heavy, coffee-colored locks gave off a burnished sheen. Only the faintest
of beard shadow shown on the carefully shaved planes of his cheeks.

She caught her breath at so much understated perfection. He didn’t need somebody like her. Remembering how she’d tried to kiss him last night was humiliating.

“Hi. What’sa matter? Morning,” she mumbled, overwhelmed by this towering, elegant presence. Then she blurted, “You look like you ought to be posing on a little platform in the men’s wear department. Nice suit. Who died?”

He frowned, seeming surprised and at a loss for words. It amazed her that she was able to startle him at times. She supposed he considered her weird.

“Good morning,” he replied finally. “I’m dressed this way because I have a meeting with the surgeon who supervised my training. I suppose you’d call it a farewell interview.
Finis.
”

Despair knotted her stomach.
He’s leaving. Forever
. “Hmmm, did you want to talk to me about something? Is anything wrong?”

“Yes, we need to talk. Nothing’s wrong. You always assume that something is wrong.”

“Life is safer if you spot trouble ahead of time.”

“Ah. Perhaps I agree. But don’t always assume that the trouble is your fault.” He ran a hand over an obstinate wisp at the crown of his dark hair. It was a habit of his. Every morning at breakfast she watched him try to tame the sprig. She loved that little cowlick. It almost made him a regular person. “May we talk, for a moment?” he asked.

Amy shivered. “Talk? Where? You want to come in?” She gestured clumsily behind her, then realized she was pointing toward the bed. Confusion and sorrow made her grimace; despite everything, she felt a smooth, deep need flowing through her body because of him.

He jerked his head toward the hall. “Come to the living room, please.”

Her breath pushing harshly inside her lungs, she followed him there and sat on an unadorned black chair that glittered like wet coal. He went to a white sofa and gracefully folded his tall body onto the sharp angles.

She was embarrassed to look at him, afraid she’d cry.
She stared at a piece of Steuben crystal on the coffee table between them. “Are you lookin’ forward to going to Africa?”

“Not really. The Ivory Coast is an affluent country, and Abidjan is a progressive, modern city, but the hospital there can’t compare to those in Europe or America. But I have to serve my time in the national service, and working in west Africa is an appropriate way to do it.”