Free The Fury of Rachel Monette by Peter Abrahams Page B

now?”
    â€œIf it is not too much trouble. You see, I haven’t much time. I must leave tomorrow.”
    â€œBack to New York?” her father asked.
    â€œYes. I fly to Paris in the afternoon.”
    â€œPerfect. I can drive you down in the morning.”
    â€œYou’re very kind.”
    Rachel directed her father to the old brick mansion that contained the European history offices. Dan had spent very little time there, but she didn’t think it necessary to tell him that. The father had a right to assemble his memories without her interference.
    Dan’s office was a large room on the third floor, overlooking a seedy tennis court that no one used. There was a wide bay window on one side. Dan had placed his desk in front of it. On it lay his pens, pencils, rulers, and erasers, neatly aligned and ready for action. The room seemed the same as she had seen it last, two, perhaps three weeks before. Along one wall were shelves of books, floor to ceiling. By another stood a line of gray metal file cabinets. On the third wall hung a large framed blown-up photograph of Chamberlain on his return from Munich. Monette looked at the photograph for a while and then turned to Rachel.
    â€œIt’s a pretty room, isn’t it?” he said. It had never struck Rachel that way.
    â€œIt’s quiet,” she said, choosing an aspect of the room she could approve with honesty.
    Monette walked over to the old pine desk and ran his hand over it softly. He gazed out the window.
    â€œYou never know if you’ve done the right thing.”
    â€œNo,” Rachel said. She saw that he was rubbing his hand back and forth over the surface of the worn pine. “Why did you decide to send Dan over here when his mother died?” Rachel asked him quietly.
    The hand stopped moving. Monette continued to face the window, his back to her. She heard him take a deep breath as though he would need extra oxygen to think about it.
    â€œIt was the most difficult thing I have had to do in my life,” he said finally. “How can I explain it? It was only three years after the war when Margaret died. Daniel was a little boy. We lived in Paris then. We had no money. No one did, of course, but it meant I had to work all the time, and when I wasn’t working I was looking for work. I worked as a waiter in Les Halles, I sold shirts in Faubourg St. Honoré, I delivered messages on a bicycle.” He stopped talking and once more ran his hand along the desk.
    â€œBut in America people had money,” he continued in a somewhat sharper tone. “When Margaret died, I assessed my potential for taking care of the little boy, and concluded that in the next few years at least it was very poor. I knew Margaret had a younger sister in America, of whom she was very fond. Angela.”
    â€œI know her.”
    Monette went on as if she had not spoken: “A married sister, husband a dentist, if I remember, no children. She was very happy to come and get him. In America he would have a better start, I thought. Then, when things were better …”
    His voice trailed away. He continued to stare out the window.
    â€œStay here for a while if you like,” Rachel said gently. “Come back to the house whenever you want. You can sleep in Adam’s room.”
    â€œYou are very considerate.”
    She gave him a key to the front door in case they went to bed before he arrived, and turned to leave.
    â€œOh, you’ll need directions, won’t you?” And she told him the way.

8
    â€œMy dear,” said Dan’s Aunt Angela when Rachel came into the house, “you’ll just have to forgive me for skipping the funeral. I can’t stand them and that’s that.” Angela put her arms around Rachel and hugged her tightly, patting her on the back without losing grip of the cigarette wedged between her fingers. And Rachel suddenly felt tears coming to her eyes, tears she could do nothing