“What?”
“Claudette. Pelletier. That’s your birth mother’s name.”
Danny stares at her.
“And she. Is. Alive.”
The green in his eyes behind the glasses darkens. “How is it possible?” he whispers. “Wasn’t she murdered by the Nazis?”
“She lives in the Loire Valley.”
“She survived?”
Sharon winces. “There’s more.”
“What?”
“She and your father weren’t married.”
He swallows. “She gave me up for adoption?”
“She lost you in the mayhem of the war. She searched for you for years.”
He takes off his glasses. “God Almighty,” he murmurs. “How? How did you find out?”
“I did some sleuthing. Sorry I did it behind your back. No, I’m not sorry I broke my promise.” Her voice cracks. “I would have been happy if anyone did this for me.”
Danny drops his face into his hands. For a long moment all she hears is heavy breathing, as if he’s trying to control a sob. Then, while the fingers of his left hand cover his face, his right hand slides along the table and finds hers. He wraps his hand around Sharon’s. “She’s alive?” he whispers. “She lost me?”
She feels the warm skin, callused from hours on the helms of ships, the long fingers strong and delicate enough to manipulate complex instruments.
She still hasn’t dropped the second bombshell. She begins with a small detail. “Your name at birth was Benjamin-Pierre Pelletier.”
“Benjamin?” He lets out a soft chuckle and repeats the name with a French accent, as if tasting it. “Benjamin-Pierre Pelletier.”
In her peripheral vision, Sharon catches Limon approaching. She dabs her eyes with a napkin while Limon’s glance darts from her to Danny, whose face is still covered. Sharon figures that he suspects that this is a lovers’ quarrel. “It’s not what you think,” she tells Limon.
Danny raises his head, wipes his glasses, and takes a sip of water.
“There’s no time for private sentiments,” Limon says. “Did you brief her?” When Danny nods, Limon says to Sharon, “When you’re done here, in a week or so, call my Paris office and they’ll arrange for your flight back home.”
“I’ll be persona non grata in France,” Danny murmurs to her. “I won’t be able to come back.”
“Unfortunately, so will I. This is bigger than any of us,” Limon says, his tone stern.
Sharon looks up at him. What price will this war hero pay, former chief of the navy, now a diplomat revered by the French whose wife moves in Parisian high society? He can’t guess that Danny’s personal stake is of an entirely different nature.
Limon squints at his watch and tells Danny, “A briefing in my room in six minutes.”
Sharon stands up. Outside, the calm weather still holds. The bar clock shows it’s almost four. The clock in her heart beats toward a major crisis. Had she launched her search months earlier, she might at least have set a phone appointment for Claudette Pelletier and her son. He would have learned the rest of the story much earlier and could have grappled with what Sharon is still holding back. Instead, massive ripple effects might cause him a painful identity crisis.
All of which is her fault.
Danny rises too and touches her shoulder. “I’ll catch up with you later.” His pinkie lingers on her neck, and its warmth traverses her spine.
“The women are not back home,” Officer Niquet reports when Sharon reaches him close to dinnertime. “They’re probably visiting some relatives for the holiday.”
Sharon is numb with confusion. “Thank you, and joyeux Noël to you and your family.”
“Next year you’ll join us,” he says.
“Wouldn’t that be great?” Of course she won’t be here. As Sharon lowers the phone’s handset into its cradle slowly, her stomach rumbles. Danny leaves tonight, never to be allowed back in France. Where is that woman?
Would Claudette Pelletier travel to Israel to meet him? Her physical limitations make it doubtful.
From the apartment next door come cheerful sounds of a family at their Christmas Eve table, which Rachelle has joined. A little girl sings in a clear, bell-like voice. Sharon looks out at the building across the street; in three lit windows, she sees more families gathered. Pine trees glitter with red bows and gold tinsel. She plugs in the lava lamp, picks up her flute, and plays Rimsky-Korsakov’s “Chanson Indoue” to the melancholic dance of kaleidoscopic colors.
It’s now 8:35. She grabs her coat to go to the dinner at the hotel. The weather has changed drastically again—and for the worse. When she tries to leave the building, the wind is as brutal as the radio forecast predicted. No taxi will be available, she knows. She trudges back upstairs, knocks on the neighbor’s door, and apologizes as she asks Rachelle to drive her the short distance.
“This will turn into a gale-force-nine storm,” Rachelle says while she struggles to keep the car from being blown into the open canal by gusts of winds. “Why not postpone the dinner? No one in her right mind would venture outside. Will someone bring you back?”
“Moka Limon’s chauffeur.” After he drives her up the ramp in his Peugeot to deliver the cognac to the sentry.
“Good, because I won’t go out again.”
The wind is so violent that when Rachelle stops in front of the hotel, Sharon can’t push open the car door. A concierge tethered to the hotel door by a rope pulls her out, grabs both her arms, and drags her into the lobby.
