“So what was your division doing in Belgium?” she asked, looking back and making eye contact with her grandfather. Even though she had studied the Battle of the Bulge on the flight over, she wanted to hear the story from his point of view.
But before her grandfather had a chance to answer, Grand-Paul cut in. “Our unit drove the enemy troops out of a small Belgium village near Bastogne.” Even though he sounded excited, his voice wobbled with weariness as he continued. “Boy, were we anxious. It was our baptism by fire—the first combat action of our division. Then in Chenogne…” Grand-Paul started and then paused.
She looked over her shoulder. “What about Chenogne?” she prodded.
“Do you see the Eiffel Tower up there?” Grandpa Jack cut in, pointing.
Ava noticed her grandpa’s face was flushed.
“Is it too hot back there? Do you need me to turn on the air?” She flipped the knob for more air.
“I’m fine. Are you, Jack?” Grand-Paul gazed at his friend with a penetrating look. A message passed between them.
“Grand-Paul, I’d really love to hear about Chenogne,” Ava said, returning to the subject. Her hand gripped the armrest, and she knew she was on to something. Dennis glanced in the rearview mirror and then back to the road.
“I—I decided I don’t want to talk about it.” Grand-Paul cleared his throat.
“Are you sure? I know it must be hard…” She let her voice trail off.
Instead of answering, Grand-Paul pointed ahead to a gleaming white arch in the distance. “Look!”
“Maybe we can talk about it later.” Ava smiled.
“Paul doesn’t want to talk about it later,” Grandpa Jack snapped. “There are some things that just have to be that way.”
Ava sucked in a breath and swallowed hard. Her shoulders tightened. Her grandfather had never talked to her like that. Tears sprang to her eyes and she blinked them away, taking in a deep breath.
Jack pointed out the window. “Look, the Arc de Triomphe! Can you believe it, Ava?” His voice was too chipper.
She nodded, swallowing down her emotion.
Hundreds of cars filled the roadway, and trees lined the road that led toward the majestic monument. It was taller than she had expected, growing before her as they neared. A large white square with a perfect arch cut from the center. Ava couldn’t look at it without recalling the black-and-white images she had seen while researching. A photo of Nazi guards marching in straight lines through the arch sent a shiver up her spine. The Nazis’ foreboding presence seemed to still be there, dominating the bricks they’d strode over with precision and power.
The road curved around the arch, and Dennis slowed so Grandpa Jack could snap a photo from the car window. The car behind them honked.
“Hey, buddy, these guys waited sixty years for this moment, they aren’t about to miss it,” Dennis mumbled.
“Yeah, if you’d waited sixty years, you’d want a photo too,” Ava chimed in, pushing her grandpa’s harsh tone out of her mind.
As they continued, the traffic grew more congested. Dennis’s hand gripped the steering wheel as he maneuvered through the lanes.
“Okay, right up here, you’re going to make the next left,” Grandpa Jack told Dennis.
After they passed the arch, Grandpa Jack guided them past the Eiffel Tower.
Ava leaned forward in her seat to eye it and then gave a small wave. “I’ll be back someday. Just give me some time to let my life calm down,” she called to the tower.
“Don’t let it get too calm. Life’s full of adventure, especially if you have someone to share it with,” Grand-Paul said.
In the driver’s seat, Dennis cleared his throat.
“Maybe someday. We’ll see.” She shrugged, keeping her eyes straight ahead. Years ago, when Grand-Paul and Dennis had spent the summer in Northern California with her grandpa and grandma, the hints had been more subtle, but they’d been there just the same. Ava had been only too happy to oblige then, but now…she was a different person. Dennis was too. They were strangers beginning a journey together, and they had a long way to travel toward trust.
“
We’ll see?
What kind of attitude is that? Too passive, if you ask me.” Grand-Paul scoffed. “We wouldn’t have accomplished anything in our lives with that type of attitude, would we, Jack?”
“Don’t let life just come to you, Ava,” Grandpa Jack added. “Look for the one thing that won’t leave your thoughts and pursue it, even if it costs you everything.” His voice trailed off. She could tell he was thinking of something specific. Someone?
