Carole Collins had had polio as a young girl, and never regained the use of her legs, although she was able to drag herself around on crutches with braces on her legs, but she chose not to. The wheelchair was less humiliating, and more efficient, and she had used it for more than fifty years. She had turned seventy that April. She had been widowed when her husband died in the war, and had never remarried. The farm had been her father's, and she ran it well, and had eventually annexed it to her brother's land after he died. John's father had been her brother, and his wife had remarried and moved away, and was only too happy to let his sister buy her out. Carole Collins was the family's only survivor. She knew a lot about farming, and absolutely nothing about children.

She was giving up her spare room to Marie-Ange, and she wasn't pleased about it, although she seldom if ever had visitors anyway. But it seemed like a waste of a good room to Carole, and she led Marie-Ange to it, through the dimly lit living room, and down a long dark hallway, as Marie-Ange followed. She had to fight back tears every inch of the way, from grief, terror, and exhaustion. And the room she saw when Carole turned the light on for her was spare and barren. There was a cross on one wall, and a Norman Rockwell print on the other. The bed had a metal frame, a thin mattress, and there were two sheets and a blanket folded neatly on it, a single pillow and a towel. There was a small closet, and a narrow dresser, and even Marie-Ange could see that there would be nowhere to put what she had brought in her three huge suitcases, but she would have to face that dilemma in the morning.

“The bathroom is down the hall,” Carole explained. ‘You share it with me, and you'd better not spend too much time in it. But I guess you're not old enough to do that.” Marie-Ange nodded. Her mother had always liked to take long, leisurely baths, and when they were going out, she spent a long time doing her makeup, and Marie-Ange loved to sit and watch her. But Carole Collins didn't wear makeup, and she was wearing jeans and a man's shirt, and her gray hair was cut short, as her nails were. There was nothing frivolous or particularly feminine about her. She just looked old and grim to Marie-Ange as they looked at each other. “I assume you know how to make your bed. If not, you can figure it out,” she said with no warmth whatsoever, and Marie-Ange nodded. Sophie had taught her to make her bed long before, although she was never very good at it, and when Sophie would help her, Robert always complained because he had to make his own bed.

The two distant relatives looked at each other for a long moment, as Carole narrowed her eyes appraisingly. ‘You look a lot like your father as a child. I haven't seen him in twenty years,” she added, but without much regret, as the words mean-spirited leaped to Marie-Ange's mind, and she began to understand. Her great-aunt seemed cold and hard and unhappy, perhaps because she was in a wheelchair, the child decided. But she was polite enough not to ask her about it. She knew her mother wouldn't have wanted her to do that. “I haven't seen him since he went to France. It always seemed like a crazy thing to me, when he had plenty to do here. It was hard on his father when he left, working the farm, but he didn't seem to care much. I guess he went over there chasing after your mother.” She said it as an accusation, and Marie-Ange had the feeling she was supposed to apologize to her, but didn't. She could see now why he had gone to Paris. The house she was in looked depressing and sad, and his aunt at least was anything but friendly. She wondered if the rest of the family had been like her. Carole Collins was so totally different from her mother, who was warm, and gracious, and lively, and filled with fun, and so very, very pretty. It was no wonder her father had gone to find her, particularly if the other women in Iowa were like this one. Had Marie-Ange been older, she would have realized that what Carole Collins was, more than anything, was bitter. Life had been unkind to her, crippling her at an early age, and then taking her husband from her a few years later. There had been very little joy in her life, and she had none to offer. “I'll wake you when I get up,” she warned, and Marie-Ange wondered when that would be, but didn't dare to ask her. “You can help me make breakfast.”

“Thank you,” Marie-Ange whispered, tears bulging in her eyes, but the older woman appeared not to see them. She turned and wheeled away then, as Marie-Ange closed the door to her room, sat down on the bed, and began to cry. She got up finally and made the bed, and then dug into her suitcases until she found her nightgowns, perfectly folded by Sophie. They had little embroideries on them that Sophie had done with her gnarled old hands, and they were of the finest cotton, and like everything else she owned, they were from Paris. Somehow Marie-Ange knew that Carole Collins had never seen anything like them, nor would she ever care to.

Marie-Ange went to bed and lay in the dark for a long time that night, wondering what she had done to have this terrible fate befall her. Robert and her parents were gone, and Sophie along with them, and she was left now with this terrifying old woman in this dismal place, and all she wished as she lay in her bed that night, listening to the unfamiliar sounds outside, was that her parents had taken her with them when they left for Paris with Robert.





