CHAPTER FORTY-FIVE
March 2002
We reach the top of the hill just as the sun is nearing the horizon. I’d tried, at first, to push my darling girl through the fields in her wheelchair, but it had been too much; the wheels lodged in the mud. So I’d scooped her into my arms and carried her—like a bride over the threshold—the rest of the way. My whole body hurts, but I don’t care. Being able to hold her one last time, to feel her heartbeat against mine, is worth the pain.
Spreading below us now is the vast swath of poppy fields we inherited from Ruby’s parents when they died in 1947. My wife has always said that she feels Ruby’s presence here, especially when the poppies are in bloom. For a long time, I never felt it, but I do now. Now I believe.
After the war, the Red Cross was able to get word to Ruby’s parents about Nadia, and when they came for her, the farmer and his wife gave them the letter Ruby had written just before she died. In it, she told them all about how Charlotte had become her family, and so when it became clear that Charlotte’s parents had perished in Auschwitz, Ruby’s parents insisted upon adopting her and bringing her to California as well. They understood how much Ruby had loved her, and so they loved her too, right from the start. But both of them died before Nadia was two, leaving sole custody of their granddaughter to Charlotte, who had just turned eighteen. After waiting for a visa, I married my darling girl amid the poppies that March and became Nadia’s adopted father.
We were never able to have biological children ourselves, but Nadia is ours in every way that matters, and I can’t imagine loving a child more than we love her. As Ruby and Charlotte discovered so long ago, family is about so much more than blood.
“Do you think I’ll see Ruby, Lucien?” my darling girl asks me now as I set her gently down at the crest of the hill, my arms aching nearly as much as my heart. “And Thomas? And my parents?”
“I think,” I say slowly, my eyes filling with tears, “that they’re with us every day. I think they have been all along.”
Nowhere is that more evident than on this spot. Ruby’s body came home in February 1946, and the month after her parents buried her here, with a silver statue of a poppy to mark her grave, the hill bloomed only in ruby red. Every year since, although the rest of the valley blossoms in a sunset rainbow, this place remains drenched only in crimson. I believe with every cell in my being that it’s a sign that Ruby watches over us from the other side.
My darling girl nods and gazes off toward the east, where the horizon is beginning to melt into the late-afternoon mist. “I imagine sometimes that I can see all the way to Paris from here,” she murmurs. “That I can see into the past. That Ruby is still alive, and Thomas has just shown up at our door, and my parents are coming home any moment now.”
I close my eyes, too choked up to reply. I never knew my wife’s parents, but I love them for raising such a wonderful woman—and for having the foresight to protect her. As for Ruby, well, she was always Charlotte’s, but I love her too. I love her for saving my wife and for the way she fought until the end to save Nadia. There’s not a piece of my world today that would exist if she hadn’t come into Charlotte’s life all those years ago.
I slip my arm around my darling girl and pull her close. “From up here, it sometimes feels like the past and the present collide,” I say. “I feel it too.” We stay that way for a long time, until the poppies begin to glow in the waning evening light.
“You said once that I was brave,” Charlotte says, breaking the long and lovely silence between us.
I smile. “I’m sure I’ve said that many times, my darling.”
“But the first time. When you said it to Philippe.”
I sigh and look off into the distant east once more. “I remember.” It is the fault of those words that Charlotte became part of the Resistance, that Ruby became more involved than she should have been. It’s a black mark on my conscience that I’ve never been able to erase.
“You told Philippe that I was strong and bold.”
“Did I?” I kiss her on the cheek. “I always was a good judge of character.”
I’m teasing her, but the half smile falls from my face as she looks up at me with eyes full of sadness. “What if you were wrong, Lucien?” she asks in a small voice. “What if I’m none of those things?”
“Oh, but you are, my darling. You’re the strongest person I know.”
When I lean in to kiss her once more on the cheek, I can taste her tears. “I’m scared, Lucien,” she says. “I’m frightened of what comes next.”
And that’s when I know for sure. She’s telling me she’s ready to go. For a moment, I don’t say anything, because I can’t. But it’s time for her to find peace, and it’s up to me to help her.
Slowly and with great effort, I get down on one knee and offer her my hand. I did this fifty-five years ago when I asked her to marry me, and I know she realizes I’m asking her to trust me one last time. I guide her down beside me, gently, until we’re lying side by side among Ruby’s poppies, staring up at the sky, which is just turning the deep cornflower blue of early twilight. I can see the first star of the evening flickering above us.
“Remember the first time I held you in my arms this way?” I ask.
She sighs. “I was fourteen. Ruby was asleep, and you appeared in the courtyard outside my window on the rue de Lasteyrie.”
I smile into the darkness and wipe away a tear. “You were crying. You insisted you were all right, and I reminded you that it was okay not to be.”
“I remember.” Her voice is fading, and it takes all my resolve not to beg her to stay with me a little while longer. But that would be for me, not for her.
“It’s okay now too.” I nuzzle her neck and pull her close to me, curling my body around hers just like I did on that night. “I told you then that you had to hold on to hope, my darling girl.”
“And I did. For all these years, Lucien.”
“Good.” I breathe into her hair, inhaling the scent of her. “Then just hold on a little longer. Hope will carry you home.”
“I love you,” she murmurs, so softly that I can barely hear her.
“I love you too.” And just like that night so many years ago, I know that the comfort of my body against hers has soothed her. She melts into me, and as I stroke her hair and murmur “Je t’aime,” again and again, the night closes in, and I can feel her slipping away.
“Ruby,” she murmurs, her voice full of hope and love, and then she smiles softly, and she’s not breathing anymore. I know she’s already made the crossing, and that somehow, Ruby is there to take her home. Peace settles over me as tears fill my eyes.
“Good-bye, my love,” I whisper. I know that one day soon, I’ll see her again.
I struggle to my feet, and in the waning light, I gently lift my sweet Charlotte into my arms for the last time and begin the long walk down the hill, across the fields of poppies.