20.
~ "We should ask around. Your Aunt and Uncle must have left word where they were evacuating to." Arthur said as the once pretty nurse now wore an angry scowl. She prowled the upstairs and looked in each room.
"My Aunt and Uncle are dead." She said coldly.
"Ariadne." He said calmly. "We don't know that. Let's ask around."
She was shaking her head.
"My Aunt's mother was Jewish. The people in Paris told me how the Nazis rounded up all people who had any Jewish heritage. They lost property and were sent away. They didn't know where the people were sent to. Just that they were arrested shortly after the invasion." She explained distractedly looking into each room.
Every room, was ripped free of furniture, rugs and even the wall paper. It was if a terrible storm had beaten the house. Aged it by a century, rather then 4 years.
"We need to ask around. We can go to your other Aunt's home. The one you and Phillip were trying to get to." Arthur offered.
"There's no point." Ariadne said bitterly.
She marched down the servants stairs and into the back garden.
"They even took the garden statues." She laughed darkly as she looked at the over grown lawns.
Her Aunt had once lovingly tended this garden. It had been a show place that was the envy of the village. The family, being so wealthy, no doubt had a target on them because of it. Many of the neighbors must have been happy to sell them out. Coming into the fine mansion to pick over the remains after the Nazis had taken what they wanted.
"I wish you could have seen it before." She whispered.
Something caught the Captain's eye. A movement in the grass. A pair of eyes looking at them.
He sprang so quickly Ariadne barely had time to register what was happening. Her Captain racing to the dead rose bushes and pulling a figure out of it's hiding place.
"Arthur!" She shouted as the Captain pulled a teenage by the collar.
The boy was dirty and too thin.
"Who are you?" Arthur growled pulling his side arm out. The boy looking terrified of the strong American.
"Arthur!" Ariadne shouted running to them. "That's Tomas! He's the cook's son."
The boy whimpered as Arthur slacked his grip on his collar. He made to run away again but Arthur pulled him back.
"Tomas!" Ariadne said kneeling down to see the boy better.
The frightened youth looked worriedly from the scary GI to the pretty girl in the blue dress.
"Tomas, it's me. It's Ariadne." She said making the boy look at her.
"Ari-Bell?" The boy said.
~ Arthur had always been good at the French language. But he had trouble keeping up with the fast pace that his nurse and the trespasser spoke in.
He was only able to catch fragments of words. That Ariadne's Aunt and Uncle had been taken a week after the invasion. They never came back.
"Where is your mother?" Ariadne asked the boy. "Take us to your mother."
~ The boy was pleased to ride in the jeep. Ariadne giving him something to eat from the flour sack. Asking him about Phillip.
"He came back. It was fine for a while. We thought they wouldn't do anything." Tomas said as he ate. Ariadne directing Arthur to a little cottage down a road.
"One night, the police came for them. Arrested them." He said.
"The police? Not the Gestapo?" Ariadne asked. The boy shook his head.
"We only saw the Nazis after they were taken. They lived in your Aunt's house."
"What about Phillip?" Ariadne asked. "What about the children?"
~ "Phillip ran away." A thin, angry looking, old woman said as Arthur and Ariadne sat down in a spartan kitchen. "The police arrested your Aunt and Uncle about a week or so after the invasion. It was very bad. Everyone was trying to get out. I can not tell you how many people came barging up to the big house wanting food and water. They would camp out on the lawn and everything." She explained as Arthur gave the boy more bread. Cutting it with his Army knife.
"After things died down, we thought we would be alright. Then they came. Even arrested the children." The old woman said.
"Phillip ran off. Or so gossip said. We had no idea what happened to you. Your Aunt never mentioned you at all. Never even asked Phillip why you didn't come back with him." The old lady said casually.
Ariadne blinked at that. Her feelings hurt at the unexpected insult the old cook levied against her. Arthur gave a hard look at the old woman.
Ariadne swallowed hard.
"Have you heard anything from them? Anything at all?" She asked timidly. Her voice suddenly shaky.
"Nothing." The cook said sadly. "Your Aunt was a real lady. Very refined. We all miss her."
"I'm sure you all do." Ariadne said coldly. "That's why you ripped out the wires and stairs to sell or burn. Why your boy was running around the garden. Tell me? What did you take from the house? It couldn't have all been the Nazis. Who told the Nazis that my Aunt had Jewish family?"
The old woman glared at the younger one.
