Danielle Steel - Crossings

“Do I have to go back?”

“No! Now go to your room and leave me alone!” She walked into her bedroom and closed the door and sat down on her bed and cried. Why did it all have to be so goddamn difficult? And a little while later her daughters came in, not to pry, but to comfort their mother. She had got control of herself by then, but her eyes were still red from crying and she was angry at Armand as well as everyone else. He had placed them in an untenable position. She feared for him and she loved him, but she hated him too. Why in God's name couldn't he have come home with them? But it wasn't his home, she knew only too well. France was, and he had stayed there to defend the country he loved, but in a way she could explain to no one.

“Mommy? …” Elisabeth advanced slowly toward the bed and put her arms around her mother.

“Yes, love?”

“We love you.” The declaration brought fresh tears to her eyes as she hugged them.

“I love you too.” She looked at Marie-Ange then. “I'm sorry I shouted at you when I came home. I was just very angry.”

“At us?” Her eldest child looked worried.

“No, at Mrs. Smith. She doesn't understand about Papa.”

“Couldn't you explain it to her?” Elisabeth looked disappointed. She liked her school, even if no one invited her to their houses to play anymore. But she liked going to school, even if Marie-Ange didn't.

Liane shook her head. “No, I couldn't explain it, sweetheart. It's much too complicated to explain to anyone right now.”

“So we don't have to go back?” Marie-Ange hammered the point home.

“No, you don't. I'll have to find you both a new school.”

“In Washington?”

“I don't know.” For the last half hour she had been asking herself the same question. “I'll have to think it out.” The next weekend was Thanksgiving, But that afternoon was the last straw. She saw Elisabeth standing near the hall phone, crying. “What's the matter, love?” She suspected that she missed her friends, if she still had any.

“Nancy Adamson just called to tell me that Mrs. Smith told everyone we had been kicked out of school.”

Liane was horrified. “She said that?” Elisabeth nodded. “But it's not true. I told her …” She rapidly reviewed the conversation in her head, and realized that Mrs. Smith had told her that the children would be happier somewhere else and she had agreed. She sighed and sat down on the floor beside her youngest child. “We agreed that you shouldn't go back. No one kicked you out.”

“Are you sure?”

“I'm positive.”

“Do they hate me?”

“Of course not!” But after what they had done to the girls on Friday, that was a tough one to prove to either child.

“Do they hate Papa?”

Liane considered her words. “No. They don't understand what he's doing.”

“What is he doing?”

“Trying to save France so that we can all go back someday to live.”

“Why?”

“Because that's what Papa does. All his life he has represented France in a lot of different countries. He takes care of France's interests. And that's what he's doing now. He's trying to take care of France so the Germans don't ruin it forever.”

“Then why does everyone say he loves the Germans? Does he?” She was exhausted by the child's questions, but each one needed a thoughtful answer. What she said now would stay with the children for years, and she knew it. They would always remember what she said, and it would color their views about their father and themselves for a lifetime.

“No, Papa doesn't love the Germans.”

“Does he hate them?”

“I don't think Papa hates anyone. But he hates what they're doing to Europe.” Elisabeth nodded slowly. It was what she had needed to hear, and it made her father a good guy.

“Okay.” She stood up then and went slowly upstairs to find her sister. And that night, Liane thought long and hard. She had to do something, and putting them in another Washington school wasn't a solution. She already knew the answer to her own questions, but she hated to do it. She decided to sleep on it one more night, but the next morning, she still had the same answer. She dialed the operator and asked her to place the call. She had waited until noon eastern time to call, which was nine o'clock for him in California. He came to the phone at once, his voice gruff.

“Liane? Is something wrong?”

“No, Uncle George, not really.”

“You sound sick or tired or something.” He was a canny old man. In truth, she was both, but she wouldn't admit it now. She was going home with her tail between her legs and that was bad enough.

“I'm all right.” She decided to get right to the point. “Do you still want us to come out?”

“Of course!” He sounded pleased, and then, “You mean you've finally come to your senses?”

“I guess you could call it that. I want to change the girls’ school, and I thought that as long as I was doing that, we might as well make a big change and come out to California.” He sensed instantly that there were deeper reasons than that. She was far too stubborn to have given in unless she was almost beaten. And she was. More so than he knew.

They made arrangements, Liane all the while holding back tears of anger, but she was grateful that she had somewhere to go. Things could have been a lot worse. There were people all over Europe who were homeless. “Uncle George?”

“Yes, Liane?”

“Thank you for letting us come.”

“Don't be ridiculous, Liane. This is your home too. It always has been.”

“Thank you.” He had made it easy for her and he hadn't mentioned Armand. She went to tell the girls.

Marie-Ange looked at her strangely then. “We're running away, aren't we, Mom?”

It was almost more than she could bear. She felt so drained that she couldn't stand one more question. “No, Marie-Ange”—she spoke to her daughter in a voice that surprised the child—“we're not running away any more than we were when we left Paris. We're doing the right thing, at the right time, in the best way we know how. It may not be what we like, but it's the smartest choice we've got, and that's why we're going to do it.” And with that she told the girls to go out to play. She needed some time to herself. And she stood at her bedroom window, watching them. They had grown up a lot in the last four months, and so had she, more than some people grow up in an entire lifetime.

iane and the girls had a quiet Thanksgiving dinner alone in Washington before they left. It was as though they were living in a town where they were strangers. No one called, no one dropped by, no one invited them to share their turkey dinner. Like millions of others in the nation, they went to church that morning, and came home to carve their turkey, but they might as well have been on a desert island when they did it.

And the next weekend they packed up the things they had bought when they arrived, and Liane put everything on a train to the West Coast. On Monday, they boarded the train, and for just a brief moment, as they sat down in their sleeper, Liane thought of Nick and when she had last seen him at Grand Central Station. It seemed a thousand years ago now, though it had been only four months. But they had been very long months for Liane and the girls. She felt relief as the train pulled slowly out of the station. None of them were sorry to leave Washington. It had been a mistake to come back. Armand had told her to go back to San Francisco, right from the first, but she couldn't have known then what they knew now, the price they would pay for his association with Pétain and the Vichy government.