Chapter 3




It was still dark the next morning when Marie-Ange's Aunt Carole came to get her. She sat in her wheelchair in the doorway of the room, told her to get up, and then abruptly turned her wheelchair around and rolled herself into the kitchen. And five minutes later, with tousled hair and sleepy eyes, Marie-Ange joined her. It was five-thirty in the morning.

“We get up early on the farm, Marie,” she said, dropping off the second half of her name with studied determination, and after a minute Marie-Ange looked at her and spoke up clearly.

“My name is Marie-Ange,” the child said with a wistful look, in an accent others would have found charming, but Carole Collins didn't. To her, it was only a reminder of how foolish her nephew had been, and she thought the double name sounded pretentious.

“Marie will do fine for you here,” she said to the child, setting a bottle of milk, a loaf of bread, and ajar of jam on the table. That was breakfast. ‘You can make toast, if you want,” she said, pointing at an ancient, rusting chrome toaster on the counter. Marie-Ange quietly put two slices of bread in it, wishing there were eggs and ham, like Sophie used to make, or peaches from the orchard. And when the toast was done, Carole helped herself to a slice and put jam on it sparingly, left the other piece of toast for Marie-Ange, and put the bread away. It was obvious that her morning meal was a small one, and Marie-Ange was starving.

“I'll have Tom show you around today, and tell you what chores to do. From now on, when you get up, you make your bed, you come in here and make breakfast for both of us, like I just showed you, and you get to your chores before you go to school. We all work here, and you will too. If you don't,” she looked at her ominously, “there's no reason for you to be here, and you can live at the state institution for orphans. There's one in Fort Dodge. You'll be a lot better off here, so don't think you can get out of your chores, or working for me. You can't, if you want to stay here.”

Marie-Ange nodded numbly, knowing as never before what it meant to be an orphan.

“You start school in two days, on Monday. And tomorrow we'll go to church together. Tom will drive us.” She had never bought a specially fitted car that she could drive. Although she could have afforded it, she didn't want to spend the money. “We'll go into town today, after you do your chores, and get you some decent clothes to work in. I don't suppose you brought anything useful with you.”

“I don't know, Madame … Aunt… Mrs….” Marie-Ange groped for her words as her aunt watched her, and all she could think of was the gnawing emptiness in her stomach. She had barely eaten on the plane, and nothing at all the night before, and her stomach was aching, she was so hungry. “Sophie packed my bags,” she explained, without saying who Sophie was, and Aunt Carole didn't ask her. “I have some dresses I used to play in,” but all the torn ones she had worn to play in the fields had been left in Marmouton, because Sophie had said her aunt would think them disgraceful.

“We'll take a look at what you brought after breakfast,” her great-aunt said without smiling at her. “And you'd better be prepared to work here. Having you here is going to cost me a pretty penny. You can't expect room and board for free out of me, and not do anything to pay for it.”

“Yes, Madame,” Marie-Ange nodded solemnly, and the old woman in the wheelchair glared at her as the child tried not to tremble.

“You may call me Aunt Carole. Now you can wash up the dishes,” which Marie-Ange did quickly. They had only used a single plate each for their toast, and a cup for Carole's coffee. She went back to her room afterward, not sure what else to do, and was sitting on her bed staring at the photographs she had put on the dresser, of her parents and her brother. And her hand was touching her locket.

She gave a start when she heard her great-aunt wheel herself into the doorway. “I want to see what you brought with you in those three ridiculous suitcases. No child should have that many clothes, Marie, it's sinful.” Marie-Ange hopped off the bed and dutifully unzipped her cases, pulling out one smocked dress after another, the embroidered nightgowns, and several little coats that her mother had bought for her in Paris and London. She wore them when she went to school, and for church on Sunday, and to Paris when she went with her parents. Carole stared at them in grim disapproval. ‘You don't need things like that here.” She wheeled herself closer to where Marie-Ange stood, and dug into the suitcases herself, and then began making a small pile on the bed of sweaters and pants, a skirt or two. Marie-Ange knew those things weren't beautiful, but Sophie had said they would be useful for school, and Marie-Ange thought now that Carole had put them aside because they were ugly. Without saying a word to the child, she zipped the suitcases up again, and told her to put the things on the bed in the narrow closet. Marie-Ange was confused by what she was doing, and then her Aunt Carole told her to go outside and find Tom so she could learn her chores from him, and then she disappeared to her own bedroom far down the dark hallway.