Ava looked back and eyed him more closely, unsure what to think. It seemed strange to be getting advice like this, especially from a man who hadn’t traveled two hundred miles outside his home in sixty years. Maybe that was it. Maybe he regretted waiting until he was eighty-four years old to follow his own advice.
As they drove out of Paris, somberness settled over her soul. It was as if she’d been living her life in a dim room and someone had come in and opened the drapes, giving her a peek of how the world really was.
She was awed by Paris. Overwhelmed by its beauty. More than the beauty, she understood better the impact of what had happened here during World War II. A foreign invader had come and had taken complete control of the French people. This wasn’t just a little village. Hitler had shown great power when he occupied Paris. She understood that feeling of helplessness, of other people’s decisions changing everything you believed to be true. She thought of Jay’s text and her e-mailed response. She wondered now if she’d made a mistake in responding to him. Jay had promised her the world and then walked away. Fear and doubt had invaded her heart. She wished she could be completely free to love again but didn’t know how that would ever be possible.
Chapter Ten
As they drove, Grandpa Jack talked about his first experiences of the war, and it wasn’t the eighty-four-year-old man riding with them any longer but the nineteen-year-old soldier. As he talked, his voice lost its quiver. He spoke in shorter, more clipped sentences—so different from his usual slow, lazy drawl.
“When we first got to France, we expected to fight the Germans still hanging on from D-Day. Then our orders changed.” Grandpa Jack didn’t appear to notice the ride or the countryside flashing by. In fact, she was sure that though his body was riding with them, his mind was back there again. Back in ’44. She jotted down a few of her thoughts. Then her pen stilled.
She tried to focus on her grandfather’s stories, but the view out the car window drew her attention. Rolling hills, covered with vineyards, stretched both directions. Rectangles of green and brown striped a nearby hillside—various crops at different stages of cultivation. The scenery looked as delicately beautiful as the elegant clothes the French women wore.
“We headed north to the combat zone on December seventeenth. It was a four-hundred-fifty-mile, breakneck march. We weren’t actually marching, of course, but those jeeps, half-tracks, and tanks seemed to crawl.”
“You must have taken this road. Do you remember it?” Dennis asked.
“All I remember is white.” He sighed. “Snow poured from the sky. I’ll never forget the unique crunch of a tank moving slowly across new-fallen snow.”
“I bet it was cold,” Ava said.
“You ain’t a-kiddin’,” Grand-Paul added. “The only thing that kept us all from freezing was our own fear and adrenaline.”
“Every now and then, we heard a high screech,” Grandpa Jack continued. “It was the tracks locking up on the ice.” His voice quivered. “We were convinced the enemy was around every turn.”
Ava leaned her head against the headrest, picturing what he was saying. She’d jotted down a few more notes, but the motion of the car and the warmth of the sun coming through the window were getting to her. A nap sounded nice.
“We neared Neufchâteau, Belgium, on December twenty-ninth. The first day of battle, the Germans came over the hill, and that’s when we started to sustain casualties.”
Ava tried to imagine the now-serene landscape covered with snow, ice, and the bodies of men who died their first day of battle.
Grandpa Jack was quiet for a while, and Ava could tell he was thinking, remembering. Grand-Paul was quiet, waiting for his friend to speak again.
She wanted to make sure Grandpa Jack didn’t get all his storytelling out before she could record it, and she was glad when he grew silent. The sunshine warmed her. Ava’s eyelids fluttered closed.
Ava didn’t know how much time had passed, but when she opened her eyes again, she knew France was long behind them.
Belgium.
Ava rubbed her eyes just as Dennis was pulling into a rest stop. Even though the sign called it a rest stop, it was more like a luxury travel center with a nice hotel and store. She chuckled when she thought about the mini-mart gas stations back home in Seattle. The ones with bars on the windows and paddles hooked to keys that opened locks to smelly bathrooms.
After using the fancy bathroom, she headed into the store. Grandpa was checking out the cheese and baguettes, and she moved to the soda case.
Dennis approached, and Ava realized that even though they’d been together for hours, they still hadn’t said much to each other.
He glanced over at her, his eyes studying her face for a moment, but he quickly looked away, pulling an orange Fanta from the cold case. “This is nice—getting the chance to hear your grandfather’s stories.”