"You can't know what it was like. To live with those devils breathing over you. We survived. We didn't run off and spread our legs to some GI to stay alive." The old woman said throwing a look at Arthur.
Ariadne stood and stormed out of the little cottage. Her face burning hot.
~ The cook had always pandered to her Aunt now that she remembered. The old woman had never cared for Ariadne before. She wasn't sure how she had forgotten that. How had she forgotten that she was never really a member of the family? That the house of her Uncle's was never her home.
"Let's go back." She said as Arthur followed her to the Jeep.
~ "I'm sorry." He said after a few miles of not talking.
"Not your fault. It's no one's fault." She said stiffly.
"It was my suggestion to find out what happened." He said gravely. His face remorseful.
"I had to find out eventually." She said looking at the passing scenery.
She sighed and tried to fight back tears.
"My parents died of the influenza when I was 9." She said suddenly. The approach of evening causing a magical feeling to spread out over the country side.
"I stayed at an orphanage for a few months till my Uncle said he would take me. I was put on a ship alone and sent to France."
Arthur said nothing as she went on.
"My Uncle's wife didn't want me to live with them. Never liked me. Everythime I did anything well, in school or whatever, she just found a way to put me down. It was always clear I was a guest in the house, not a family member." She finished.
"I'm sorry." He said.
She shrugged.
"I guess I wasn't remembering it right." She admitted sadly. "I guess I forgot what they were really like. I forgot that I really am alone."
"Your not alone." Arthur said slowing the jeep down as they passed a small bridge.
She looked at him. His voice was sincere.
"At least, I don't want you to be alone." He corrected awkwardly. His heart on his sleeve.
She looked at her hands.
"Arthur, there's something you need to know." She said taking a deep breath.
He looked at her expectantly. Night creeping over the road as Paris glittered into into view.
"A few weeks before the Normandy invasion, I was working at the hospital. An American soldier was brought in after an air raid." She said. Her eyes staying on her hands and not on him.
"He had saved a family in a burning house and went back for a little boy. The house fell on both of them. The boy died, but the soldier was only wounded. He was brought into the trauma ward. I had to use and opium to calm him down because he was fighting too much. He had a lot of shrapnel on his back." She said trying to rush to the end.
"Ariadne." Arthur said distractedly.
"He was talking to me the entire time the doctor was pulling the shrapnel out. But, the drugs made him a little... disoriented. He said things to me he didn't mean." She went on.
"Ariadne." Arthur said slowing down and pulling the jeep over.
"Look at me." He ordered.
She took a deep breath and meet his eyes.
"What are you saying?" He asked.
"How you think you feel about me, it's not real. You didn't dream about me, you were just remembering when you were drugged. How you feel isn't real." She said feeling tears bloom unwelcome into her eyes.
Arthur said nothing to her as she looked at her hands again.
"Ariadne." He said softly. His voice kind. Like it had been when they first met. She ignored him and looked at her hands.
"Please look at me." He said taking her hand. Those large, warm hands of his with the rough callouses she loved so much.
His eyes were very soft as she peered back at him.
"Is that why you've been avoiding me?" He asked.
"I thought it would be easier." She said sadly. "Eventually you would realize you don't have feelings for me."
"I do have feelings for you. You can't tell me what I feel for you isn't real." He said confidently. "It's real."
She was nodding then. Her mind rebelling against what his was saying as her heart felt like it was growing with each beat.
"So that was real, huh?" He asked with a laugh. She had to smile. Her poor Captain was no doubt embarrassed by the way he acted under the drugs.
"Yes. It was very memorable." She admitted.
"What did I say?" He asked.
"Lots of things." She admitted shyly.
"Like what?" He laughed.
"You asked about me, told me you were going to help me. Help me fix it all. Then... you um... you kissed me." She admitted.
"Really?" He laughed.
She nodded. Embarrassed.
"Well that sounds like something I would do." He teased and she giggled.
He started the engine and put the jeep into gear again.
~ It was night when the jeep rolled into the hospital's driveway.
"Can I see you again tomorrow?" He asked as she was reluctant to let this day with him end.
She nodded and felt her courage rise.
She leaned over and kissed her Captain then. Felt his lips part and his breath find hers. His tongue danced lightly over her own.
She pulled away suddenly breathless. Her lips tingling as she had never been kissed like that before.
"I have to go." She whispered.
He nodded. His eyes sad that she was leaving. His hands, reluctant to let her slip away.
"Thank you, for all you did for me today." She whispered.