It was a lonely life for Gaëlle, and she was riding her bike back from the village late one afternoon, thinking about her father and brother. She missed them both. But she and her mother had food and a place to live, thanks to the mercy of the commandant, and she was grateful for that.
She was halfway home, when she saw a police truck outside a house, and gendarmes, and she slowed before they could see her, and got off the road for a moment. She didn’t want to be questioned by them, and as she watched from the distance, she saw a familiar sight that brought back painful memories for her. A man and a woman with two small children, and the woman was carrying an infant and crying, as they were forced from their home at gunpoint and got into the truck. And as she watched the agonizing scene that reminded her of the Feldmanns, although they looked like simpler people and the house was small, the déjà vu was agonizing for her, and she saw a sudden movement out of the corner of her eye. When she looked more closely, she saw a small child climb out a side window from what must have been the basement. It was a little boy, and he was cowering behind some rusty pipes. They seemed to have forgotten him as they drove away. She saw that he was wearing short pants and had no coat on, and he was shaking as he hid, barely visible except if you knew he was there.
Gaëlle watched and waited, and he didn’t move as she stared at him from where she stood. She wondered if the soldiers would come back for him, but no one did. And after she thought she had waited long enough, she leaped on her bicycle and rode past him, stopped a few feet away, and went back to look behind the pipes where he was hiding. He stared at her in terror, too frightened to move. He looked about four years old. She reached a hand out to him and he shrank into the shadows, desperately afraid of her.
“Come. I won’t hurt you,” she said softly.
“Will you take me to my mama?” She nodded, lying to him. And he took a step toward her, and came out from where he had stayed hidden since climbing out the window. She lifted him swiftly into the basket of her bike, and covered him completely with her coat, which she took off hastily. She looked around to make sure no one had seen them, and was satisfied that no one had.
“Don’t talk, don’t make any sound,” she said, loud enough for him to hear her, and he didn’t respond. He was curled up in a ball in the basket, which was just big enough for him. It was cold riding home, and she pedaled as fast as she could, with her precious cargo, with no idea what she would do with him or where she would go. But she knew what she had to do. It had been an instant decision as soon as she saw him, and she tried to think of where she could hide him until she figured it out. She remembered an old shed past their orchards on a back path of the estate where no one ever went. It was near the cemetery, and she had been there recently to tend her father’s grave. It was a small shed for equipment, and there was a cellar underground where they had kept cider in better days. It was the only place she could think of where he’d be safe, for now anyway.
She rode past the château on the back road, toward the cemetery, and no one noticed her. It was dark when they got to the shed. She wheeled her bike inside, and it smelled of apples. It had a dirt floor, which was frozen hard, and a trap door to the cellar she remembered, although she hadn’t been inside it in years. She and Thomas used to hide there when they played games. She lifted the boy carefully out of the basket and set him on his feet, as he looked up at her in the moonlight coming through the windows. His face was pale, and his eyes were huge in the small face.
“What’s your name?” she asked him in a gentle voice, bending down to talk to him. He looked clean, and his clothes were neat, his hair had been brushed, and she could see that he was a child his mother loved and took good care of. She wondered if she had told him to escape through the window, or if he had figured it out himself. The other two children had looked slightly younger than he was, and the baby was very small. He was the oldest of the four children.
“I’m Jacob,” he said softly, still afraid of her, and not sure what she was going to do with him, nor was she.
“I’m Gaëlle,” she said solemnly, and ran a gentle hand across his hair and kissed his cheek.
“Where’s my mama?”
“I don’t know,” she said honestly, and then she asked him to do something she knew would be hard for him. “I need you to be very brave. I have to leave you here for a little while. You can’t go outside. I’ll come back later. No one will find you here. Will you do that for me? Stay in this little house in the dark?” For a child of his age, it was a terrifying prospect, but his safety depended on it. He nodded after a minute.
“Will the bad policemen come back, with the guns?”
“Not if you’re inside here and are very quiet. I’ll bring you something to eat.” He nodded again. She stroked his head, smiled, and wheeled her bike back outside, and then rode back to the château. She had left her coat with him in case he was cold, and as she headed toward home, with her cheeks flaming from how fast she was pedaling, she prayed that no one would find him, and she would think of a way to keep him safe. She was doing it for Rebekah, and her family, and all the people she couldn’t save. She wanted to save this one life now, to make up for the rest.
She left her bike in the courtyard and went upstairs to check on her mother. She was asleep, as usual, and had grown disastrously thin. She looked almost like a cadaver as she slept. Gaëlle left the sleeping powder next to her bed in case she woke up, and went back to her room, thinking about what she had to do. She had to get to the kitchen, and steal some food for him, and then she wanted to go back and settle him in for the night, and in the morning she would have to decide what to do. There was no one she could ask, she had no idea where to go, or how to hide a child for a long period of time, as others did. And she couldn’t leave him in the orchard shed forever. She prayed to find an answer, just as Apolline showed up with some food for her, and a tray with soup and a small crust of bread for her mother. There was another crust for Gaëlle, from the commandant’s table, and some dried meat and a little stew, and a small sliver of cheese. Gaëlle thanked her and wrapped the bread, meat, and cheese in a napkin, and put some water in the thermos she kept in her room, and she quickly ate the stew herself since she had no way to carry it to Jacob. And an hour later she went out again, with the food in her basket, and a blanket she had taken from the linen cupboard they used upstairs.