Ava agreed, and when they got back in the car, the stories continued. Both Grand-Paul and Grandpa Jack started in about the pranks they used to play on each other. After a while, the stories became fewer and farther between. The laughter faded, and the backseat grew quiet. Before long, both men were snoring. Ava sat quietly too, wondering what to say. Dennis turned on the turn signal, preparing to take the next exit. As they got closer, Ava saw that the sign read B
ASTOGNE
.
She settled deeper in her seat. Warm rays of sunlight filtered in the front window, and a sweet peace filled her. Even though she was in a foreign country with someone she hadn’t seen in years, she felt more comfortable and at ease than she had in a long time.
“Do you know what’s up with Chenogne? My grandpa didn’t seem happy that it was brought up.”
He shrugged. “Mostly my grandpa and I just talk about the end of the war when they liberated Mauthausen.”
“I can see how something that big can overshadow everything else, but something must have happened in Chenogne. It must have been something horrible for him to change the subject and then to act that way when we brought it up again.”
“You should ask him about it when it’s just the two of you. Maybe he’ll open up more,” Dennis suggested. From the pinched look on his face, she suspected he knew more but just wasn’t letting on. She thought about prodding him, but once again the view out the window captured her attention.
The car wound down a narrower road, leading them past houses, fields, and farms—many of which she assumed looked the same as they had sixty years ago. Or one hundred years ago, for that matter.
She twirled a strand of long hair around her finger and studied a small herd of cattle moving with quickened steps through a lush green field. “I’m afraid to see him cry or get angry. I’m afraid I won’t know what to do or how to respond.”
“I’ve never known you to be afraid of anything.”
“Well, I was afraid before I found out we’d be going on this trip together. When I first considered heading out alone, I was scared of getting lost, getting robbed. Of being out of my comfort zone.”
“That just doesn’t seem possible. Where is the adventurous girl I once knew?”
“You’re making it sound like it’s a bad thing I’m no longer adventurous.”
Outside the window, the hillsides were covered with forests. She tried to picture the United States Army moving through these parts. She imagined young guys, fearful of what was around the next bend.
“I didn’t mean for it to sound like that. It’s just that for so long I used you for inspiration. Every time I’d come to a challenge, I’d think,
Ava would do it, so why can’t I?
Then I’d go for it. That strategy worked, because I’ve traveled more places and accomplished more than I thought possible.”
Ava’s fists clenched on her lap, not appreciating the way it made her sound like she’d accomplished nothing. “I’m still a take-charge person—just not in this situation. I’m the lead producer at a morning television show. I call the shots.” She thought of Todd. “Well, I mostly call the shots.”
“Okay, if you say so. I just see something in your eyes. It’s not fear. Not concern. There’s something else. I can tell—” He started and then stopped.
“What?”
“Nothing.”
“You have to finish now.” She waited, tapping her toe against the floorboard.
Dennis took in a deep breath. “Well, at first when I saw you I was mad. Mad at Grand-Paul because he knew you were coming and didn’t tell me. It would have helped if I could have prepared.” He paused and pressed his lips tight.
Ava eyed him, trying to get a hint of what he meant.
“Even though I don’t know what’s happened in the last fifteen years, I could tell you’ve been hurt. You just seem so lost, so uncertain.”
Ava balled her fists and placed them on her lap. “Don’t you think that’s a bit presumptuous?” She twisted her hair around her finger again. Faster, harder.
“That’s also something I forgot. How fiery you can get. I was just trying to open up.”
Ava opened her mouth, ready to shoot back that maybe he should say nothing at all, when guilt wrapped around her chest like a rope. What bothered her most, perhaps, was he was right. She
was
hurt, and it angered her that he could see that. Instead of answering, she pointed to a road that looked as if it led into the center of town. “I think you’re supposed to turn right here. Isn’t that the way to Bastogne?”
“I’m going to head down the road a little bit. This is the route the guys took back in forty-four. I’d like to stop near the hill where they first saw battle.” His smile had slipped a notch, but he still had a pleasant tone to his voice. She didn’t know why. She wouldn’t try to be nice to herself if she were in his shoes.